E6600 or E6400?

[Jaepheth]

I plan on overclocking a bit (3.0 - 3.5 GHz)

What I'm wondering is, how much of an improvement in rendering scenes in Blender will I see with the E6600? Would you guys consider the E6600 to be worth the extra cost?

 

[TBSN]

Is Blender a rendering program? In games I've heard there isn't a huge improvement, but as far as other uses I have no idea...

 

[tallman45]

As with the Dual core itself someday Apps will take advantage of not only the second core but also the additional cache. While clock speed can be attained , onboard cache is purchased.

Here is a set of charts that show an OC E6400 at 2.88 vs a stock E6600 at 2.4. In some cases the 4mb cacge really makes up for the 400mhz lack of speed. Wonder what the same tests would show if the E6300, E6300 and E6600 all wer running at 2.88 ?

E6400 Overclocked

 

[cmdrdredd]

It should be noted that generally the E6600s will overclock to higher levels than an E6400.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
It should be noted that generally the E6600s will overclock to higher levels than an E6400.

QFT.

<3500 MHz is pretty much absolute best on most air cooling for E6400/6300 if you want to be able to pass a few hours of Orthos, whereas the E6600 should do that & then some, usually 3600 MHz or a bit more before you lose Orthos stability.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
It should be noted that generally the E6600s will overclock to higher levels than an E6400.

QFT.

<3500 MHz is pretty much absolute best on most air cooling for E6400/6300 if you want to be able to pass a few hours of Orthos, whereas the E6600 should do that & then some, usually 3600 MHz or a bit more before you lose Orthos stability.

Yeah, take my system with E6400(8xmulti) @ 3.2Ghz, 400Mhz FSB, DDR2-1000. Pop in an E6600 and with 9xmulti you're already at 3.6Ghz with no adjusting. Maybe some voltage up or down depending on luck, but generally same ease.

If it were me, I'd get the E6600 for the cache AND the 9xmulti.