Pentium E6600 3.06ghz vs i3-2100 performance

[Destoro]

Hi, I've been trying to find a benchmark for the Pentium E6600 to compare it with the entry level i3 as an upgrade for my current system, but it's proven very difficult, have any of you seen one? Or know it's relative performance and overclocking ability?

I'm looking at upgrading my current system and the E6600 provides a very cheap route (~80AUD) compared to an i3 which will need a new motherboard and ram (~200AUD). Currently I am using an e2180 clocked at 2.3ghz with a HD6850 so either of these chips should provide a big increase in performance and free up the videocard to really perform.

The second question, is can I use my DDR2 800 with the 1066FSB E6600, without slowing it down? DDR2 1066 doesn't seem to be sold locally any more for a reasonable price. My motherboard is a Gigabyte G33M-S2L, which supports the E6600 with a bios update.

 

[Arkaign]

E6600 is fairly decent, i3 is a good bit quicker. If you're not a gamer, the 6600 will be fine and make more sense financially. DDR2 vs DDR3 is kinda meh (5% or less performance diff in almost anything).

 

[Destoro]

I am, but it's only lately that the CPU has been unable to keep up with games like BF3.

 

[toyota]

an E6600 has been somewhat slow for a while especially trying to run games at decent settings. if you want to game then get the i3 2100.

 

[Cerb]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=289

For gaming, I'd skip the C2Q. Outside of gaming, however, a Q6600 for that price would be a nice upgrade, giving you the added cores, more of a snappy feeling, and you should be able to reach 3GHz+ at stock Vcore.

DDR2-1066 will limit a Q6600 to 4.8GHz, if my arithmetic is correct, which will be nigh unreachable, without exotic cooling and a freak chip.

I am, but it's only lately that the CPU has been unable to keep up with games like BF3.

Console ports have allowed those of us with elderly rigs to hang on, but the last 6-9 months have finally seen games capable of making them feel as old as they are.

 

[ther00kie16]

I'm not sure if an i3 would help.
http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html
Seems as if a Phenom x2 was good enough to max out any single GPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/87?vs=187
The Pentium e6600 is similar to the e7000 series but with less cache. A e7500 at 2.93ghz is directly comparable to the Phenom x2. The e6600 is slightly faster so I don't think it'd bottleneck any GPU you have, especially if you overclock it to 3.6+ghz.

 

[skipsneeky2]

an E6600 has been somewhat slow for a while especially trying to run games at decent settings. if you want to game then get the i3 2100.

Love my i3 2100 a couple reviews have it flying pass the core 2 duo e7600 which is a nicer chip then even the pentium e6600.

No point in investing into a 775 platform anymore unless your getting it for a dollar and a quarter and are upgrading over something like a pentium 4 or d
I retired a core 2 duo e8200 recently BF3 showed huge gains with the i3 2100.

If you plan to game the i3 2100 is a obvious choice matching it with a 6800 series radeon has yielded excellent budget gaming performance for some that is well balanced.

 

[toyota]

oops

 

[Destoro]

I'm not sure if an i3 would help.
http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html
Seems as if a Phenom x2 was good enough to max out any single GPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/87?vs=187
The Pentium e6600 is similar to the e7000 series but with less cache. A e7500 at 2.93ghz is directly comparable to the Phenom x2. The e6600 is slightly faster so I don't think it'd bottleneck any GPU you have, especially if you overclock it to 3.6+ghz.

Thanks, this was a pretty comprehensive answer, I think those charts pretty clearly show that I wouldn't get any benefit out of the faster chip in the current crop of games and with my card. The next question is what happens when you put a 1066 chip with DDR800 memory? My motherboard has a memory divider setting but the manual adjustment doesn't seem to work (I tried using it to get a better overclock with my current CPU), I suppose the BIOS automatically detects which divider to use based on the CPU? If so I would be in trouble as the CPU would be ~10% slowed (I can only get about 920mhz out of the memory).

 

[peonyu]

If your going to spend the money to buy a new board and RAM, you might aswell shell out the extra bucks and get a 2500k or a 2600k. If not then just grab the E6600, the difference from it and I3 is there but its nothing major.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I could assume perhaps the Op plays BF3 do you Op?

My e8200 which was a 2.67ghz stock chip with 6mb l2 cache@ 3.2ghz was holding back my radeon 6750 at stock and oced to a good level in BF3..

Unless your playing games from like 2007 i would highly suggest a i3 2100 at minimum to ensure you get the most out of your 6850.

On a side note the e7600 might be a decent upgrade but i highly would consider at least a i3 2100 platform.

List of games you play might yield more answers

 

[Cerb]

Thanks, this was a pretty comprehensive answer, I think those charts pretty clearly show that I wouldn't get any benefit out of the faster chip in the current crop of games and with my card. The next question is what happens when you put a 1066 chip with DDR800 memory? My motherboard has a memory divider setting but the manual adjustment doesn't seem to work (I tried using it to get a better overclock with my current CPU), I suppose the BIOS automatically detects which divider to use based on the CPU? If so I would be in trouble as the CPU would be ~10% slowed (I can only get about 920mhz out of the memory).

No, no, no, no. It's both the other way around, and the FSB is 4x the real speed (transfers on edge and peak of both rising and falling), so you need half that in DDR RAM speed.

1066MHz FSB -> 266MHz * 4
DDR2-533 -> 266MHz * 2

The lowest you can run your RAM bus is the same real clock speed as your FSB. You can run it faster than the FSB all day long. DDR2 that can run at 920 (460*2) would let you OC a Q6600 to around 4.15GHz (460*9), a practically impossible feat to do safely with normal air cooling, unless you luck up on a fantastic CPU sample.

The auto multiplier should be the one that gets it closest to 800MHz, but that typically won't change if you OC, so you generally want to drop it to minimum, then OC, then raise it if the RAM still has headroom.

 

[-Slacker-]

40% increase in ipc plus another 20% on top of that from hyper threading. Should be worth it.

 

[Denithor]

Why not OC your e2180 a little further (should hit 3GHz easy)? Even spend a few bucks for a nice cooler, if you can hit 3.2GHz or so it's not much different than the Pentium e6600 you're considering buying. At that point run your game and see if there are significant improvements.

 

[Destoro]

I run games like Tribes: Ascend, NS2 beta, Starcraft 2. I might get BF3 sometime soon but performance in beta was bad. Natural Selection 2 is the killer, although a lot of that poor performance is due to lack of optimisation at this stage, a few more frames in other games would go down nicely. I'm kind of poor atm so I'm not going to go out and buy a 2500k.

I've tried overclocking more, but the highest I've run has been 2.5ghz and 2.3ghz is the best stable overclock I've managed on stock cooling without changing voltage. I believe it's the ram holding me back, as the E2180 is supposed to be a very strong overclocker.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I run games like Tribes: Ascend, NS2 beta, Starcraft 2. I might get BF3 sometime soon but performance in beta was bad. Natural Selection 2 is the killer, although a lot of that poor performance is due to lack of optimisation at this stage, a few more frames in other games would go down nicely. I'm kind of poor atm so I'm not going to go out and buy a 2500k.

I've tried overclocking more, but the highest I've run has been 2.5ghz and 2.3ghz is the best stable overclock I've managed on stock cooling without changing voltage. I believe it's the ram holding me back, as the E2180 is supposed to be a very strong overclocker.

Without me looking it up i know the g33 is compatible with g0 stepped processors popular ones like the e6750 and the q6600.

Without much hassle you prob could get a q6600 quad core for under $100 drop it in and clock it to 3ghz without a problem maybe even 3.6ghz if you tinker around i have done this with a ecs g33 i got years ago.

I do believe this will be the best and cheapest route to be happy i doubt you will be happy with another dual core chip with so little more to offer.

 

[Bman123]

if you are upgrading the only choice is socket 1155 right now. A i3 2100 will be a big difference

 

[Destoro]

No, no, no, no. It's both the other way around, and the FSB is 4x the real speed (transfers on edge and peak of both rising and falling), so you need half that in DDR RAM speed.

1066MHz FSB -> 266MHz * 4
DDR2-533 -> 266MHz * 2

The lowest you can run your RAM bus is the same real clock speed as your FSB. You can run it faster than the FSB all day long. DDR2 that can run at 920 (460*2) would let you OC a Q6600 to around 4.15GHz (460*9), a practically impossible feat to do safely with normal air cooling, unless you luck up on a fantastic CPU sample.

The auto multiplier should be the one that gets it closest to 800MHz, but that typically won't change if you OC, so you generally want to drop it to minimum, then OC, then raise it if the RAM still has headroom.

I don't quite follow. Currently, my FSB in bios is set to 230mhz. In CPU-Z this gives a reported RAM frequency of 460mhz, rated FSB of 960mhz and cpu clock speed of 2.3ghz with 10x multiplier. I'd need DDR 1800 not DDR 800 for what you suggest (460mhz FSB)?

Upon further investigation (other forums) it seems that the board has limited ram divider options for 800mhz FSB chips but opens them up for higher fsb speed chips. Strange.

 

[zlejedi]

Get Q6600 it's best cheap option for core 2 era mobos.

 

[tweakboy]

Well for BF3 neither of those dual cores is really enough,,, you need a quad core power house for BF3 , and not bottleneck your VC.... gl

 

[Skurge]

Don't get the E6600, I had one and it's no contest with the i3. Just multi-tasking will be A LOT better with the i3.

BF3 multiplayer was unplayable for me with the E6600 and it wasn't just low FPS, it was constant pausing and hitching. Both cores pegged at 100%.

Dirt 3 my FPS went from mid 30s to high 50s
SC2 went from mid 30s to high 70s
The difference is just massive.

I would NOT recommend getting ANY core 2 cpu over the 2100.

 

[Destoro]

Don't get the E6600, I had one and it's no contest with the i3. Just multi-tasking will be A LOT better with the i3.

BF3 multiplayer was unplayable for me with the E6600 and it wasn't just low FPS, it was constant pausing and hitching. Both cores pegged at 100%.

Dirt 3 my FPS went from mid 30s to high 50s
SC2 went from mid 30s to high 70s
The difference is just massive.

I would NOT recommend getting ANY core 2 cpu over the 2100.

Was that the newer Pentium E6600 (stock 3.06ghz) or the older Core 2 E6600 (stock 2.4ghz)? That performance sounds more like what I get on my 2180.

 

[Denithor]

I don't quite follow. Currently, my FSB in bios is set to 230mhz. In CPU-Z this gives a reported RAM frequency of 460mhz, rated FSB of 960mhz and cpu clock speed of 2.3ghz with 10x multiplier. I'd need DDR 1800 not DDR 800 for what you suggest (460mhz FSB)?

Upon further investigation (other forums) it seems that the board has limited ram divider options for 800mhz FSB chips but opens them up for higher fsb speed chips. Strange.

There's part of your problem with overclocking right there. You've apparently got your RAM running @ 1:1 ratio with FSB so you have DDR2-800 running at 960 speeds, which is apparently about the top end for it. When you go to 2.5GHz on the CPU your FSB is 250 and you end up pushing your RAM to 1000 which it cannot handle.

Drop your RAM multiplier down and you should be able to push your CPU considerably higher.

 

[Concillian]

You can probably reasonably estimate differences by looking at bench and comparing:

E4500 (reasonably close to 2180 OCed)
to
E7500 (reasonably close to E6600 stock)
to
i3 2100

i3 2100 is 40-50% faster in single threaded than the e7500 and 60-75% faster in multithreaded. If you're playing BF3, an i3 (stock) has significantly better performance multithreaded than an E6600 will have. Even if you can get the E6600 to 4GHz, a stock i3-2100 will still be faster.

Those benches may not be perfect alignment with your CPUs, but they should be close enough to demonstrate that there are very significant performance differences with each step (40-50% single threaded performance improvement with each step. i3 adding hyperthreading for even more when multithreaded.)

If you are considering the E6600, make sure your motherboard and BIOS are fully compatible with the Wolfdale chips. If you have a 2180, the board is potentially of a vintage that wouldn't be compatible. It sounds as if your FSB or RAM might be limiting you right now, which means an E6600 might not work out as you think it will. Check this compatibility and check it again before buying an E6600.

The other thing is that DDR3 looks to be here for at least another generation, and it's probably as cheap as it's going to get right now. Memory MFRs have pulled back capacity as much as 50% in order to raise prices back up to a reasonable level (reasonable for them to make a profit). Your cheapest transition to a DDR3 platform is right now.

Your last option (if your mobo is compatible with Wolfdales) is to check ebay for E8400 - E8600s Those are 10-20% faster per clock than the lower cache E5xxx and E6xxx chips. In the US, they aren't much more to get used than an E6600 is new. A mild OC will get it within spitting distance of i3-2100 performance. Keep an eye on FS/FT too.

 

[PingSpike]

So you're looking at a $120AU different to go with the i3. But you said DDR2 is expensive now. I don't know what you can get for it there but here you could probably sell that motherboard for $25 and a 2x2gb DDR2 kit you could probably get $25 for. The e2180 is sort of hard to price these days but I would think you could get $15 for it. So that's $65 USD = whatever AU. Covers a lot of the cost and you'd get rid of your old hardware before its completely worthless and get a serious upgrade instead of a minor one.

I had a s775 setup with a e2160 but I ended up parting it out when I was thinking of upgrading the CPU. DDR3 was so cheap that I was looking at either getting a G41 board and DDR3 in which case I might as well just go all the way because I was selling all my old hardware anyway. I could sell my DDR2 and turn around and buy twice as much DDR3 for no real cost. And those s775 chips were pricey while falling behind the 1155 stuff that was cheaper. Plus that e6600 didn't really seem like much of an upgrade when I finally tracked down some benchmarks for it. The only real loser was that 1155 motherboards were expensive when I updated.

I've stopped buying expensive motherboards for now. Intel chipsets have a short life and my previous "buy a really great motherboard and just update the cpu" strategy just didn't make any sense.