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Q6600 verse Q9450

F

figgly

Member
Retail Q6600 can be purchased for about $200 now.

OEM Q9450 is $350.

Is the Q9450 worth a 75% premium over the Q6600?

Closer to a 90% premium for retail Q9450 (if you can find it.)

I don't overclock and I will keep the new build for at least 3 years.

What do you think about the CPU choice ?

Thank you.
 
At current prices I'd stick with the Q6600.

The Q9450 is about 15% faster at stock, which isn't worth such a steep jump in price IMO.

Another CPU to consider is the Q6700, at $266. Its only about 5% slower than a Q9450, if you intend to keep the CPU for 3 years and not overclock the extra speed may come in handy over a Q6600.
 
Ok... Some more questions... Benn out of the loop for quite some time:

1) Are the Q6600 and Q6700 both dual core? THe Q9450 is quad, right?

2) How does your advice change if one is planning a moderate to aggressive OC?

3) What MoBos are recommended for both 6600 and 9450 if doing moderate to agressive OC?

I'm part of the "best bang for the buck" crowd...
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813127033
$137 ar seems like a lot until you see what you're getting with this.

Q6600 is best bang for buck at $200 vs $350+ for Q9450 and $265 for Q6700. If you're doing a mild/moderate oc of around 3.2 then any of these cpus will easily get there and the q6600 wins again. If you can get a Q9450 for $300 then they're a very good alternative, but at $350+ they're too much. If you wait a couple of months Q9450 will probably be closer in price, but if buying now just get Q6600.

all of these are quads btw. Q6600 stock speed is 2.4 (9x266) and is 65nm. Q6700 is 2.66 (10x266) and is 65nm. Q9450 is 2.66 (8x333) and is 45nm.
 
Q6600, Q6700, and Q9450 are all quads. Q6600 and Q6700 are both 65nm CPU's, the only difference is that the Q6700 has a slightly higher multiplier. The Q9450 is 45nm, and has a lower mulitplier then the Q6600 or Q6700, whihc means to hit higher GHz, you need to run at a higher FSB speed (which makes it harder to do)

For best bang for the buck, a $200 Q6600 that you OC to ~3.5GHz looks pretty good. A Q9450 will likely also get to about the same amount, due to the difficulty of running the higher FSB. Plus the Q9450 is what, like ~140 more.

Any good P35 board should do well OC'ing either CPU
 
Originally posted by: Caveman
Ok... Some more questions... Benn out of the loop for quite some time:

1) Are the Q6600 and Q6700 both dual core? THe Q9450 is quad, right?
Click to expand...

Anything that starts with a "Q" is a quad core, and anything that starts with an "E" is dual.

2) How does your advice change if one is planning a moderate to aggressive OC?
Click to expand...

His opinion may differ from mine, but here's what I think:

I imagine that a Q6600 will probably get a higher OC mainly due to the lower stock FSB, which means it has a higher multiplier. Clock for clock, the Q9450 is faster though. You also have to consider that the Q9450 has the SSE4 instruction set. This probably won't make much difference for a while until it gains wider adoption, but the OP is planning on keeping his cpu for 3yrs, so it might actually have an impact down the road.

3) What MoBos are recommended for both 6600 and 9450 if doing moderate to agressive OC?

I'm part of the "best bang for the buck" crowd...
Click to expand...

I would imagine that a any decent Intel P35 motherboard would be your best bang for the buck for C2Q OCing. I really liked my Abit IP35-Pro, and so does Anandtech http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3142 Then again, I've gotten just as good of an overclock out of my 780i board, although this board was a bit more finicky to install. The Abit just worked out of the box.
 
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
I love my ip 35 pro, but with that ix38 quad gt at 137 shipped, why would you get in ip35 pro right now?😕
Click to expand...

You wouldn't 🙂

...you posted that while I was typing my post.

I think I would go so far as to say I would have probably bought the IX38 and sold the IP-35 Pro if I didn't already have this 780i board.
 
So... If the stock speed of a Q6600 is "x" GHz, and ramping it up to (possibly) 3.5, what kind of speed increase will I see in the real world running CPU intensive calculations (no graphics)?

Is the OCing linearly scaling, or does a clock jump of say 10% give a 15% performance boost...?
 
Originally posted by: Caveman
So... If the stock speed of a Q6600 is "x" GHz, and ramping it up to (possibly) 3.5, what kind of speed increase will I see in the real world running CPU intensive calculations (no graphics)?

Is the OCing linearly scaling, or does a clock jump of say 10% give a 15% performance boost...?
Click to expand...

Generally speaking, if the application is totally CPU bound then a 10% overclock will yield close to 10% higher performance.
 
Originally posted by: figgly
I don't overclock and I will keep the new build for at least 3 years.
Click to expand...

There's a version of this many of us fall for, how much can we overclock at "stock" voltages? Even though "stock" Vcore varies with each Q6600 chip, there's quite a range where they overclock nicely at under stock voltage. Mine only actually needs its "default" voltage of 1.275 V near 3.2 Ghz. The curve not only climbs above this speed, it falls below this speed. Power is said to be frequency * voltage * voltage, so one uses less power and generates less heat by exploiting this at speeds near stock.

In other words, the specs on a Q6600 are a very conservative, arbitrary judgment call by Intel. If your ATM gave you $24 when you asked for $30, unless you hit the green button, would you? Sure, hitting it twice to get $36 is greedy, but an overclock of 3.0 Ghz is an extremely conservative way to get the value you've paid for out of the chip.

My very first recollection of school was getting my kindergarten classmates to play Simon Says backwards, causing a student teacher to leave the room in tears. Oops! But taking the 2.4 Ghz rating of a Q6600 too literally is like playing along with Simon Says.
 
My very first recollection of school was getting my kindergarten classmates to play Simon Says backwards, causing a student teacher to leave the room in tears. Oops! But taking the 2.4 Ghz rating of a Q6600 too literally is like playing along with Simon Says.
Click to expand...

wft???

Good point about the lower vcore required for stock speeds. That is a good way for non-overclockers to get their power consumption WAY down on a Q6600 or even Q6700 these days.
 
Originally posted by: Caveman
So... If the stock speed of a Q6600 is "x" GHz, and ramping it up to (possibly) 3.5, what kind of speed increase will I see in the real world running CPU intensive calculations (no graphics)?

Is the OCing linearly scaling, or does a clock jump of say 10% give a 15% performance boost...?
Click to expand...

I don't think you would/could notice any difference in speed or snappyness from any of these chips when compared to each other or even if slightly overclocked. As for the Q6600, unless you get a really good chip I would say you top end is closer to 3.2GHz.
 
I'm not going to open up another thread on this topic so please bear with my semi thread-highjack... what about the gaming performance between these two chips??? I can't see the 6600 being better even overclocked starting from the point of the 9450 having more cache 12mb compared to the 6600 with 4mb and then there is the sse4 instructions on the 9450 (if the sse4 ins. make a dif) - were not talking about dual core gaming here ok?
 
Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I'm not going to open up another thread on this topic so please bear with my semi thread-highjack... what about the gaming performance between these two chips??? I can't see the 6600 being better even overclocked starting from the point of the 9450 having more cache 12mb compared to the 6600 with 4mb and then there is the sse4 instructions on the 9450 (if the sse4 ins. make a dif) - were not talking about dual core gaming here ok?
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, not much....maybe 2-5%.

Hers are some links comparing Q9300 or Q9450 with Q6600's.

Xbit

link2

Any new CPU, once you get to 3GHz+, the CPU isn't the limiting factor, the VC is.
 
+1 for what garfield said. Have a look at my x264 Benchmark HD and you'll see that on the average, there is a slight gain (~5 %) in the Q9450 - at least for x264 encoding. That's not to say that other applications can't use the larger cache and/or SSE4 though.
 
I agree with graysky. I compared my results with a ton of Q6600's the other day on graysky's x264 benchmark (which I highly recommend btw) and I was almost exactly 5% faster clock/clock on my 9450.

I have noticed a more significant DC improvement, however. I was averaging a hair under 2200 ppd on my e6750 at 3.4, so 1100 ppd per core. I'm looking at 5,000+ ppd on my q9450 which is also at 3.4, so around 1300 ppd per core now. At least a 15% improvement, though it will be a couple weeks before I get exact numbers. This makes sense as the extra cache is supposed to help a lot in this sort of program. Will post more as data becomes available.
 
Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat
Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I'm not going to open up another thread on this topic so please bear with my semi thread-highjack... what about the gaming performance between these two chips??? I can't see the 6600 being better even overclocked starting from the point of the 9450 having more cache 12mb compared to the 6600 with 4mb and then there is the sse4 instructions on the 9450 (if the sse4 ins. make a dif) - were not talking about dual core gaming here ok?
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, not much....maybe 2-5%.

Hers are some links comparing Q9300 or Q9450 with Q6600's.

Xbit

link2

Any new CPU, once you get to 3GHz+, the CPU isn't the limiting factor, the VC is.
Click to expand...

those power consumptions gotta be noted, wow!
 
Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat
Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I'm not going to open up another thread on this topic so please bear with my semi thread-highjack... what about the gaming performance between these two chips??? I can't see the 6600 being better even overclocked starting from the point of the 9450 having more cache 12mb compared to the 6600 with 4mb and then there is the sse4 instructions on the 9450 (if the sse4 ins. make a dif) - were not talking about dual core gaming here ok?
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, not much....maybe 2-5%.

Hers are some links comparing Q9300 or Q9450 with Q6600's.

Xbit

link2

Any new CPU, once you get to 3GHz+, the CPU isn't the limiting factor, the VC is.
Click to expand...

what? on a quad, it's the ability of the mobo to keep fsb stable at high speeds usually. and my e6750 was limited to 468 fsb, it wouldn't post at ANYTHING over that under any circumstances, so it's speed was not limited by vcore but by the chip's max fsb x multi(8); aka it hit the fsb wall.
 
Nice links Garfield, makes me lean towards the Q6700 for $289 save $100 bucks probably outperform stock & may OC better !!
Thanks !!
Just another direction to confuse my sorry butt !!
But this just confirms what iv'e been recomending to friends who are looking & waiting !

Ol'Pal 😀

Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat
Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I'm not going to open up another thread on this topic so please bear with my semi thread-highjack... what about the gaming performance between these two chips??? I can't see the 6600 being better even overclocked starting from the point of the 9450 having more cache 12mb compared to the 6600 with 4mb and then there is the sse4 instructions on the 9450 (if the sse4 ins. make a dif) - were not talking about dual core gaming here ok?
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, not much....maybe 2-5%.

Hers are some links comparing Q9300 or Q9450 with Q6600's.

Xbit

link2

Any new CPU, once you get to 3GHz+, the CPU isn't the limiting factor, the VC is.
Click to expand...

 
Please do note that with the Q6600, you have a much higher heat output than the Q9450, thus for extreme clocks (the kind of which Q9450 is capable), Q6600 needs to go to either very extreme air cooling, or water-cooling altogether. I'm quite sure that with the stock cooler, 3.0-3.2GHz with the Q6600 is already pushing it, and the limit should be at 3.6GHz-3.8GHz for air cooling. Q9450, on the other hand, can still run quite well at 3.6GHz with the stock cooler, and up to 4.0GHz with extreme air.

So there... um... just my two cents. But if you're not going to overclock much, Q6600 is a good choice. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat
Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I'm not going to open up another thread on this topic so please bear with my semi thread-highjack... what about the gaming performance between these two chips??? I can't see the 6600 being better even overclocked starting from the point of the 9450 having more cache 12mb compared to the 6600 with 4mb and then there is the sse4 instructions on the 9450 (if the sse4 ins. make a dif) - were not talking about dual core gaming here ok?
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, not much....maybe 2-5%.

Hers are some links comparing Q9300 or Q9450 with Q6600's.

Xbit

link2

Any new CPU, once you get to 3GHz+, the CPU isn't the limiting factor, the VC is.
Click to expand...

what? on a quad, it's the ability of the mobo to keep fsb stable at high speeds usually. and my e6750 was limited to 468 fsb, it wouldn't post at ANYTHING over that under any circumstances, so it's speed was not limited by vcore but by the chip's max fsb x multi(8); aka it hit the fsb wall.
Click to expand...

I was talking about gaming performance for my last sentence, not about what limited OC speeds. Just that once you OC to 3+GHz, any CPU, whether dual or quad, the game becomes Video card limited. I should have been more clear.
 
that's certainly true with most games, but crysis and supcom both scale as high as you can get on a quad core if you have strong enough video cards. ask aigo about his supcom experiences.
 
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