[Techspot] Q6600 a decade later - does it still game?

escrow4

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Feb 4, 2013
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"We set out to discover if the decade old Core 2 Quad Q6600 could cut the mustard in 2017, and the answer is a resounding no. Of course, this won't surprise many of you -- testing 10-year-old computer tech is a bit like comparing steam trains against maglevs.

Out of the box, the Q6600 is only good for a Cinebench R15 multi-threaded score of around 250pts. By comparison, a $120 Core i3-6100 scored around 400pts and the i7-6700K hit over 900pts. Overclocking the Q6600 to 3.1GHz only boosted the Cinebench scores to around 320pts."

http://www.techspot.com/article/1313-intel-q6600-ten-years-later/page3.html

The simple answer is: HA!

Remember when CPU development was actually exciting?
 

superstition

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Feb 2, 2008
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I'm sure it will run The Sims 4. lol

They're still charging monthly fees for SWTOR, too, right?
 

bigboxes

Lifer
Apr 6, 2002
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Wow. I remember building a Q6600 box for a client back in the day. First quad I ever worked on. Crazy how things change, but I guess ten years will do that to a cpu.
 

cbn

Lifer
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I remember back in ~March 2013 shopping for a used CPU upgrade for my Core 2 DIY machine......and seeing the Q6600 for around $50 to $60 shipped on ebay. Now they are like $13 shipped.

Meanwhile (almost 4 years later) the Sandy Bridge Core i5 2400 and Core i5 2500 (released 4 years after the Q6600) are around that same price as what the Q6600 was in 2013...... $50 and $60 shipped respectively.

Interesting how the depreciation has been almost linear. EDIT/Correction: Q6600 had a higher launch price in January 2007 compared to the Core i5 2500 launch price in January 2011.
 
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MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
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My sister in law still uses my old Q6600 SLCKR I used to run @ 4.0 for web surfing etc.

It's not clocked that high these days, and it would be horrible for gaming I imagine.

10 years + is a pretty big gap.

Still have a Q9650 rig I should do something with, the wife would rather turn on her Amazon little pad than use it these days.
 
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superstition

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Interesting how the depreciation has been almost linear.
It depends on where you look. I remember ordering RAM from memory4less back in 2001 or whatever because it had good prices. Now I just it on saw Google Shopping listing a used Pentium 4 EE for a ridiculous price — $633.70. Office Depot has a new one for a mere $1149.99, which did get added to my cart. Consutronix will also sell you one, for a cool $1236.07 with shipping.

August 2004 · Intel · Single-core · 3.5 GHz · Socket LGA775 · 1,066 MHz fsb

Get advanced performance for high-end gaming and the most demanding power applications. The Intel Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology Extreme Edition is designed specifically for those who know their technology and crave high performance.

The cheapest price listed in Google Shopping for that CPU, used, is about as expensive as buying an FX 8320E and a board capable of overclocking it to a decent level ($139.42) — at least if one has a Micro Center near. Zombie tech pricing can be interesting.
 
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StrangerGuy

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Wish they throw in Nehalem and Penryn in there, they seem to hold up much better than Conroe quads according to random Youtube game testing.
 

superstition

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Just to clarify I was comparing what I remember about ebay prices in 2013 to ebay 'buy it now" prices in 2017.
I know. Ebay tends to inflate the pricing of old stuff but not to the degree clueless corporations tend to (because there's apparently not enough incentive for some companies to invest manpower into bringing obsolete tech pricing into the real world). I just think the zombie pricing is funny.

Yes! You, too, can score a cool new Extreme Edition Pentium 4 for the low low price of $1200. Act now.
 
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MongGrel

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I know. Ebay tends to inflate the pricing of old stuff but not to the degree clueless corporations tend to (because there's apparently not enough incentive for some companies to invest manpower into bringing obsolete tech pricing into the real world). I just think the zombie pricing is funny.

Yes! You, too, can score a cool new Extreme Edition Pentium 4 for the low low price of $1200. Act now.

Someone might actually buy it, why wouldn't they.

Not my thing personally, but someone else probably catches a fish now and then.
 
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superstition

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Someone might actually buy it, why wouldn't they. Not my thing personally, but someone else probably catches a fish now and then.
Hold onto old junk and it becomes less valuable, even older, junk. At some point the potential profit from selling to the utterly ignorant is outweighed by the depreciation overall. My guess is that the Pentium 4 EE passed that threshold a long time ago.
Wish they throw in Nehalem and Penryn in there, they seem to hold up much better than Conroe quads according to random Youtube game testing.
Yes. Going back too far makes for a less interesting article than going forward to the point where people would have to ponder whether or not the performance is acceptable. But, I do like to see old tech included benchmark roundups to give perspective. That's why I tested the 2009 Lynnfield i5 750 with the Ryzen Blender stuff, with Cinebench R15, etc. If I hadn't I wouldn't have seen a point where the benefit from The Stilt's compiled builds stop. It was also interesting to see that Lynnfield at 3.8 get a similar single thread score to Piledriver at 4.4 in CB R11.5. The Lynnfield results suggest to me that it can still be adequate for some games, as long as they don't rely too heavily on multithreaded performance.
 
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SPBHM

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Sep 12, 2012
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that's pretty slow, but I would like to see more games and exploring some different settings,
also, the 45nm ones.

but yes, can't expect much from lga 775 in 2017

edit, also it's possible to run DDR3 1333+ on lga 775, they used DDR2 800 (which is fair enough, an accurate representation of average C2Q, but...)
 
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ElFenix

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things to note:
1. how much faster 2 tocks of improvement the 2500k is over the Q6600
2. how much not faster 2 tocks of improvement the 6700k is over the 2500k, but
3. how close that i3 is to nipping at the i5's heels.
 

SinfulWeeper

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Sep 2, 2000
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Wonder if I should try loading windows 10 on my old comodor 64... How to covert a DVD or iso to heaven knows how many 5" floppy disks... I am getting a headache on that conversion alone... Let alone actually installing it. But hey. I seen vista installed on a 286. Would have been cooler if it were an 8086... Lol
 

StrangerGuy

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May 9, 2004
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things to note:
1. how much faster 2 tocks of improvement the 2500k is over the Q6600
2. how much not faster 2 tocks of improvement the 6700k is over the 2500k, but
3. how close that i3 is to nipping at the i5's heels.

Yeah, a $64 Skylake 2C/4T is strong enough to make the $200 i5s look bad for the huge cost differential. Nobody should be spending $200 on a 4C/4T chip in 2017.
 

Ancalagon44

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Feb 17, 2010
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Embarrassingly, I don't think my CPU is that much faster than a Q6600 - I've got a Phenom II X6 1045T
 

pantsaregood

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Feb 13, 2011
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I hate to be that guy, but Q6600s would often far exceed the 3.1 GHz used here. 4.0 GHz wasn't uncommon. In addition to some faster RAM, most of the games that are in the 20s for minimum framerate would've increased to around 30.

3.1 GHz to 4.0 GHz is almost a 30% increase in speed. The difference in performance is not trivial at that point.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not claiming that a Q6600 at 4.0 GHz paired with DDR3 at 1600 MHz can offer a premium gaming experience, only that it can offer a playable 30 FPS experience. We are discussing a 10 year old CPU. Can anyone imagine discussing running Crysis on a Pentium II in 2007?

Also, I can't help but think the hex-core Xeons from this era would still be able to drive significantly multi threaded games very well. They're probably roughly comparable to a Phenom II X6.
 
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Denithor

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Even at 4GHz it would likely only be challenging the dual core Pentium, not even really contending with the i3 or above. And, if I recall right, 4GHz was more of a golden result, average was more like 3.6-3.8GHz for the Q6600.
 

VirtualLarry

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4.0Ghz was VERY uncommon (I might say rare) for a Q6600. I got mine to 3.6Ghz, which was considered a realistic max for those CPUs back in the day. I don't know who started the 4.0Ghz rumor. There was a person on these forums claiming that he got to 4.0 on his, but most people I don't think believed him fully.

Edit: And if you thought the Skylake CPUs were bandwidth-limited, you should try a quad-core with a FSB like the Q6600! Way more memory bandwidth-limited than Skylake, especially on scientific compute tasks.
 

Conroe

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I ran benchmarks at 4.29 and it was close to low end Haswell i5's in many CPU benchmarks. It's in the Cinebench r11.5 thread here to.
pm42.jpg

Photobucket seems to have messed up my screen shots.

No 65nm chips could do that, at least not on air. That chip is rock solid at 4.0 24/7.
 

pantsaregood

Senior member
Feb 13, 2011
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I may be thinking of Penryn regularly hitting 4.0 GHz. Still, 3.6 GHz is 16% faster than the 3.1 GHz tested, and 3.8 GHz is 22% faster. The point still stands that this comparison did not take into account significant headroom that most Q6600s had.

It also fails to account for the memory bandwidth issue someone above mentioned.

EDIT: I'd really like to see someone take a Core 2 Quad QX6850, Core 2 Quad QX9770, Core i7 875K, Xeon X5672 (in dual channel), Core i7 2700K, Core i7 3770K, Core i7 4770K, Core i7 5775C (L4 disabled), Core i7 6700K, and Core i7 7700K, clock them all to 4 GHz with 1866 MHz DDR3 (or 2133/2400 if you can push the Core 2s to do so), and benchmark them against each other. This would be a fantastic means to compare the IPC gains from the last ten years.
 
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