Core 2 Quad Q6600 vs. Core 2 Duo E6850: General Information

We can get a practical idea of the highs and lows of every solution by comparing their formal specifications. Let’s compare side by side the official specs of Core 2 Duo E6850 and Core 2 Quad Q6600 (new G0 core stepping):

The advantages of dual-core Core 2 Duo E6850 over the quad-core Core 2 Quad Q6600 look as follows:

• 25% higher clock speed ensuring higher performance in applications that aren’t optimized for multi-threading;
• Higher bus frequency that increases the memory subsystem performance. Peak bandwidth of the bus between the processor and memory for CPUs with 1333MHz bus is 10.7GB/s vs. 8.5GB/s by CPUs with 1067MHz bus.
• 46% lower heat dissipation that allows using relatively simple and inexpensive cooling solutions, even during overclocking.

The advantages of the quad-core Core 2 Quad Q6600 over dual-core Core 2 Duo E6850:

• Twice as many computational cores that ensure higher performance in multi-threaded applications.
• Twice as large L2 cache memory. It is especially crucial for Windows Vista users as this operating system can distribute computational threads intellectually over the cores with shared or exclusive L2 cache.

Well, each of the CPUs has its highs and lows. Nevertheless, the major drawback of Core 2 Quad Q6600 is its lower clock frequency of 2.4GHz. However, this issue can be resolved by overclocking, can’t it? So, let’s take a closer look at the processors that are sitting in out lab and find out if the overclocked quad-core Core 2 Quad Q6600 will be able to run at the same frequencies as the dual-core Core 2 Duo E6850.