AMD is teh suck atm, We'll have to wait and see what they can do with their 45nm technology. Until then, I wouldn't even consider them.

poor AMD... k10 = S3 Savage2000

I've recently upgrade to a Q6600 from a E4300. Compared these 2CPUs, I found that the Q6600 is very hot and not that fast.
E4300 is a overclocker's favourite. my Q6600 can go 3.2ghz without increase in voltage. I've decided to lower the voltage artificially to cool it at default speed.

For a quad core, Q6600 is good value for money but if you don't need the 4CPUs, then a old E4300 (and overclock it) will do. I guess you can't get one now, but you can get like E7XXX series, which is similar.

Very nice article. Makes me think about the upcomming 45nm achitecture from AMD, since the clock-for-clock disadvantage for AMD isn't that big right now. I think it will really give the Core i7 a run for its money, if Intel doesn't stop acting like nVidia and doesn't lower its prices to some more comfortable level. The Core i7 940 is listed at ~610 EUR on geizhals.at right now, which is totaly off-scale for a 2,8Ghz CPU. The big problem is that it won't bring the huge performance increase Core 2 did, so AMD solutions may become fairly atractive, IMO.

Only 3.6ghz with a Q6600? That is pretty sad. I managed that with an X3210 which is an 8x multi Kentsfield. I know of people that have hit 4ghz on this chip and with 2 instances of F@H SMP reaches at most about 61c on an old Thermaltake CL-P0024 copper tower cooler that I originally bought back in 04' for my Athlon XP 2600+ t-bred. Somebody definitely has done something wrong here.
http://i82.photobucket.co...ars/FWSummer08SPi1mOC.jpg

Lots of Q6600's max out at 3.2ghz, 3.6ghz is fairly common, so I would say that listing a Q6600 @ 3.6ghz for comparison purposes is fairly reasonable.

I wouldn't say anything is wrong aside from the fact that their Q6600 isn't one of the better or best OC'ers out there, that's all. =)

I do wonder how much better their Phenom would have OC'ed had they used a board with the SB750 such as the M3A79-T instead of the older SB600 on the M3A32-MVP Deluxe that Xbitlabs used, people seem to report an extra 100-200-250mhz pretty easily thanks to the SB750.

Have you seen how hot a Q6600 gets at 3.6ghz? Sure they could have gone alot higher then 3.6ghz- if they had water cooling.

Great article. No great surprises, perhaps, but nicely executed and an enjoyable read. Thanks!