Intels Quad Core Q6600 (Revisted)

Real Performance

Maybe it was a little greed coupled with ease of speed to 3.2GHz.
The Q6600 is a bedeviling processor. It's tempting when you see speed increases with little voltage adjustment. What would it take to throttle up higher?

3.3, 3.4, maybe More?

I was eagerly setting up scenes to render in Lightwave and Vue 6.5 and the awe I had anticipated shut smack down in my face. Occasional completed renders would be followed by immediate system shutdown/reboots.

NOOOOoooooooo!!! But Yes, the little proc that could was unable to perform stable in prolonged practical use in 3D applications. I tried everything I could imagine to get stability. BIOS updates, New ratios, voltage changes, ... the works. In the end the baseline was the only rock solid numbers I could get stability. 3.2Ghz

Something I hadn't Mentioned (SECRET)

I was actually playing the Crysis Demo @ 3.6Ghz and my jaw dropped at Max settings (using the 8800 640mb GTS). I was playing Team Fortress and Half-Life 2 2nd Episode at blazing speeds. (The HL2 Source engine known for its sensitivities to over clocking.) All games help up and gave great frames per second.

Sadly, it was the odd reboot when the PC was idle that forced the speed down.

Temps @ 60 C

After my last system analysis I found that temps that hovered/breached and held at 60C would cause an immediate shut down.

The interesting thing about the Q6600 is that higher FSB speeds did not necessarily mean more heat. In fact the span of 3.2 to 3.6 was nominal. At best there was a 2-5 C increase. In other words, the voltage increase required was nominal.

When all four cores were running in Lightwave and Vue6 benchmark tests, the rendering worked until the four cores pegged 60+C for for 6-10 seconds. As soon as that was breached - an immediate shut down reboot would occur. Interesting for a chip set to max temp capped at 70C.

The only feasible way to break the 3.2 barrier all around reliability is with more aggressive/expensive cooling.

It's 3.2 not 3.4 GHz - Still the Best Buy for the Money

It may not be 3.4GHz but @ 3.2GHz, the Q6600 is still a champ.
Since the Q6700 is $250.00 more and only offers a .220 MHz difference, it's hard to overlook this CPU.

There are plenty of Core 2 Duos that will run higher than 3.2, but its hard to beat 4 processors in one box.