Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700

Oh yea thanks, i was more interested in the price and the high resolution gaming benchmarks
Cheers

Sam

 

I understand most of your comments here - let me explain what I think.

It was a 'quick hack' but it's also cheaper (as Intel admits itself - they're trying to push developers to make use of the products - here's a great example of forward-looking games development) and allows them to get quad-core out on the market early.

You can read why I think that the FSB interconnect is not SO MUCH of an issue during the realistic lifespan of this product on page 2 of the review - judging from your comments, it sounds like you didn't read it. In short, it comes down to the way that Intel has architected its cache and the way that the cache accesses memory. There's simply less traffic going across the front side bus because the cache is smarter.

I am excited by AMD's K8L chip and I can't wait to see what it can do. If AMD come up with a great product - which I don't doubt for one minute - I think we'll have two great products on the market. There's no doubt that a native quad-core solution is better than a 2x2 quad-core solution (like Core 2 Quad). Intel will move to 45nm at the end of next year (just when AMD is finally moving all of its products to 65nm) and then we'll see a new architecture in 2008. Intel's Nehalem architecture (due in 2008) will be native quad-core and will manufactured on a 45nm process.

FWIW, Intel's Core 2 is a great enthusiast's product - you can ask anyone who's bought one and overclocked it. When was the last time you saw 1GHz+ overclocks on AIR on AMD chips that cost less than £150?

With Pentium 4 versus Athlon 64, there was quite clearly one very good product and one very bad product. The Athlon 64 was an awesome product, but now it's just not fast enough in many scenarios - I feel that AMD failed to capitalise in the time when it had a much better product.

For gaming though, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 still remains a great product and is an equal to Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad for that matter - the advances are in the more CPU intense 2D scenarios. Roll on 4x4 and K8L is what I say - I can't wait to see how both perform.

 

So in a nut shell Tim (and forgive me if i am wrong) at the moment, if you want a good gaming rig and one that can multitask reasonably well you might as well go for the e6700 and overclock it, get dx10 graphics and sit back and wait to see what is going to happen with the quad war and then pick one from that?

 

I wouldn't even go that high - I'd be content with an E6600, E6400 or an E6300 - they all overclock if you've got a good mobo and good memory (the latter might not be true soon though ). I honestly don't see the point in spending more than about £200 on a CPU, since you're going to get close-to FX-62 performance from it (just look at the performance graphs).

 

100% agreement with Tim: I bought an e6300 - it runs fine at stock speeds - later I Might OC it but good enough for now.

 

Timothy Smalley explain yourself! well PM me if you like. This is all rather annoying now becuase I was gonna go quad lol, but don't think I will now!

That said if I want to I can with ease as it is the same socket, argh, when it gets alot closer to the time i reckon i should worry more lol otherwise i'll have sod all hair left by then!

 

I understand Tims hints

 

Let me see if I understand correctly; Nehalem is a whole new architecture, in that Core 2 is a totally new design from Netburst, and not just a refresh of Core?

I ask because Netburst held around for five or six solid years, and K8 and even K8L is and will be patches to the original Clawhammer chip that come out.. when? Been a while there, too.

Yet Nehalem, another whole new architecture, after just 2 years?

Not that I'm complaining, a quicker pace of improvement is great, I'm just a little surprised. Things are moving at light speed, compared to the crawl that has been recent history.

Edit: I also need to read the forums much, much more often. Decoding the spoilers are as exciting as the reviews.

 

I DO need an explanation, or a PM from anyone explaining this... multiplier locking or what?

 

Lol customh, me too!! Doug? care to enlighten?

 

I'm just guessing, but I think Tim is experimenting with a certain new product from one of the big two.

 

Considering Valve announced that It is adding Dual core and Quad core support to Its source code I think the era of new single core games begining to end.

 

Nehalem is a completely new architecture as far as I know, but I don't know how much different it is at the moment. I'm assuming we'll see a shared cache over four cores (similar to the way Core 2 shares L2 cache between its two cores) - I'm also guessing that we will see a higher IPC and the capability to handle more threads at once.

you'll have to wait and see.

 

This thread became funny the minute people stopped being able to interprete Tim's hints

The higher threads thing sounds interesting. I wonder does this mean they're reintroducing something like hyperthreading? 8 threads on a C2Q would provide enough paralell power for paralell stuff to really start to take off. Whereas 4 doesn't seem like quite enough to have massive parellism.

 

You can already work on four instructions per clock, per core on Core 2 - I'd expect that you'll be able to work on more than four IPC per core on Nehalem.

 

Thanks for the review, helpfull

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No problem - welcome to the forums.

 

I dont like you Tim Smalley i dont... i just wasnt awake enough when i read it...

 

I think i need to find out more about Nehalem lol

 

Indeed, I do too