Hello, maybe I'm a bit slow but: Where's the difference between the Core 2 Quad Q6600 and the Xeon X3220? They've moved togethen in price very close (after the latest Intel pricedrop) Core 2 Quad Q6600 : 4 Core, 2 × 4 MByte L2, 65 nm, Socket LGA775, 2,4 GHz, FSB1066, 105 Watt, Intel pricing: 193 US$ Xeon X3220 4 Core, 2 × 4 MByte L2, 65 nm, Socket LGA775, 2,4 GHz, FSB1066, 105 Watt, Intel pricing: 198 US$ Am I missing something?
I am probably wrong but I had thought that the Xeons were slightly better quality, i.e they are all designed in the same way but some finish their manufacture slightly better, like the difference between Tesco Carrots and Tesco Finest* Carrots or something.
Xeons are primarily designed for servers, rather than your standard desktop, it seems they are "finished off" better at the factories to make sure they are 100% fine for running 24/7. Hope this helped.
Can you even buy the B3 stepping? I thought that they stopped making them almost a year ago. you would think that the stock would of run out by now otherwise there would be threads about how people ordering the 6600's are still getting B3 chips when they wanted the G0.
The original Q6600 had B3 stepping and was rated at 105W. Later on they released a G0 stepping rated at 95W. The 'stepping' is effectively a version number: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_(version_numbers)
At the last Intel TST we were at we were informed from Intel server support staff that they are 100% identical chips. They are even supported (if you put a core 2 in a server MB that is).
I am sure I have read somewhere that the Xeon CPU's allow you to use 2 separate CPU's in dual (or multi, e.g. 4, 8 etc) CPU motherboards but if you put 2 or more normal dual or quad core CPU in a multi CPU motherboard it won't work.
I maybe completely missing the point here, but I remember a Custom PC explaining the diffrence... something to do with the with the way that the prefetch (i may have it wrong i'm trying to find the info via google) The Xeons are optimised for server based tasks (obviously) where as the Core 2 Quad are optimised for desktop based tasks... This equates to slower performance in say gaming for a xenon, but much better performance in encoding etc etc... edit: Saying that I don't think that its a huge difference...
http://www.custompc.co.uk/labs/601820/cpus/products.html - "However, the Xeon X3200-series CPUs aren't just Core 2 Quads with a different name engraved in the top of the heatspreader. As Xeons are aimed at servers and workstations, the four prefetchers are tuned for these sorts of applications, rather than standard desktop applications and games. As a result of this subtle tuning, the X3220 was 3 per cent slower than the otherwise identical Core 2 Quad Q6600 in our Media Benchmarks, and 25 per cent slower in games. However, in our Folding@home test and Cinebench R10, the X3220 was 3 per cent faster than the Q6600. Unless you're building a server or workstation, you're better off buying a Q6600 over an X3220" this is the bit of interest... hope it helps...
Something isn't right there, though. There might be a small difference, but it certainly shouldn't be 25%. Nor have I read any other test where the difference is that large. I would go for the G0 Xeon X3220 if you can. Mainly because they can take 85C as a peak, rather than the lower 71C of the Q6600.
I don't know if this is terribly helpful, but here is a dump from CPU-Z of a Conroe based Xeon: Processor 1 (ID = 0) Number of cores 2 (max 2) Number of threads 2 (max 2) Name Intel Xeon 3060 Codename Conroe Specification Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 3060 @ 2.40GHz Package Socket 775 LGA (platform ID = 0h) CPUID 6.F.6 Extended CPUID 6.F Core Stepping B2 Technology 65 nm Core Speed 2400.3 MHz (9.0 x 266.7 MHz) Rated Bus speed 1066.8 MHz Stock frequency 2400 MHz Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, EM64T L1 Data cache 2 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size L1 Instruction cache 2 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size L2 cache 4096 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size FID/VID Control yes FID range 6.0x - 9.0x max VID 1.350 V Features XD, VT
That's the 5xxx series, the 3xxx series are single socket only. In fact socket 775 is single socket only whereas multi-processor boards/processors use socket 771 which is incompatible. I would be surprised if the performance difference were 25%, Xeons are not only designed for servers where the usage patterns are significantly different from a standard desktop but also for workstations where the usage patter would be very similar I imagine with the only important difference being reliability. Moriquendi