Hardware Overclocking Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...2_quad_q6600/1

We take Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 for a spin on two motherboards to find out if it could be the next Athlon XP 2500+. Read on to find out how we got on...



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[Mother-Goose]

OOOOOOOOOOOO!

I'll give it a spin on my striker then, just upping the fsb and no voltage tinkering etc and see what I get out of it!

On a side note, would the scythe fit on the striker? My freezer 7 is barely able to, in fact the fan had to be mounted two fins higher than it should.

Spot on review though, Q6600 cheesecake!

p.s. I love the Clarksonian POWEEEEEER!!!!1

[cosmic]

Interesting that you managed to get to 3GHz without exceeding Intel's recommended voltage range for the chip. How hot was the chip under load at this clock - did not see the temps in the review (I know you kept below 65C - but what temp was it on the P35 board)

Looking forward to see what is possible with a G0 stepping Q6600.

[LeMaltor]

Cool review, I guess an upgrade is in order

[[EOCF] Tim]

Thank you for the very good read and interesting article.

One thing that I did very much like was the games, and that you actually (as one of the very few) listed the minimum fps. One thing that bothers me, is that a lot of review sites that review CPU's in games, bench them with Average fps. They might even do it in higher resolutions (thank goodness) and with AA and AF. But there is going to be no difference in average fps between CPU's on higher resolutions. But you can see the difference, (even at higher resolutions) with minimum fps as we saw from this excellent review.

I'd like to ask you a big favour. Could you please next time bench the games with AA and AF enabled at normal resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200 or widescreen etc), and at the same time keep using the minimum fps as well. I think that'd be an eye opener, since I was quite convinced that you don't need a powerful CPU when your gaming at high resolution and AA and AF.

I mean, the average can be within 1 fps of one another, but what we saw from the 1600x1200 benches, that the minimum fps changed quite a bit. If we would be able to get 28fps mimimum with an old 3800+, and 35fps min. with a Q2D or Q2Q, then obviously the Q2D would deliver a better gaming experience.

So, this was a great review, everything was done right, quite a few games, and what's fantastic that it had minimum fps for the reasons listed above. But one addition could be to add some 4xAA 16xAF, to really see what a cpu can do for the mimimum framerate, being the best playable experience delivered.

Again thanks, and a big thumbsup.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

What speed of RAM would you recommend for over clocking the Q6600? I had been intending buying a Q6600, Abit IP35 Pro and some G.Skill HZ 6400. (The HZ will clock over 1000Mhz)

[Spacecowboy92]

This it the type of thing I came to bit for. Great article.
Although they always make me sad because I have no money to upgrade

[Paradigm Shifter]

Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon

What speed of RAM would you recommend for over clocking the Q6600? I had been intending buying a Q6600, Abit IP35 Pro and some G.Skill HZ 6400. (The HZ will clock over 1000Mhz)

Unless you plan to go over 400MHz FSB, PC2-6400 should be more than sufficient.

...

I'm waiting for my Q6600, Striker Extreme and assorted other goodies to arrive at the minute. Will be fun to see what can be done.

[Tim S]

Gosh, I jump on a train for an hour and there are already a whole bunch of questions - thank you for the comments.

Originally Posted by Mother-Gooser

On a side note, would the scythe fit on the striker? My freezer 7 is barely able to, in fact the fan had to be mounted two fins higher than it should.

I'm not sure if the Infinity will, but there are some good heatsinks that WILL fit on the Striker and should deliver very similar performance. The thing I was trying to prove here is that with a system that are essentially "nothing special", you can overclock a Q6600 to beyond the QX6850's stock speeds.

p.s. I love the Clarksonian POWEEEEEER!!!!1

To be truthful, I was running out of things to say.

Originally Posted by cosmic

Interesting that you managed to get to 3GHz without exceeding Intel's recommended voltage range for the chip. How hot was the chip under load at this clock - did not see the temps in the review (I know you kept below 65C - but what temp was it on the P35 board)

Looking forward to see what is possible with a G0 stepping Q6600.

I think temps under 4x Prime 95 load were around 55 degrees with the Infinity on the P5K Deluxe - at 3.35GHz, I think temperatures hovered around 62-64 degrees depending on room temperature. Our office is around 23-26 degrees typically and mobo temp was hovering around the 38 degree mark according to Asus's monitoring software.

Originally Posted by [EOCF] Tim

Thank you for the very good read and interesting article.

One thing that I did very much like was the games, and that you actually (as one of the very few) listed the minimum fps. One thing that bothers me, is that a lot of review sites that review CPU's in games, bench them with Average fps. They might even do it in higher resolutions (thank goodness) and with AA and AF. But there is going to be no difference in average fps between CPU's on higher resolutions. But you can see the difference, (even at higher resolutions) with minimum fps as we saw from this excellent review.

I'd like to ask you a big favour. Could you please next time bench the games with AA and AF enabled at normal resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200 or widescreen etc), and at the same time keep using the minimum fps as well. I think that'd be an eye opener, since I was quite convinced that you don't need a powerful CPU when your gaming at high resolution and AA and AF.

I mean, the average can be within 1 fps of one another, but what we saw from the 1600x1200 benches, that the minimum fps changed quite a bit. If we would be able to get 28fps mimimum with an old 3800+, and 35fps min. with a Q2D or Q2Q, then obviously the Q2D would deliver a better gaming experience.

So, this was a great review, everything was done right, quite a few games, and what's fantastic that it had minimum fps for the reasons listed above. But one addition could be to add some 4xAA 16xAF, to really see what a cpu can do for the mimimum framerate, being the best playable experience delivered.

Again thanks, and a big thumbsup.

Hey Tim, welcome to the forums - I appreciate your comments and I'll see what I can do on that front as you make a very valid point. I guess what would be interesting is how well the CPUs cope with SLI/CrossFire as that can be hugely CPU dependent at any resolution.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon

What speed of RAM would you recommend for over clocking the Q6600? I had been intending buying a Q6600, Abit IP35 Pro and some G.Skill HZ 6400. (The HZ will clock over 1000Mhz)

The HZ should be more than enough - I've kept the RAM speed down below 900MHz here and still got great performance so it shows what can be done without the need for uber-clocked memory.

[Delphium]

Once again another great article from Bit

I have just been messing around with overclocking my QX6800, and seeing that Bit have managed to get as much as nearly 1ghz overclock on the cpu, I think I need to revise my overclocking a bit, like increase voltages, as without adjusting any of the voltages I managed to get an extra 600mhz to 3.522GHz from the stock 2.93GHz on the cpu, which I had thought was a reasonable increase.

It is certainly most interesting to see that the Q6600 would clock as high as it did!
As I am to get another quad core cpu I was debating weather to get the Q6600 or Q6700 and had even thought meh, ill get the QX6850, but after seeing the improvements possible on a Q6600 think id rather save a few penneys and invest in the Q6600 with a watercooling kit.


Top Article Bit!!!! Keep them coming!!!

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

Originally Posted by Tim S

The HZ should be more than enough - I've kept the RAM speed down below 900MHz here and still got great performance so it shows what can be done without the need for uber-clocked memory.

Thanks Tim. Thanks for taking the time to test the hardware and to write the article too. It's responses to the community like this and the staff members regular input into the forums that keep Bit great.

[edit] Another question for you. What kind of difference to real world temps would ~10w difference of the G0 stepping realistically make. The price premium some e-tailers are demanding for the G0 stepping does not seem that justified. [/edit]

[sandys]

Sorry for the off topic but I am looking at an upgrade to Core2 but excuse my ignorance here, are there Core2 boards that do both SLI and Crossfire these days or is each technology still locked to its AMD/Nvidia chipset?

Just thinking about an upgrade in the future, its been quite annoying being an Nvidia owner recently on XP/Vista (7900GTXSLI ) bugger all drivers for ages, dodgy SLI performance etc, it was all good prior to the 8800 release but it really does seem like they have abandoned old hardware, so I'd be looking to ditch them soon if it doesn't sort itself out even if AMD/ATi perform slower if they have working drivers and frequent updates I'd be happy.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon

[edit] Another question for you. What kind of difference to real world temps would ~90w difference of the G0 stepping realistically make. The price premium some e-tailers are demanding for the G0 stepping does not seem that justified. [/edit]

I don't honestly know without testing one... hazarding a guess maybe 5 degrees or 50-100MHz more?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by sandys

Sorry for the off topic but I am looking at an upgrade to Core2 but excuse my ignorance here, are there Core2 boards that do both SLI and Crossfire these days or is each technology still locked to its AMD/Nvidia chipset?

Unfortunately there aren't any boards that do both - Nvidia locks SLI to its own chipsets (although rumours have suggested X38 might support both SLI and CrossFire - I've got no confirmation on that though), while CrossFire is available officially on 975X, RD600 and P965 - P35 hasn't been officially certified yet.

I guess you could say it sucks for the consumer, but it makes business sense for Nvidia to lock to its own chipsets (sell two graphics cards, sell one chipset/motherboard too). ATI on the other hand were behind Nvidia at the start and had to come up with compelling reasons to buy CrossFire over SLI (i.e. allowing it to work on all but Nvidia based mobos).

[cereal_killer]

Just curious, what kind of perfromance increase would you see if you dropped the multiplier down to 6x and raised the fsb as hight as possible up to at least 3ghz if possible ?

[Da Dego]

that would be a 500mhz FSB. I doubt most motherboards could handle that stress, particularly running quad cores. At that end you'd likely need very high end cooling and a cherry picked mobo and chip. And that's assuming the BIOS would let you...

It's an interesting suggestion, but a tad infeasible. There comes a point where you have to rely on the multiplier to get the highest clocks, which is why the best chips are a high mult and a low FSB to start with you *can* drop the mult to increase the FSB but there's a northward limit where you start shattering your PCIe/PCI, SATA and other "bridge" controlled chips as they can't handle that incoming speed.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Da Dego

that would be a 500mhz FSB. I doubt most motherboards could handle that stress, particularly running quad cores. At that end you'd likely need very high end cooling and a cherry picked mobo and chip. And that's assuming the BIOS would let you...

It's an interesting suggestion, but a tad infeasible. There comes a point where you have to rely on the multiplier to get the highest clocks, which is why the best chips are a high mult and a low FSB to start with you *can* drop the mult to increase the FSB but there's a northward limit where you start shattering your PCIe/PCI, SATA and other "bridge" controlled chips as they can't handle that incoming speed.

interesting to note is this

I achieved 498.1 FSB by dropping the multiplier to x8 on my Q6600 nad upping vcore to crazy levels 1.66volts


This was achieved on my ABIT IP35 PRO !

tRY THIS
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...3104269&size=o

Now that is what you call an overclock. Especially since i was just using water cooling

gilgamesh

[Nature]

What were the recorded temps if any?

I ask because it seems this chip is perfect for htpc's. I drive a donkey- I don't like high clock speeds.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Nature

What were the recorded temps if any?

I ask because it seems this chip is perfect for htpc's. I drive a donkey- I don't like high clock speeds.

QUADCORE 6600 @stock speeds and at idle in windows are 35c go upto 46c onFULL LOAD

bare in mind this is with the cream of the crop water cooling. So i have no idea the temps on Air cooling!


Gilgamesh