DH Review: Intel QX6850 and E6750 CPU's

Zardon

Read The Review Here
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It is hard to believe that it has been nearly a year since Intel first launched the Core 2 brand of CPU’s; it seems much longer. This is not a negative statement, but there have been so many revisions of the product line up since then that it seems like the Core 2 should have been around for much longer. Regardless of budget there is now a dual or quad core CPU to fit everyone's requirements with speeds ranging from 1.6GHz to 2.9GHz.

Due to some rather disturbing delays in the release of competing products from AMD, Core 2 has gone unchallenged in the desktop sector, however this hasn’t stopped Intel from producing more high specification processors and it is these we are reviewing today, the Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Core 2 Duo E6750.

brutusmaximus

700 pounds for a processor is a little rich for my blood even though the performance is great. Alternatives are the dual cores....... but do you think that buying a dual core processor today is going to hold much ground in 8 months time? i am not convinced buying one is going to futureproof any system, which means we really need to spend serious cash on a quad. Where the hell are AMD incidentally? their top end graphics cards are poor, they have no competiting CPUs and their CEO Dave Orton walked a while ago.

We really need competition to get the prices of these processors down to the sub 500 zone. God knows how much one of those Xeon 5365s is going to cost

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

happy with my q6600 for the time being

Lelisevis

Im toying with the idea of switching to the intel camp but do these things really run as hot as all the reviews seem to suggest? Everything i've read suggests the stock cooler is useless and what about a decent SLi motherboard suggestion with at least a couple of other useable pci-e slots when dual 8800 series cards are used?

Zelig

I'm convinced that buying anything is not going to futureproof any system. The important thing is now, no matter how expensive one's shiny new stuff is, it's going to be half price in a year.

Veridian3

You are limited to the 680i boards if you want SLI with a 1333fsb and that leaves you with a spare 1xslot and a spare 8x slot (unless you buy a LT which doesnt have the 8x). The best one we have used to date is the Abit IN9 32x Max.

As for temps we tested our CPU with some MX-2 and the freezer 7 pro for most of the testing (other than OC) and it didnt seem particularly high. We would always recommend buying a high spec cooler for a high spec chip...its just common sense.

brutusmaximus

Depends how far you look into the future. Spending 250 now on a mid range dual core processor will probably mean in 6 months time it will need replaced, whereas spending 400 on a low end quad could feasibly mean a year plus of gaming. We are already seeing benefits with quad core on vista, by the end of the year I am betting most leading games will be using quad core to enhance gameplay - and there are a lot of promises for Artifical intelligence boosts with more than 2 cores. Same with graphics cards, if you spend little now, in 6 months the card will be redundant.

Lelisevis

Thankyou kindly for the advice, not sure on the 1333fsb as the price of the 1066fsb chips are being massively cut and I don't think the extra bus speed is justifying the price at the moment. Then again after years of AMD chips im always open to advice. Makes sense to future-proof I guess.

Veridian3

The 1333fsb's are coming in at the same price range as the 1066's, infact in some stores you can get the 1333's cheaper than the 1066's at the moment as the prices haven't been updated.

For example, one of the main online stores here in the UK has the E6750 for £50 less than the E6700... thats about $85 more for the slower FSB!