Introduction:
With
the recent release of games such as Supreme Commander
which make use of more than two processing cores
many of our readers may be contemplating a move
to a Quad core CPU. It is fair to say they are
still expensive especially when you look at the
£650 QX6700.
Attempting in someway to address this Intel
have released the Q6600 which is meant to be targeted
at a slightly lower end market. Don't
be jumping for joy just yet, they still retail
in excess of £500. The Q6600 offers 1066mhz
FSB and 2x4MB of level 2 cache abeit at a lower
clock speed of 2.4ghz (266x9) compared to the
2.66ghz its “extreme” edition brother
offers. The Q6600 is also multipler locked (above
9x).
A
four core processor doesn’t always deliver
huge gains over two cores but it is great for
richly multithreaded applications and will be
sure to benefit those of you who are heavily into
multitasking.
The
question still lingers “but this isn’t
a true quad core CPU right?”, and as with
the QX6700 the Q6600 is basically two Core 2 Duo
processors built into a single multi chip module.
Nothing
new about the 65nm process technology, this is
shared right across the Core 2 Line of CPU’s.
Each processor die offers 4MB of shared level
2 cache with each cache being dedicated to the
two cores on that specific die. If data needs
to be moved back and forth between the two cores
it has to be handled across the 1066mhz shared
front side bus (FSB). While this seems like a
particularly large “failing”, Intel
confidently has stated that the FSB has plenty
of bandwidth to deal with the kind of traffic
used by a desktop CPU.
The
Q6600 has a lower thermal and power consumption
rating than the QX6700 with a TDP rating of 105w
(down from 125w for the QX6700). Motherboard support
for both processors is identical, if it supports
one, it will support the other.
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Many
of you by now are probably reassuring yourselves
that Quad core right now is “overkill”,
however support for threaded applications is gaining
momentum all the time. If we look at the next
generation consoles (Playstation 3 and Xbox 360),
both of these systems use multiple cored processors
and game developers are already praising the potential
in such an environment. With the release of Supreme
Commander (which utilizes as many cores as you
can throw at it), I noticed gains over dual core
systems when playing larger maps near the population
unit limit cap, specifically when playing against
multiple (and high level) AI opponents. Other
forthcoming games (among the many) which will
apparently use Quad core will be Unreal
Tournament 2007, Half Life 2
Episode 2 and Alan Wake.
As you can see these are high quality AAA list
titles so the future is positive for Quad Core
in a gaming environment.
Intel
Core 2 Quad Q6600 |
| Clock
frequency |
2400mhz |
| Cores
|
4 |
| Packaging
|
LGA775 |
| Vcore
(max) |
1.35
V |
| Bus
frequency |
1066
MHz |
| Typical
heat dissipation |
105
W |
| L2
cache |
2
x 4MB, shared |
| Production
technology |
65
nm |
| Intel
Hyper-Threading |
None |
| Intel
Virtualization Technology |
Yes |
| EM64T
(Enhanced Memory 64 Technology) |
Yes |
| EIST
(Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology) |
Yes |
