News - Intel details entire Ivy Bridge line up

[Terbinator]

The Q6600 may only have been rated 100W but it's power draw was pretty horrendous. Don't get me wrong - I had one for 2 years and it was probably the best cpu I had too (I sold it for a small loss a year ago).

If you compare it to the 980 BE it gets slapped silly - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=362

Great cpu yes, but it's pretty comparable to say a comparison of the i7 2600K vs the 980 BE now. That shouldn't be a huge surprise considering that the Q6600 was 65nm vs 45nm 980 BE, and the 980 BE is 45nm vs the 32nm 2600K. It probably will surprise a lot of people who actually believe intel has some god-given superiority that isn't down to their process lead.

But the 980 came a good few years after (5?) has a smaller process, 1.3GHz extra, IMC , " true quad-core" etc etc - IMO, the comparison between the 2600 and 980 is no way similar. Lets not forget the Q6600 was the bottom tier Kentsfield as well, not the fastest, GHz wise, the architecture had to offer.

If you'd kept a Q6600 for 5 years i don't think you'd be looking at a 980BE for your replacement.

[Jimbo75]

But the 980 came a good few years after (5?) has a smaller process, 1.3GHz extra, IMC , " true quad-core" etc etc - IMO, the comparison between the 2600 and 980 is no way similar. Lets not forget the Q6600 was the bottom tier Kentsfield as well, not the fastest, GHz wise, the architecture had to offer.

If you'd kept a Q6600 for 5 years i don't think you'd be looking at a 980BE for your replacement.

I agree mostly (it would be less than 4 years however not quite 5). I could have used say the 1090T which is almost 2 years old already and beats the Q6600 by even more than the 980 BE does though, but i wanted to keep it as a 4 core vs 4 core example.

I'm basically just making the point that if anyone still has a Q6600 and thinks it's still good enough then even a bog-standard 3 years old Phenom II will be as well. In fact I'm pretty sure even the lowly FX 4100 can beat the Q6600 in most benchmarks.

[Jimbo75]

Inspired by that possibility I checked out the Q6600 vs the A8-3850 Llano APU -

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=399

That's quite an eye-opener - even the A8 3850 is quite a bit faster than the Q6600. I think it's worth recognising these facts when we talk about how good the Q6600 was...and how it's still basically more than good enough for the average user.

Pity there are no power draw figures for each.

[Skywalker]

I'm still on i5 750 OC'ed to 3.3Ghz which seems sufficient for most tasks but once IB is realeased I'll be upgrading as the only game I'm playing is more CPU than GPU dependent.
The i5 3570K and Z77 will be a nice combo me thinks

[Kumagawa]

WOW AMD's much newer CPU's with much higher clocks are competitive with Intels 2006 CPU's /s

[Skywalker]

WOW AMD's much newer CPU's with much higher clocks are competitive with Intels 2006 CPU's /s

In which tasks?
The FX 8120 under Linux seems to be even better than i5/i7 2600K when ALL of its cores are fully used.
It may lack the performance per single core vs intel but appaerntly excells in heavy threaded tasks.

Also, how much FPS is enough? Most games are perfectly playable with some 40FPS, why should i need 200?

[shaithis]

Also, how much FPS is enough? Most games are perfectly playable with some 40FPS, why should i need 200?

For many people (myself included) 60FPS is the magic number.

[kalniel]

Well my X2 3800 was so good I didn't need to get a Q6600 Now that was a chip that was ahead of its time and provided performance for years.

[Jimbo75]

WOW AMD's much newer CPU's with much higher clocks are competitive with Intels 2006 CPU's /s

The Q6600 was released in 2007.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=53

As you can see the 8150 is basically twice as fast and even much faster in Cinebench single thread. That's a bit more than "competitive".

On the other hand you can compare graphics and see that intel is indeed "competitive" with ATI's 2006 graphics. I guess Ivy Bridge - with much higher clocks - might be capable of beating the x1900 xtx in a few benchmarks.

[Jimbo75]

Well my X2 3800 was so good I didn't need to get a Q6600 Now that was a chip that was ahead of its time and provided performance for years.

I had a X2 4200 then a X2 6000 but I have to say the first time I really felt the performance difference was with the Q6600 - at least while gaming. Maybe it was just an illusion due to having the 4 cores though.

[kalniel]

I had a X2 4200 then a X2 6000 but I have to say the first time I really felt the performance difference was with the Q6600 - at least while gaming. Maybe it was just an illusion due to having the 4 cores though.

What did you step up to the X2 from? At the time the competition was the horrendous Pentium 4/D. I came from a P3 and the difference in having true dual core, fantastic floating point performance and on chip memory controller was huge.

[ShadowKnight]

I am also looking forwarded to the 2011 socket Ivy Bridge. Yes, it may not be entirely necessary, but I currently run a i7 920 and like multichannel memory interface and extra threads. I may not use them all in game, but hey, there is more than games out there not everyone has access to a grid system for rendering for example

The next build is planned for around q4 2012, so I guess I can wait and see what they will do.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am also looking forwarded to the 2011 socket Ivy Bridge. Yes, it may not be entirely necessary, but I currently run a i7 920 and like multichannel memory interface and extra threads. I may not use them all in game, but hey, there is more than games out there not everyone has access to a grid system for rendering for example

The next build is planned for around q4 2012, so I guess I can wait and see what they will do.

This article is interesting:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...k,2974-15.html

It seems clockspeed increases and power consumption are the major improvements over the last few years.

[kalniel]

not everyone has access to a grid system for rendering for example

You don't have access to NGS?

[blueberry99]

Q6600 (Kentsfield Core 2 Duo @65nm) = 105W, according to http://ark.intel.com/products/29765/Intel-Core2-Quad-Processor-Q6600-(8M-Cache-2_40-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB)

Mine is overclocked to 3GHz ... I fry an egg on it each morning

[Terbinator]

G0 stepping was 95W.