Q6600 vs Q8200

[[GSV]Trig]

I was going to bump the year old thread asking which of these CPU's were the best.

Pretty much everyone was saying the Q6600 due to its better ability to overclock.
Some were saying the extra FSB and extra features of the newer chip were better, lower power etc.

However, as my machine is Windows 7 x64 the one thing that everyone neglected to mention was the lack of Virtualization on the Q8200....

http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=29765,36547,

Q6600 ftw I think...

[Zak33]

and WHAT, pray tell, is Windows Virtualization?

[Zak33]

oooh... is it the ability to run XP Mode in Windows 7? As a Virtual PC?

[ajones]

I must admit that I thought all new processors include virtualisation support as standard... never thought to check the feature spec of a particular chip!

[ajones]

oooh... is it the ability to run XP Mode in Windows 7? As a Virtual PC?

It's a little more than that. You can run any OS that your hardware supports as a virtual machine, and therefore have several OSs running simultaneously on your hardware. With direct virtualisation support in the hardware, you shouldn't see too much degradation in performance between each instance of the OS, as you are not using emulation; other than the sharing of your actual hardware resources (eg. memory).

You don't need Win7 virtualisation to use it, I think you can install third party software like VM Ware to do the same job as well.



Please flame away if I'm wrong... still messing around with this in prep for Win7! Do I go the Win7Pro route (which includes an XP license *I think*) or pick up freebee 3rd party virtualisation software....

[Domestic_Ginger]

Am I right in thinking W7 home doesn't come with Xp compatability mode; only professional (or whatever they call it!)?

[Syllopsium]

Q6600 ftw I think...

Q6600 is a no brainer. Looking at the benchmarks both the processors are broadly comparable (Q8200 wins in a few benchmarks, but not by much), however VT and double the level 2 cache in the Q6600 make it the best choice.

PK

[madman045]

Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise can use XP Mode which is XP Professional SP3 in Windows Virtual PC. I am waiting for vmware workstation 7 to be finished before it goes on my laptop.

XP Mode has been very useful and being able to run the XP applications on my 7 desktop is very good, only issue so far is with having AV on the XP VM, it doesnt automatically close it and ends up leaving the vm session open.

Q6600 or Q9550 for existing motherboard/ddr2 users for people wanting to dabble with VM's

[Syllopsium]

Am I right in thinking W7 home doesn't come with Xp compatability mode; only professional (or whatever they call it!)?

Yup : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/vir.../download.aspx

Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise versions only.

It's only a canned version of XP in VirtualPC, though. The advantage of VT is being able to run other operating systems. Personally I'd recommend VMWare's products, although VirtualPC isn't that bad really.

I've found few applications that refuse to run in Vista or Windows 7, and the ones that have any problems at all are basically due to shoddy coding.

PK

[shaithis]

The only thing you need the virtualisation feature on the CPU for is to run 64bit guest operating systems I beleive. 32bit guest OSes should run fine without it.

[Syllopsium]

The only thing you need the virtualisation feature on the CPU for is to run 64bit guest operating systems I believe. 32bit guest OSes should run fine without it.

If by 'run fine' you mean 'still runs, but more slowly and in some cases less reliably'. VirtualPC and VMWare run ok, even without VT, because their emulation technology isn't bad.

VirtualBox, on the other hand, is rather lacking if you don't have VT (then again, it's not perfect even when you do).

PK