The Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Owns

January 13th, 2008

I recently bought this baby as an upgrade to my system, and wow is it amazing. Before then I was using a Pentium D 940, which ran at 3.2 GHz. This is a later model from Intel with a while new architecture, so even though it runs at 2.4 GHz it performs much better, and even though it has twice as many cores, it runs much cooler than my old Pentium D.

I’m about to make a temperature comparison between the two processors, who how about I discuss my computer’s cooling situation first? For cooling I use a Scythe Ninja Plus Revision B. It’s a great cooler, and it is really quiet. If you look at the picture below, it’s the big hunk of metal in the top left of the case.
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The case is a Antec P180, with the three included fans used. For thermal grease I use Arctic Silver 5, applied according to the instructions on the manufacturer’s website.

I did end up whipping away that little dribble at the right end of the line…

Now for some perspective. The Pentium D ran a little above 50 degrees Celsius on a good day, but more like 60 usually. I haven’t seen the Core 2 Quad go above 30 degrees Celsius, even though I turned all the case fans on low.

As for performance, it runs circles around my old Pentium D. With the Pentium D 940 I could run Unreal Tournament with the default settings, except the resolution bumped up to 1920 by 1200 to accommodate my 24″ monitor, which would cause the processor to out at 100% usage, and the game to skip at the most inopportune times. With the Core 2 Quad Q6600, I can use the same settings and the processor usage never goes above 50% during gameplay and is very smooth. Furthermore, if I turn the texture and world details all the way up, the usage never goes above 65%.

As for the Windows Experience Index rating, I’ll just let you see for yourself with a before and after.

Demos
Core 2 Quad; Pentium D; Intel; Processor; PC Building
13 January 2008 comments [5] TrackBack-URI

5 comments

Calculating Pi with Code — My Piece of the Inter(.)net posted on February 24, 2008:

[...] the calculations in that event. As you can see, though, even with my computer’s Intel Core 2 Quad Q660, I would have to run this program for several years to have that [...]
Mjhieu posted on October 18, 2008:

Yeah My system’s also used core 2 quad Q6600 and I overlock it to 3.7 ghz under water cooling system, it runs like hell with HD4870x2. Finnally, Crysis is loser for me…
Gerardo posted on July 14, 2009:

:] Woah, great set up. My Latitude runs Core2Duo 2.2ghz haha cant compare it to yours.
David McGrath posted on July 14, 2009:

Heh, thanks Gerardo. This is a really great machine, and it is now my “old” computer.

My new i7 box is even more powerful. I converted this computer into a Windows Home Server, which is great for storing a bunch of media. I work the new machine even harder than the old one.
More RAM: Copy says, "NOM NOM NOM" | My Piece of the Inter(.)net posted on December 15, 2009:

[...] Here you can see the inside of my compy while I am installing one of the modules. That hulking metal thing is the heat sync for the Intel Core 2 Quad processor. [...]