The good old Q6600

Disposed said:
You list 3 EE processors then say the 980X is the first worth having?

The E6600 and E6300 where the go to chips not the E6400. I do remember the 820 but the only thing good about it was the price. 4GHZ on air was impressive but even at 4GHZ the performance was lacking compared to the conroe and allendale chips.
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The QX9770 / QX9775 were awesome CPUs, but not necessarily worth the cost. I mention them because they were awesome. Not all the great chips were affordable or bargain bin overclockers.
 
Well if we want to talk about clocks only i think everyone is leaving the celly 352 and 356 out, 8ghz on liquid nitrogen FTW!
 
My Q6600 is still running strong! Love it. I don't have that much time to game these days, but it handles everything just fine to me.
 
Loved my Q6600. Love my 2500K more.

That said, my brother is graduating from college, and he'll take good care of the old chip, so it's hardly going to waste. In fact, his graduation was the catalyst for upgrading.
 
I feel the same. The Q6600 is the best CPU I've got and affordable when it came out. Mine still rocking at 3.6 on Air stable. Now, my i2600k rocking stable at 4.8 and can't really complain since this probably going to last me after the Ivy bridge or something way better to come along. I skipped the 920 series since I didnt see the need to upgrade from my Q6600. I've got nothing but love for my Q6600 and i2600k right now :)
 
e6300 was my dream chip, 1.86 stock and ran at 2800 all day long. When you felt like heating up the room, dump some volts on it and kick her up to 3400! BEASTLY! Still going strong in a friends build.
 
Betauser said:
I feel the same. The Q6600 is the best CPU I've got and affordable when it came out. Mine still rocking at 3.6 on Air stable. Now, my i2600k rocking stable at 4.8 and can't really complain since this probably going to last me after the Ivy bridge or something way better to come along. I skipped the 920 series since I didnt see the need to upgrade from my Q6600. I've got nothing but love for my Q6600 and i2600k right now :)
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Affordable when it came out? It launched above $800.

Normally I enjoy nostalgia threads, and there's no doubt that if there was an Overclocking Hall of Fame for processors, the Q6600 would be inducted into it, but you can't say that the Q6600 had great bang for the buck when it launched, or that it was the first chip that was a legendary overclocker. There has been a rich history, from Intel and from AMD, of immensely popular budget chips that overclocked like crazy and could run neck-and-neck with the $1000 top-of-the-line chips. When I first got into it, the chip to get was the Athlon XP 1700+ Palomino with a JHIUB stepping that unlocked the multiplier with a pencil. Next year, it was something else. For many people on this forum, the Q6600 will have a special place as being their first overclocking chip, but it's not the first overclocking chip.
 
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I disagree on it being the best, my first chip was an intel Celeron 300A now that thing rocked running on my Abit BE6 at 450 :D that was a good chip

I think the best intel chips we've ever seen

Celeron 300A
CeleronT 1000
Core2 Duo E6600
Core i5 750
and
Core i5 2500k

those are the best of the best for bang for buck in my mind
 
insaneshell said:
I disagree on it being the best, my first chip was an intel Celeron 300A now that thing rocked running on my Abit BE6 at 450 :D that was a good chip

I think the best intel chips we've ever seen

Celeron 300A
CeleronT 1000
Core2 Duo E6600
Core i5 750
and
Core i5 2500k

those are the best of the best for bang for buck in my mind
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On bang for your buck I can agree with those. Though they aren't necessarily the best Intel has had to offer by a long shot.
 
Okay how about the worst Intel chip?

My Pentium 120 wouldn't reliably OC to 133 speeds :)
 
J So said:
Okay how about the worst Intel chip?

My Pentium 120 wouldn't reliably OC to 133 speeds :)
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There was a particular stepping of the Pentium 133MHz CPU which wouldn't post at anything other than it's default (specified by jumpers) multiplier. (SY039 stepping I believe.)
 
Dan_D said:
On bang for your buck I can agree with those. Though they aren't necessarily the best Intel has had to offer by a long shot.
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well when i got my 300A and oc'd to 450 I could catch a Pentium II 450 and almost beat it lol

and that sucks about your P1 ive got one here for Windows 95/dos gaming it hits 200mhz from its stock 133, but its also on a Super7 board an ASUS P5A
 
I'm also still rockin my q6600. At stock clocks no less since I never really felt the need for more speed. That said I would like to see how a SSD feels in this thing.
 
insaneshell said:
well when i got my 300A and oc'd to 450 I could catch a Pentium II 450 and almost beat it lol

and that sucks about your P1 ive got one here for Windows 95/dos gaming it hits 200mhz from its stock 133, but its also on a Super7 board an ASUS P5A
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It was just the one stepping of Pentium 133. I've had tons of other good and bad CPUs as far as overclocking goes. I had three Celeron 300A's and one of them wouldn't hit 450MHz. 416MHz was the best it could do.
 
nalc said:
Affordable when it came out? It launched above $800.

Normally I enjoy nostalgia threads, and there's no doubt that if there was an Overclocking Hall of Fame for processors, the Q6600 would be inducted into it, but you can't say that the Q6600 had great bang for the buck when it launched, or that it was the first chip that was a legendary overclocker. There has been a rich history, from Intel and from AMD, of immensely popular budget chips that overclocked like crazy and could run neck-and-neck with the $1000 top-of-the-line chips. When I first got into it, the chip to get was the Athlon XP 1700+ Palomino with a JHIUB stepping that unlocked the multiplier with a pencil. Next year, it was something else. For many people on this forum, the Q6600 will have a special place as being their first overclocking chip, but it's not the first overclocking chip.
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I don't remember them being that high. I thought it was around 500ish. I guess I was wrong, nonetheless, it was the best CPU ive owned for what it's worth.
 
Dan_D said:
It was just the one stepping of Pentium 133. I've had tons of other good and bad CPUs as far as overclocking goes. I had three Celeron 300A's and one of them wouldn't hit 450MHz. 416MHz was the best it could do.
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Well my favorite clocker for me hands down was my X3 450 it hit 4.1ghz while unlocking to quad im gonna miss it lol
 
Dan_D said:
There was a particular stepping of the Pentium 133MHz CPU which wouldn't post at anything other than it's default (specified by jumpers) multiplier. (SY039 stepping I believe.)
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I remember that the stepping I had was horrible.. don't remember what it was thou. I'm sure some of it had to do with the glued on, tiny passive HS on there. The MB didn't have any voltage jumpers so I was stuck at stock but when I zip tied a little 40mm fan I bought at Fry's onto the HS it would run at 133 but was never 100% stable.

Back then everyone was ZOMFG overclocking will destroy your computer! Funny how mainstream it is now. It was amazing when I bought my first MB with multipliers in the BIOS.. I was in heaven!
 
nalc said:
Affordable when it came out? It launched above $800.

Normally I enjoy nostalgia threads, and there's no doubt that if there was an Overclocking Hall of Fame for processors, the Q6600 would be inducted into it, but you can't say that the Q6600 had great bang for the buck when it launched, or that it was the first chip that was a legendary overclocker. There has been a rich history, from Intel and from AMD, of immensely popular budget chips that overclocked like crazy and could run neck-and-neck with the $1000 top-of-the-line chips. When I first got into it, the chip to get was the Athlon XP 1700+ Palomino with a JHIUB stepping that unlocked the multiplier with a pencil. Next year, it was something else. For many people on this forum, the Q6600 will have a special place as being their first overclocking chip, but it's not the first overclocking chip.
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OK, I'll spot you the B3, so let's move on to G0 because that's what everyone is romanticizing. It came out in July/August of 2007 and was $300. That means people are going on almost 4 years of service and the CPU still doesn't stretch its legs in a lot of applications.

Why is that? Like I said earlier, people are still downplaying the fact that the G0 Q6600 is a quadcore. The fact that it has almost 50% headroom on top of having four cores is what makes it extraordinary and unique. Does anyone have a rebuttal for this or are we going to keep harping over single cores that were obsolete in months to maybe a year tops? I don't care how awesome your Celery, Pentium 133, Athlon XP (I went through XPs like water) was. You weren't still finding headroom in it 4 years later like with the G0 Q6600.
 
J So said:
I remember that the stepping I had was horrible.. don't remember what it was thou. I'm sure some of it had to do with the glued on, tiny passive HS on there. The MB didn't have any voltage jumpers so I was stuck at stock but when I zip tied a little 40mm fan I bought at Fry's onto the HS it would run at 133 but was never 100% stable.

Back then everyone was ZOMFG overclocking will destroy your computer! Funny how mainstream it is now. It was amazing when I bought my first MB with multipliers in the BIOS.. I was in heaven!
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Mine didn't have a heat sink attached to it like that.
 
My July 07 q6600 g0 which was and still is an amazing overclocker is now in my little brother's computer, still running at 3.51ghz to this date. With... consolizaton, that P35 system will honestly last until something finally breaks down *knocks on wood*. The only reason I went P67 was because it was nearly 4 years, and I just wanted some new toys!!! My new system is definitely faster, but I feel that is more or less due to the SSDs I have now.
 
Dan_D said:
Mine didn't have a heat sink attached to it like that.
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That was my first computer I ever bought with my own money, it was a Dell. Cost me 2700.00 with my upgrade to 16 megs of RAM. I was in college at the time and had to take out a loan for the PC from my credit union.. yes they used to do computer loans.. Took me 2 years to pay that off but when you're making 1400.00 a month gross.. 2700.00 was a HUGE chunk of change.

I remember it had a 1.2 Gig HD and I thought it would be impossible to fill it up.

eta.. 2700.00 is still a huge chunk of change. 3 of my last 4 cars cost less than that!
 
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aldamon said:
OK, I'll spot you the B3, so let's move on to G0 because that's what everyone is romanticizing. It came out in July/August of 2007 and was $300. That means people are going on almost 4 years of service and the CPU still doesn't stretch its legs in a lot of applications.

Why is that? Like I said earlier, people are still downplaying the fact that the G0 Q6600 is a quadcore. The fact that it has almost 50% headroom on top of having four cores is what makes it extraordinary and unique. Does anyone have a rebuttal for this or are we going to keep harping over single cores that were obsolete in months to maybe a year tops? I don't care how awesome your Celery, Pentium 133, Athlon XP (I went through XPs like water) was. You weren't still finding headroom in it 4 years later like with the G0 Q6600.
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This is what I'm talking about. I dont recall the Q6600 G0 stepping being $800 chip. If I remember correctly, at one point, newegg priced this chip around $350-400ish.
 
Had my Q6600 for 3.5 years now, still going strong at 3.6Ghz on air. Probably skipping Sandy Bridge, not sure whether it'll last until Haswell is out though...
 
aldamon said:
OK, I'll spot you the B3, so let's move on to G0 because that's what everyone is romanticizing. It came out in July/August of 2007 and was $300. That means people are going on almost 4 years of service and the CPU still doesn't stretch its legs in a lot of applications.

Why is that? Like I said earlier, people are still downplaying the fact that the G0 Q6600 is a quadcore. The fact that it has almost 50% headroom on top of having four cores is what makes it extraordinary and unique. Does anyone have a rebuttal for this or are we going to keep harping over single cores that were obsolete in months to maybe a year tops? I don't care how awesome your Celery, Pentium 133, Athlon XP (I went through XPs like water) was. You weren't still finding headroom in it 4 years later like with the G0 Q6600.
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But is that because the hardware was futureproof, or because software stagnated?

The current i7 chips at the same price point as the Q6600 can walk all over it. The 970 is near the q6600 launch price, has 2 more cores, a large ipc advantage, is clocked higher, has hyperthreading, and has way more memory bandwidth. Its probably just as much of an improvement over the Q6600 as the Q6600 was over something like the athlon 64 x2 4800+. It just isn't as obvious, as the Q6600 can run a high end single GPU gaming rig without becoming a bottlleneck in most games.
 
I don't remember the Q6600 being $800 either. I bought mine on 6/26/07 (<3 newegg order history, lol) and it was around the $300 range. I had a Celeron 300A and as much nostalgia as it brings me, I don't think I've ever noticed and felt the results of an overclock in gaming as much as I did when I took my Q6600 up to 3.2.

I also think though that the value of the Q6600 isn't all due to the chip itself. When it came out, not many programs utilized all of it's cores. As time went on, the processor "grew" along with the software. At the same time you had the 360 and PS3 putting a ceiling on a lot of gaming, thus you didn't have the same exponential growth on hardware requirements that we had seen in the past.

Don't get me wrong, the Q6600 is a hell of a chip, but it also was in the right place at the right time to seem even better than it actually is.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I don't remember the Q6600 being $800 either. I bought mine on 6/26/07 (<3 newegg order history, lol) and it was around the $300 range. I had a Celeron 300A and as much nostalgia as it brings me, I don't think I've ever noticed and felt the results of an overclock in gaming as much as I did when I took my Q6600 up to 3.2.

I also think though that the value of the Q6600 isn't all due to the chip itself. When it came out, not many programs utilized all of it's cores. As time went on, the processor "grew" along with the software. At the same time you had the 360 and PS3 putting a ceiling on a lot of gaming, thus you didn't have the same exponential growth on hardware requirements that we had seen in the past.

Don't get me wrong, the Q6600 is a hell of a chip, but it also was in the right place at the right time to seem even better than it actually is.
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The Q6600 indeed launched at $850 and then fell to around $550 after a few months on the market. I bought mine at the $550 price point. I had it up until recently. I gave it to a friend who was running an E6400 on a motherboard that didn't support 45nm quad coe CPUs.
 
From Wikipedia: The mainstream Core 2 Quad Q6600, clocked at 2.4 GHz, was launched on January 8, 2007 at US$851 (reduced to US$530 on April 7, 2007).

Wow, a 60%+ price drop in less than 6 months (~$350 in 6/07). I still have my Q6600, however I need to put a new video card in its box; my old one died and I cannibalized its 6970 once I built my new rig. Not sure whether to sell it or give it to a family member; seems like a waste to use for simple desktop computing.
 
TwistedAegis said:
From Wikipedia: The mainstream Core 2 Quad Q6600, clocked at 2.4 GHz, was launched on January 8, 2007 at US$851 (reduced to US$530 on April 7, 2007).

Wow, a 60%+ price drop in less than 6 months (~$350 in 6/07). I still have my Q6600, however I need to put a new video card in its box; my old one died and I cannibalized its 6970 once I built my new rig. Not sure whether to sell it or give it to a family member; seems like a waste to use for simple desktop computing.
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Sounds about right.
 
I paid ~$290 for a guranteed G0 from n_cixusa on 7/07, and I haven't even oc'd it to its limits because there just is no need.

Having said all that, I just saw the BF3 videos from E3 and :eek::eek: !! I might have to return to pc gaming just for that, and I'm not sure if my rig from 2007 will handle it.
 
Also had a Q6600 G0. Inbelievable CPU, paired with a Gigabyte P35-DS3L budget mobo was hitting 3.6 Ghz on air for 24/7

Even performed as fast my other PC with a DFI Lanparty P45-T2RS+ & Q9300 @ 3.3

But if i have to decide... wouldn't choose it as the best overclocker...

(I still have a Pentium 100@133 cpu :D )
 
TwistedAegis said:
From Wikipedia: The mainstream Core 2 Quad Q6600, clocked at 2.4 GHz, was launched on January 8, 2007 at US$851 (reduced to US$530 on April 7, 2007).

Wow, a 60%+ price drop in less than 6 months (~$350 in 6/07). I still have my Q6600, however I need to put a new video card in its box; my old one died and I cannibalized its 6970 once I built my new rig. Not sure whether to sell it or give it to a family member; seems like a waste to use for simple desktop computing.
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IIRC most conroe/kentsfield chips had major price reductions right about the time they released the XX20 revision chips.

I remember getting ready to buy one right when the prices dropped (had my eyes on the e6300) then they released the XX20 chips the day before i made the purchase and i ended up buying the E6420.

I dont remember my reasoning for getting the E6420 over the 6300 but that puppy did 3.2Ghz for 3 and a half years without a single problem. I do remember being annoyed that the E6600 was just barely outside my budget and the wife wouldn't budge. :mad: Something i religiously remind her of when she gets a $160 haircut or spends $80 at the damn nail salon! :mad:
 
TwistedAegis said:
I also think though that the value of the Q6600 isn't all due to the chip itself. When it came out, not many programs utilized all of it's cores. As time went on, the processor "grew" along with the software. At the same time you had the 360 and PS3 putting a ceiling on a lot of gaming, thus you didn't have the same exponential growth on hardware requirements that we had seen in the past.

Don't get me wrong, the Q6600 is a hell of a chip, but it also was in the right place at the right time to seem even better than it actually is.
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^This. I had one, and the description above is accurate. I had a G0 that overclocked to 3.4 GHZ on 1.31v 24/7. That thing was sick back when it came out.
 
Disposed said:
Agreed, the E6600 and Q6600 deserve spots in the hall of fame.



A year later and only marginal performance difference over the kentsfield quads with nearly double the price. The only thing those where good for was the folks that bought conroe and skipped kentsfield. If you already had a kentsfield quad there was no real reason to upgrade, the price just wasnt justified IMO.

I honestly dont get the popularity of the Q9550. All things considered it was pretty underwhelming. If i had to choose between the 2 right now i would go with the Q6600 still because it would be so much cheaper.
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Proud owner of an E6600 since June 2006 and still going!
 
aldamon said:
OK, I'll spot you the B3, so let's move on to G0 because that's what everyone is romanticizing. It came out in July/August of 2007 and was $300. That means people are going on almost 4 years of service and the CPU still doesn't stretch its legs in a lot of applications.

Why is that? Like I said earlier, people are still downplaying the fact that the G0 Q6600 is a quadcore. The fact that it has almost 50% headroom on top of having four cores is what makes it extraordinary and unique. Does anyone have a rebuttal for this or are we going to keep harping over single cores that were obsolete in months to maybe a year tops? I don't care how awesome your Celery, Pentium 133, Athlon XP (I went through XPs like water) was. You weren't still finding headroom in it 4 years later like with the G0 Q6600.
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If you live next to a Microcenter you could have bought (and still can) a 2500K for $180 at launch. Someone who is OK with a Q6600 for four years would just as happy if not happier with the 2500K that should be useful for that long also.

My previous cpu was a Q9550 which I also bought at MC for $180 and I sold it about 18 months after buying it also for $180.
 
I so regret dropping my trusty Q6600 and wasting cash on this AMD X6 junk. I can't even say i feel any noticable performance increase with it.
 
I'm running my Q9550 @ 4ghz on an H70 that's a 40% oc, I feel no need to upgrade, with my Gigabyte 560ti OC it will run anything I throw at it and more.
 
Disposed said:
Agreed, the E6600 and Q6600 deserve spots in the hall of fame.



A year later and only marginal performance difference over the kentsfield quads with nearly double the price. The only thing those where good for was the folks that bought conroe and skipped kentsfield. If you already had a kentsfield quad there was no real reason to upgrade, the price just wasnt justified IMO.

I honestly dont get the popularity of the Q9550. All things considered it was pretty underwhelming. If i had to choose between the 2 right now i would go with the Q6600 still because it would be so much cheaper.
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The Q9xxx series supported VT-D, beyond that there isn't much of a reason to get one over a q6xxx
 
MrCrispy said:
Still IMO one of the best cpu's Intel made. I held off upgrading to i7 last year and SB now mostly because the Q6600 does everything I ask it to with room to spare.
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+1

This CPU is still quite capable and has legs left!
 
OmegaAvenger said:
The Q9xxx series supported VT-D, beyond that there isn't much of a reason to get one over a q6xxx
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VT-D is a memory controller feature. With nehalem and up the controller is on the CPU, thats the only real difference. So if the 775 motherboard supports VT-D then you can have it with a Q6600. So there was really NO reason to get one over kentsfield chips.
 
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