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E6400 vs E6600

chrisf6969 said:
Well, I kinda wish I had bought a 6300. They're cheaper, overclock pretty much the same as a 6600. The performance is close between the 2 chips. The cheap mobo I bought supposedly works better with 2Mb chips for some reason. And I upgrade often so I could have just waited for the 6900's to push the 6600's down a price notch later.

Sorry but the E6300 and E6600 differ greatly.
 
fusionrs said:
Sorry but the E6300 and E6600 differ greatly.

The multiplier is a bottleneck on overclocking the E6300's... especially since you will need some good RAM to run in 1:1. The E6400 on the other hand almost has a perfect multiplier for running 1:1 with PC2-6400 memory, and that's why I chose it ;)
 
GoldenTiger said:
Unlike some newer posters, I am a long-time poster (lost my old account, was here since early 2001 and on other forums way before then), and know how to back up my facts:

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=15

More than 10% difference (10% is the difference in clockspeed essentially) by far... only thing different is the cache in that case, it's the only other variable. In Rise of Legends especially, it's an ENORMOUS difference.

Also:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/623-10/intel-core-2-duo-test.html

This is a direct comparison of the Conroe's at the SAME CLOCK SPEEDS (underclocked E6600 via multiplier) with 2MB vs. 4MB cache. It illustrates the 5-10% I quoted VERY well.


Yes, you generally do need a higher-end board to overclock E6600 or better well, but if you're buying a $350+ CPU, why would you pair it with an $80-150 motherboard? That's sort of like buying a Ferrari and getting the cheapest tires the shop offers as replacements for the stock ones.

So I see one set of benches, where the clockspeeds aren't the same. So I don't really count that one. And while the 2nd set certainly illustrates your point, I'd like to know the resolutions that are used in those setups. I would never disagree that the benefits weren't there for apps like encoding and decompression/compression. Such small percentages won't be realized to the user, however. Certainly in things where it takes a long time, such as the graph's 193 vs 180 "score" for WinRAR, which I'll assume is a measurement of some file operation in seconds, and I'm actually quite impressed by that score if that is indeed what it is measuring. But the gaming frames isn't something people are going to be able to tell the difference between. 60 fps to 90 fps, sure. 80 fps to 90 fps, not so sure.

I agree 100 percent with the comment about pairing a $350 CPU with a lower end mobo though. Although I hardly call $150-$180 a low-end mobo, I still totally agree with your point. But there are lots of people running around with 965P boards and E6600s, when that platform is supposed to be the consumer level chipset (lets leave the Gigabyte DQ6 out of that catagorey if we're using price as our standard).
 
Fact is, your looking at about a $2-300 difference between a E6400/DS3 combo vs a E6600/P5W DH combo.

My E6400/DS3 combo sits at 3.2 ghz rock stable at stock Vcore and it freaking loves running at this speed like it was stock speed. My temps are so nice its crazy. I'm at an easy 8x400 so my mem is nice and tight 800mhz just like its supposed to run.

Now with an E6600/P5W DH if I ran it at 9x400 I really don't think it would handle it. Only a hand few that I've heard about go straight to this speed on air without mods. The boards appear to be able to handle 400 FSB fine, as most don't hit walls until 410-430 range. It could be the NB's, but I really think the cache is holding it back. So you either end up running at smaller multi or a lower FSB. So then your memory is running slower or your take it out of 1:1 and take a performance hit there.
 
well havent got back to ala yet to finish it up but right now i am at a little over 480fsb with corsair 6400 and a zalman 9500 with 41 degrees did modify the zalman to fit my dq6 after the ds3 gave out at 460 will have screeny up sunday or monday ten hr drive to all from tx
 
celerity said:
I've done a small analysis at XS and in fact there is almost NO DIFFERENCE between Allendale and Conroe. For E6600 you pay for the 9x multi, not the stupid cache.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107300
Which is pointless, since the E6600 overclocks are shaky (some good, some very poor), and the E6300/E6400 are OCing more consistant. As another poster mentioned, the E6400 at 400FSB runs at 1:1 with your memory, and as long as you have a good motherboard you are almost gauranteed 3.2GHz. Save your $100 and put it where you will see a difference today AND tomorrow: your video card.
 
InorganicMatter said:
Which is pointless, since the E6600 overclocks are shaky (some good, some very poor), and the E6300/E6400 are OCing more consistant. As another poster mentioned, the E6400 at 400FSB runs at 1:1 with your memory, and as long as you have a good motherboard you are almost gauranteed 3.2GHz. Save your $100 and put it where you will see a difference today AND tomorrow: your video card.

If you look at the Conroe database: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1075792

Its looks like from our information people are having to give the 4Mb Conroes 1.4+ volts to get over 3Ghz. Where many are hitting 3Ghz+ with less than 1.4v for the 2mb versions (6300/6400).

Just my observation.

I thought my chip was just a dud. Giving it more voltage didn't do anything.

I tried dropping multiplier to 6x & ram ratio to 1:1, still hit the same FSB wall. I'm going to be trying different ram TONIGHT!! If I still hit the same FSB wall, I'm going to ditch this mobo and get an Asus P5W DH, like I wanted to do in the 1st place, but they were sold out everywhere.
 
I'm telling you guys, the E6600 are all the dud clockers that they couldn't make into E6700/X6800s. The E6400/E6300s are X6800/E6700s with bad cache, hence their astronomical clocks.
 
InorganicMatter said:
I'm telling you guys, the E6600 are all the dud clockers that they couldn't make into E6700/X6800s. The E6400/E6300s are X6800/E6700s with bad cache, hence their astronomical clocks.


k thx bai

i am 3d stable at 3700 air cooled. nothing special about my rig or cpu. dud clocker?
anyway, how come guys will spend hundreds on high speed ram that wont increase performance in any way on this cpu/chipset. or spend hundreds on raptor drives that dont increase performance at all, maybe they used to load huge tasks a bit faster but now with sata2 16mb ncq/tcq 7.2k drives, they are pretty much equal. the 5% to 10% number that is being tossed around here is way more increase than either of the examples i just gave.
guys spend more than $80 on pretty cases. check the conroe oc database here. it doesnt show anything like "6300/6400 always overclock great. 6600/6700 are shaky". most of the guys making these blanket statements havent been anywhere near a conroe. it looks like the motherboards are controlling how high your fsb can go. obviously then, the cpu with the higher multiplier will overclock higher.
 
not bad. anyway, i have a roughly $1500 to $2000 sli rig here. the extra $80-$90 for the 6600 is not much difference. why cheap out on the cpu when i have been waiting for months for it, and i have near top of the line everything else?
 
I haven't seen any E6400 hits 4Ghz stable yet, but I have seen many E6600 hits 4Ghz stable at round v1.55 ~ v1.65, if you are thinking of 4Ghz then E6600 would get you close to it
 
InorganicMatter said:
I'm telling you guys, the E6600 are all the dud clockers that they couldn't make into E6700/X6800s. The E6400/E6300s are X6800/E6700s with bad cache, hence their astronomical clocks.

and i;m a cat that can type
 
I bought an E6700 for 568, regretted it, then sold it for 616. I then bought an E6400 for 244 from Ewiz awhile back and could not be happier. I vote P5B Deluxe with the 0507 BIOS and an E6400 or even E6300. Most of these mobos are doing 500-520 FSB unmodded @ a 7x multi. That would give you 3.5-3.6.4GHz with an E6300. My E6400 will do 3.2 on stock voltage, and 3.5 with a small increase in voltage. It takes much more to move from high in 3.6 to 3.7.

You can get the P5B Deluxe from ClubIT for 205usd last I looked.

If you have phase change cooling or something elaborate like that you might go E6600 or E6700 because you may get beyond 4GHz. For something like a rig for gaming on air cooling definitely get an E6300|E6400.

There's a few E6400s @ 4.GHz linked below for folks that say they haven't seen it. One is on air:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=111081

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=111983
 
Bah, why settle for second best... Get conroe not its crippled sibling.. :D
 
InorganicMatter said:
I'm telling you guys, the E6600 are all the dud clockers that they couldn't make into E6700/X6800s. The E6400/E6300s are X6800/E6700s with bad cache, hence their astronomical clocks.

Yeah, thats what I was saying a while back. But I was thinking they 6300/6400 might not have even been speed binned at all. (just failed caches, so they the speed is luck of the draw)

Where the 6600 are almost all definitely failed X6800's, so the speed is < approx 3 Ghz at default voltage (the probably use a safety factor over 2.93). Doesn't mean they won't overclock, just that they'll probably need more than stock voltage.
 
chrisf6969 said:
Where the 6600 are almost all definitely failed X6800's.

oh yea, righty right. definitely. and the 6300/6400's are very good 6800's, only with half the cache disabled.
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
oh yea, righty right. definitely. and the 6300/6400's are very good 6800's, only with half the cache disabled.
You didn't even read Chris's post. He is saying that he thinks the E6300 and E6400s are not speed-binned at all. If the cache fails on any CPU, it automatically goes into the budget-bin. It's very likely that E63/400s are X6800s that clock great but had cache missing. No promises of course on the clocks, but it's the most valid theory I've seen so far. Really, it would explain why E6600s need a much higher voltage to reach the same clock that an E6400 hits at near-stock voltage.
 
InorganicMatter said:
You didn't even read Chris's post. He is saying that he thinks the E6300 and E6400s are not speed-binned at all. If the cache fails on any CPU, it automatically goes into the budget-bin. It's very likely that E63/400s are X6800s that clock great but had cache missing. No promises of course on the clocks, but it's the most valid theory I've seen so far. Really, it would explain why E6600s need a much higher voltage to reach the same clock that an E6400 hits at near-stock voltage.

6300 and 6400's are manufactured with 2mb l2 cache. they are physically smaller than 6600/6700/6800. so this wacky jive about "failed caches" is just a pipe dream. "ok these over here are the broken ones. i got a good idea! lets call them allendale! and see how much we can get for them" jesus. some people will go for just about anything.


Allendale is a codename for stripped down versions of the Conroe processors with only 2MB of L2 cache. The E6300 (1.86GHz) and E6400 (2.13GHz), both with a 1066MT/s FSB, were released on July 27, 2006. Traditionally, CPUs of the same family with less cache simply have the unavailable cache disabled, but this is not the case with Allendale. Allendale actually has a smaller die, which results in less heat production and a higher overclock. Some Allendale CPUs have been shown to overclock better than Conroe CPUs because of the smaller die size and lower temperatures. At launch time, Intel's prices for the Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 processors were $183 USD and $224 USD each in quantities of 1000.
 
Hiya guys,

The way I looked at it was that I wanted a fast system out of the box, and I plan to keep it around for a couple years so the 4MB cache seemed worth it. I made a silly mistake and ordered DDR2 667MHz RAM, so my OCing will get me as far as 3GHz I think, but I'm only receiving the parts on Monday. Oh, also got a Gigabyte DQ6 to go with it and a SilverStone 750W PSU.

Cheers,
Mike
 
doesnt matter what speed your ram is. you can run it at a lower divider. also, ram speed/timings do not affect performance at all in my experience. i get same superpi times/f.e.a.r. framerates whether my ram is run at 4/4/4/12 or 5/5/5/18(for some reason the is the spd default on g.skill ddr2 800 cas 4 hz). also no change whether i run it at ddr2 800 or ddr2 1000.
nice psu. too bad about the mainboard tho.

jk.
 
Shame about the mainboard :-o (or does jk mean you're joking :p)

Thanks for the info :)
 
My vote goes to the E6600.
If you can't afford it, it's your fault for not working hard while you were in school, so don't bitch.
 
NeRd said:
Shame about the mainboard :-o (or does jk mean you're joking :p)

Thanks for the info :)

jk means just kidding. actually i dont have a clue how that board works, because i dont own one, and cannot pass judgement on a board until i have used/abused it.
 
E6600 isn't a biggie from the E6400. The E6400 I have now is great. Better than any AMD processor I've tried that my friends have and I haven't had a problem since. 4MB Cache is a bit too much but 2MB is fine for me. Get the E6400.
 
Just a week ago, I'd only recommend the 6600 if you don't overclock. But times have changed, the new week 27 6600s seem to pretty much all make it to 3.6ghz. They're as good as the ES conroes we all drooled over in may. If you can guarantee a week 26 or 27, it's worth the extra money.
 
schizo said:
Just a week ago, I'd only recommend the 6600 if you don't overclock. But times have changed, the new week 27 6600s seem to pretty much all make it to 3.6ghz. They're as good as the ES conroes we all drooled over in may. If you can guarantee a week 26 or 27, it's worth the extra money.


My Week 24 is hitting 3.6 too :D. While I haven't yet fully stabilized that speed for prime/etc., I have fully done it at 3.5ghz (389*9). 4MB cache can and does help :D. It's not like you can add it later ;), and the price difference isn't HUGE considering the multiplier, better stock speed, and twice the cache.
 
You just got lucky with a good chip. All things being equal I'd rather have a 6400 at 3.4Ghz than a 6600 at 3.2Ghz, which is about as far as the <week26 chips tend to go. Spend the extra money on better RAM or graphics. That was what I'd say a week ago, anyway.
 
Just to double check, once I start pushing the fsb up, do i leave the memory speed on auto 'cause the lowest memory multiplier is (2x fsb)...

Cheers.
 
if you use something like cubase/cakewalk/acid to make music and have lots of VST and VSTi instrumenrts running real time then the cache would be definately benificial. i cant think of any other reason to need that much cache except for a high volume web server or something you are unlikely to do.
 
Well, I was bitching at first b/c I couldn't get a good clock on my e6600, that maybe I should have gotten a 6400/6300. But I'm happy now after a bumpy road to a decent overclock.

This system has been more difficult to overclock than any of my past systems.

At very first I tried using DDR2 667 which actually held me back to 2.75Ghz

Then I got some DDR2 800 and I was having instability around 3 Ghz
Then I realized I was overvolting the MCH, FSB & DIMM.
If you leave them set to Normal/Auto, they get increased with the FSB speed.
So they were all being overvolted. (approx +2.v)

After I set them all to +.1v, I had a lot more stability.

Then I realized I had also been giving the CPU more juice than it needed. I had raised it earlier b/c I was experiencing instability, but it was actually b/c of the MCH/NB getting too much voltage. So I lowered it from 1.4v to 1.3625v

Now, that I've pinpointed the NB being overvolted as the problem I've been able to tweak the CPU & Ram better. Raised the ram ratio from 2 to 2.5. And I'll be testing for clocks higher than 3Ghz, next.

On a side note, I think the e4300 will be the answer to everyone's problems as it will be cheap and have a higher multiplier to make it MUCH easier to overclock. These stock 266Mhz FSB's & low multipliers are a little difficult to deal with.
 
I even noticed with my old P4c800 that the more the mobo manufacturers try and do things for you the harder it gets to get a good result. you can get a mediocre result quite easy but to do it properly its like when im trying to fix something for someone and they are looking over my shoulder "helping" me :) and you have to tell them to piss off!
 
NeRd said:
Just to double check, once I start pushing the fsb up, do i leave the memory speed on auto 'cause the lowest memory multiplier is (2x fsb)...

Cheers.


if you have ddr2 800 or good ddr2 667, you should leave it on ddr2 800 and it automatically stay at 1/1 as you raise your fsb. i dont know what it will do if you set it to "auto".
 
chrisf6969 said:
Well, I was bitching at first b/c I couldn't get a good clock on my e6600, that maybe I should have gotten a 6400/6300. But I'm happy now after a bumpy road to a decent overclock.

This system has been more difficult to overclock than any of my past systems.

At very first I tried using DDR2 667 which actually held me back to 2.75Ghz

Then I got some DDR2 800 and I was having instability around 3 Ghz
Then I realized I was overvolting the MCH, FSB & DIMM.
If you leave them set to Normal/Auto, they get increased with the FSB speed.
So they were all being overvolted. (approx +2.v)

After I set them all to +.1v, I had a lot more stability.

Then I realized I had also been giving the CPU more juice than it needed. I had raised it earlier b/c I was experiencing instability, but it was actually b/c of the MCH/NB getting too much voltage. So I lowered it from 1.4v to 1.3625v

Now, that I've pinpointed the NB being overvolted as the problem I've been able to tweak the CPU & Ram better. Raised the ram ratio from 2 to 2.5. And I'll be testing for clocks higher than 3Ghz, next.

On a side note, I think the e4300 will be the answer to everyone's problems as it will be cheap and have a higher multiplier to make it MUCH easier to overclock. These stock 266Mhz FSB's & low multipliers are a little difficult to deal with.



The E4300 Allendale is going to be an insane value from the looks of things!
 
GoldenTiger said:
The E4300 Allendale is going to be an insane value from the looks of things!
I agree, but on a next generation chipset thats able to handle a high FSB, but even so at its price point many low end desktops will use this wonderful chip. Now we just need a better on-board tech so game companys can push the envolpe as far as realistic looking/feeling games.
 
GoldenTiger said:
The E4300 Allendale is going to be an insane value from the looks of things!
Maybe. It could be the 805D all over again, with an insanely high multi and good FSB overclocking. Or, the E4300 could be all the dud Conroe's that wouldn't break 266FSB, so they slapped it on a slower FSB and they don't overclock worth crap. We will see.
 
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