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Quad Core overclocking

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Bigbacon

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Do the 1333mhz bus Quad Cores overclock well? which is the best bang for the buck?

Looking to get a gaming machine and retire my C2D to other duties. My current 2.13 C2D is pushed to 3.2. Would able to be albe to get a say a 2.5 quad core up to the same speeds without crazy cooling? (I'm using the stock cooler on my c2d)

Cache question on these also.

Newegg lists quads with 4, 6 and 12mb caches. How does that add up between the cores or is just one lump cache area?
 
The Intel Quads are two C2D processors pretty much taped together, so it's two sets of L2 caches.
 
As stated, it's 2 sets of L2 cache, pretty much 2 C2D cpu's put together. If you're not looking to spend too much money, I'd get a Q6600 and an aftermarket cooler, if you want 3.2+Ghz. With a Q6600, you should be able to hit 3.0Ghz with no issues, and you could possibly get up to 3.4-3.6+Ghz if the particular CPU you end up with is decent.

You will need an aftermarket cooler though.
 
Jimbo is right, the Q6600 is currently the best bang for your buck quad out right now, and though it's a 1066 chip, that just means more FSB headroom for overclocking.

When I first overclocked my Q6600 I used the stock heatsink. You should be okay for a mild overclock as long as you are just staying within the range where you don't really have to crank up the voltage. I had mine up at 3.2 with a small voltage increase and I was getting temps <20C to TjMax in Prime95.

About the cache, it's true that each pair of cores has it's own cache, but as with the Q6600 and it's two blocks of cache for example, if you were using a program that only took advantage of two cores then each core could conceivably have it's own block of 4MB cache to work with whereas a Dual would still have to share a single block of 4 or 6MB.
 
After getting advice in another thread, I'm running my Q6600 G0 @ 3.6 with an 1800 FSB & 8x multiplier (prior OC @ 3.6 / 1600 / 9x). It's a true beast at everything I play or run. You will not be disappointed with its overclocking potential & performance.
 
Get the Q6600. It's priced so well ($140-200), and in most apps (when overclocked) will spank the other budget quads Q8200 and Q9300 chips. Remember at one time the Q6600 sold for $999!!!

I don't have first hand experience, as I'm running an x3350, but I tell you it wasn't that easy to get the x3350 to run stable at 3.6GHz without playing alot with GTL ref voltages. One GTL setting literally dropped my core temps by 10C!!!

The 45nm processors have a slightly newer instruction set, so you'll probably miss a few percents here and there on Divx encodes, but otherwise, for general FPU and math functions (important for gaming, etc.) the Q6600 at 3.6GHz performs.

You should reach high clocks on a decent motherboard because the Q6600 has a nice multiplier of 9. 400 x 9 on a Q6600 is much easier than 450 x 8 on a X3350.

It's strange, but the Asus P5E-VM HDMI m-atx board is quite good for OC'ing quads. Asus quality hasn't been to stable lately though. It got lucky with a good board, but see on the net lots of folks are having problems.
 
While I agree with the rest in that the Q6600 is the way to go based on what you're looking for, I also would like to add, don't purchase it expecting a 3.6GHz OC. There is a very good chance you won't reach it even with proper cooling and a good board. The newer batches are not OCing like they use to, many are topping out at around 3.2GHz, some even less.
 
cool, I was pretty sure the cache was paired. Newegg used to list it as 4x2 or 6x2 but now they just show the total and I got confused.

In terms of over clocking, I was only mainly interested in getting it to at least the speed I have currently which is 3.2
 
I'd check out the GA-EP45-DS3R from Gigabyte. Solid board and solid overclocker. My P35-DS3R has yet to disappoint, and I've built 2 Q6600 systems on the P35 and 1 on the EP45 from Gigabyte..
 
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