QX6700 or X6800

Well the X6800 appears to be 2.93 GHz and the Q6700 is 2.66 GHz. So i'm going to guess that the 2.93 is faster than the 2.66 without overclocking :p

Really it all depends if your programs are mutlithreaded. If they are not, then the faster CPU wins, if they are then the more cores wins.
 
yaric said:
Well the X6800 appears to be 2.93 GHz and the Q6700 is 2.66 GHz. So i'm going to guess that the 2.93 is faster than the 2.66 without overclocking :p

Really it all depends if your programs are mutlithreaded. If they are not, then the faster CPU wins, if they are then the more cores wins.
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but the QX6700 has:
L1 Cache: 64KB+64KB
L2 Cache: 2 x 4MB

compared to the x6800's:

L1 Cache: 32KB+32KB
L2 Cache: 4M shared

Doesn't that count for anything? It appears the QX6700 has a better cache. Doesn't that translate to performance?
 
This thread hurts my head.

If you're looking for a specific answer, that answer is "It depends what you do".

Gaming - It depends on the Game.
Applications - Depends what they do.
Vista - Depends what you do as a user.

Where's my beer?
 
Buying a X6800 over the QX6700 is complete madness at this point...

Of course the best buy is the Q6600 + overclock. Who in their right mind wouldn't overclock a Core 2 CPU? If you don't plan to overclock why do you even show up on [H]ard|Forum ?? =)
 
mwarps said:
This thread hurts my head.

If you're looking for a specific answer, that answer is "It depends what you do".

Gaming - It depends on the Game.
Applications - Depends what they do.
Vista - Depends what you do as a user.

Where's my beer?
Click to expand...

+1 I don't even know the answer and my head hurts.
 
Id say the qx6600, #1 half the price of the qx6700 plus you can fold for the [H] team too :D
 
Cyant said:
Buying a X6800 over the QX6700 is complete madness at this point...

Of course the best buy is the Q6600 + overclock. Who in their right mind wouldn't overclock a Core 2 CPU? If you don't plan to overclock why do you even show up on [H]ard|Forum ?? =)
Click to expand...

sigh.. b/c I am pretty much a nub when it comes to building, and I don't want to overclock when I don't know what I am doing and fry something. All my previous PCs I have always run stock. I'm looking for the best cpu w/o overclocking. Maybe in the future once I learn some about oc'ing then I will attempt to do that.
 
mwarps said:
This thread hurts my head.

If you're looking for a specific answer, that answer is "It depends what you do".

Gaming - It depends on the Game.
Applications - Depends what they do.
Vista - Depends what you do as a user.

Where's my beer?
Click to expand...

Doesn't one of those two run everything faster, on average? Or does it really depend that much on the application?

If it matters, here is what i'd like to do:

Games - Fear, Battlefield 2, HL2, Supreme Commander, Crysis (when it is released), C&C 3, Oblivion, and WC3 DOTA.

Applications - Eclipse 3.2.1, winrtgen (http://www.oxid.it/projects.html), Visual Studio .NET (2003 and up), Microosft Office, Outlook, web browsing.

Vista - playing the above games, running the above apps on two displays (3007 HC and an old dell 20 inch lcd). Playing music, IM and gadgets running.

I'd offer you a beer if I had one on hand. Unfortunately I'm out it appears :eek:

Thanks.
 
For most of those games the difference between 2.66 Quad and 2.93 dual is minimal. There is a bigger difference in Supreme Commander. H's article is linked above.

They will both run anything you throw at them *very* fast.

The application does matter a lot if you want a quantitative answer. Qualitative is "no difference"
 
guitarfly said:
Doesn't one of those two run everything faster, on average? Or does it really depend that much on the application?

If it matters, here is what i'd like to do:

Games - Fear, Battlefield 2, HL2, Supreme Commander, Crysis (when it is released), C&C 3, Oblivion, and WC3 DOTA.

Applications - Eclipse 3.2.1, winrtgen (http://www.oxid.it/projects.html), Visual Studio .NET (2003 and up), Microosft Office, Outlook, web browsing.

Vista - playing the above games, running the above apps on two displays (3007 HC and an old dell 20 inch lcd). Playing music, IM and gadgets running.

I'd offer you a beer if I had one on hand. Unfortunately I'm out it appears :eek:

Thanks.
Click to expand...

overall the X6800 will give u faster performance
the only thing QX6700 will help is with the music/video ripping, supreme commander, and crysis. The other thing would be if ur running 4 programs all at once that are using up the cpu, but i think 2 cores will be plenty for most uses. I honestly think you'll be more dissapointed with Quad until next year when more applications make use of multicores and by that time you can upgrade to QX8950 or something. If your going to keep this CPU for many years then Quad would be more future proof, but i think you'll be making bad use of the money to get best of the best on a budget.
 
troisanh said:
+1.
Click to expand...
++

right now support for quad might not be really out there all that much, but once games start supporting multi threading propperly (crysis, ut3, etc..) then the quad will blow the x6800 away

the <10% difference in clock speed simply can not compensate for having twice as much cores
 
Grab a QX6800 and be done. Availability is low right now, but soon you should be able to find one easily enough.
 
the know-it-all editors of tomz recommend x6800 over the qx6700 on part 3 of their system builder marathon :rolleyes:
the clock speeds of the two cpus are really close, so is the price (here they cost almost the same), therefore 8>4 and qx6700>x6800 imho, but for gaming both seem to be overkill. For gaming they should perform no better than an overclocked regular core 2 duo. For things like movie editing, rendering, folding, encoding, encrypting etc... quad-core is better than the dual-core (most apps for these tasks I mentioned are written with multi cpu support).

edit : I just noticed you mentioned gaming and no overclocking which would favor the x6800 over the qx6700 but visual studio (compiling) should work better with a qx6700. If you can find one, I would also recommend a QX6800.
 
^^^^^ do you honestly think if he was going to use it for those tasks, he would need to ask? If he was into encoding and all that he would know if he needed a quad core..

If you're just gonna do gaming and basic tasks, dual cores saves power, produces less heat, and is faster. So why get two more cores? just for e-peen?
 
I got the QX6700 and I'm really happy with it. It runs really smoothly when you have several apps open at the same time. If fact, it just runs smoother. Just like a dual runs smoother than a single, a quad runs smoother than a dual. I'm happy to give up a little speed per processor for that.
 
i dont even consider tom's hardware a good source for review. The main reason people right now consider the x6800 over the quad core is because nothing besides video and photo intensive encoding applications will utilize the extra 2 cores of the processor. if your gaming and you want some future proof, just go for the quadcore with no questions asked. Yes, the framerates on the x6800 are slightly better than the qx6700 but just by a few frames.
 
osalcido, did you notice the edit at all or as it would be my guess, you were just busy typing ???

I only skimmed through the thread to be honest before giving an answer so I haven't looked at the other posts of the op before I typed my reply? Still, I would never recommend a dual-core over a quad-core if the price is close like this and the MHz difference isn't so big. Have you noticed that he mentioned Visual Studio, which should mean using compilers that are "Multi-Threaded" yet you still think a qx6700 isn't going to be faster and just sit there producing heat. Imho, you couldn't be more wrong.

http://www.intel.com/performance/server/entry_level/intthru.htm

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2007q1/cpu2006-20070122-00296.html
 
Thanks alot everyone for all the great advice and info :) . Right now I am leaning towards a quad, since that seems to perhaps be the most "future proof", but I still am going to give it alot of thought. Any additional comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
guitarfly said:
Thanks alot everyone for all the great advice and info :) . Right now I am leaning towards a quad, since that seems to perhaps be the most "future proof", but I still am going to give it alot of thought. Any additional comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I totally advocate the quad core. Alan Wake and Crysis are two games that will take advantage of quad core CPUs when they ship. Supreme Commander already does if you are into that type of game. More titles with quad core support will start popping up in the near future as well. The quad core CPUs can be overclocked just like the dual core CPUs and the increased heat and power usage aren't too bad either. In my mind, it just makes sense to go quad.
 
xbeemer said:
I got the QX6700 and I'm really happy with it. It runs really smoothly when you have several apps open at the same time. If fact, it just runs smoother. Just like a dual runs smoother than a single, a quad runs smoother than a dual. I'm happy to give up a little speed per processor for that.
Click to expand...

Well put! Smooth is an excellent way to sum it up. Additionally, you can always turn off two of the cores in the BIOS and wait for mult-threaded apps.
 
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