Hello!

oke yesterday i hear someone saying that a Q6600 isn't a real quadcore. i also hear someone saying that it are 2 E6600 on one chip. so what is it than? a dualchip like pentiumD was, or a dualcore with HT? => fake 4core but acctually a c2d with HT?

and what is the Q9XXX serie? are that real quads? man it's stupid to ask, but i know there are no stupid questions.

thanks for your comments, i'll be waiting to hear from you all.

Currently all Intel Quads are 2x C2D on one die as opposed to AMD's Phenom which is known as "native" quad core.

There is no hyperthreading/SMT magic to make windows think there are 4 cores, there are 4 core albeit in a 2x2 arrangement.

the C2QX series however do have hyperthreading/SMT to give the impression of 8 cores/ 8thread ahndling. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Intel's native quad cores will be coming H2 2008 in the form of Nehalem

Both Q6XXX series and Q9XXX series are 2 true dual core chips stuck in one package. So yes there are 4 real cores they just didn't start that way during manufacturing.

Producing dual cores then packaging them in a quad core is done to increase yields on the chip which help lower the cost. But really "True" or not the intel beats AMDS True quad core by leaps and bounds. so don't spend to muych tme worrying about it.

^ Q6600 = monolithic quad (2x2) 65nm
Qx9650 = monolithic quad (2x2) 45nm
Phenom = native quad (4x1) 65nm

Sure it may not be 'real' quad-core but it does perform well...

both 9600 & 6600 are two C2D slapped together. each c2d has 2 cores. so 2 c2d makes 4 cores......so basically its a quad core but not a true or native quad core as AMD puts it.right now phenom is the only "true" quad core. but this argument is irrelevant in most cases as intel quad core bets phemon on most cases.

I'll take the double cheese with Intel on it, over the Kids meal with the AMD toy any day.

I am waiting for the supersized burger with Intel inside. Hold the double cheese... REAL tasty...

AMD just leaves a bad taste in my mouth these days - oh whoops I ate the toy,,,

Bob

Hi,

Q6600 is a real quad-core, it's just not a native quad-core design as AMD was saying when they were promoting the Phenom.

The Q6600 is the equivalent of a bi-CPU packed into one. If you had a motherboard with 2 Intel duo-cores (let's say 2 E6600), you would have (more or less) the same thing as an Q6600. Indeed, within a Q6600 you will find 2 dual-core CPU which communicate between themselves via the FSB, so it's really the same as having a bi-CPU motherboard. Of course, packing the 2 dual-cores into one allows some optimisations but AFAIK it's not really significant.

OTOH, AMD with the Phenom did build a native quad-core design. The 4 cores are really part of the same CPU and they don't rely on any external component (such as the FSB for Intel) to talk to each other. FYI, this is the approach Intel is taking now with the Nehalem. But the Penryn (Q9xxx) are still using the Q6600 approach.

Of course, Intel "dirty approach" is more sensible if you consider that its percentage of defects is much less than AMD's who will lost a Phenom as soon as one core is down. More over, it allowed Intel to produce quad-cores sooner than AMD using parts (dual cores) that they already had a lot of experience with.

At the end of the day does it really matter ? Experience has proven that natively designed quad-core Phenoms are way behind the quick & dirty made quad-core Intels. Even though the 2 dual-cores in a Q6600 have to go through the FSB to communicate (which should be a real disadvantage) , their large and efficient cache is more than enough to compensate that issue.

So if you're planning on buying a Q6600 by all means do it. The 4 cores are really there, no tricks no HT, etc. And I can tell you from real experience that it really makes a difference with multi-threaded applications (encoding videos with x264 is just great :-)) Plus the Q6600 is easily overclockable, mine runs at 3Ghz and I've got the old stepping which wasn't that well-regarded. I've been told that with the current stepping (used on all Q6600 since July 2007) you can easily reach between 3.2 and 3.5 Ghz.

Hope it helps. You should also consider reading this site articles on that matter.

Cheers ! :-)

Hi,

Q6600 is a real quad-core, it's just not a native quad-core design as AMD was saying when they were promoting the Phenom.

The Q6600 is the equivalent of a bi-CPU packed into one. If you had a motherboard with 2 Intel duo-cores (let's say 2 E6600), you would have (more or less) the same thing as an Q6600. Indeed, within a Q6600 you will find 2 dual-core CPU which communicate between themselves via the FSB, so it's really the same as having a bi-CPU motherboard. Of course, packing the 2 dual-cores into one allows some optimisations but AFAIK it's not really significant.

OTOH, AMD with the Phenom did build a native quad-core design. The 4 cores are really part of the same CPU and they don't rely on any external component (such as the FSB for Intel) to talk to each other. FYI, this is the approach Intel is taking now with the Nehalem. But the Penryn (Q9xxx) are still using the Q6600 approach.

Of course, Intel "dirty approach" is more sensible if you consider that its percentage of defects is much less than AMD's who will lost a Phenom as soon as one core is down. More over, it allowed Intel to produce quad-cores sooner than AMD using parts (dual cores) that they already had a lot of experience with.

At the end of the day does it really matter ? Experience has proven that natively designed quad-core Phenoms are way behind the quick & dirty made quad-core Intels. Even though the 2 dual-cores in a Q6600 have to go through the FSB to communicate (which should be a real disadvantage) , their large and efficient cache is more than enough to compensate that issue.

So if you're planning on buying a Q6600 by all means do it. The 4 cores are really there, no tricks no HT, etc. And I can tell you from real experience that it really makes a difference with multi-threaded applications (encoding videos with x264 is just great :-)) Plus the Q6600 is easily overclockable, mine runs at 3Ghz and I've got the old stepping which wasn't that well-regarded. I've been told that with the current stepping (used on all Q6600 since July 2007) you can easily reach between 3.2 and 3.5 Ghz.

Hope it helps. You should also consider reading this site articles on that matter.

Cheers ! :-)

oke guys! you have teached me something today! oke!

yes i'm looking to buy a quadcore, but at the end of summer or late 2008. because of my queest in hardware searching i ran into this question about the quads. now i hope that the new nehalem will come soon, and i can specc on that

thanks!!

topic is closed

Topic is nearly closed!

Prices on Nehalem chips will be extremely high for at least 6 months after they're released, porbably for 9-12 months even! I believe they also only have a controller for the more expensive DDR3 RAM. You will also need a new mobo with a LGA1366 socket.

Nehalem will seems like get an extreme amoun of erformance out of itself. dpends on it's name.

oke, no end on this topic than!

will it say i opend a good topic! (yes!)

oow, nehalem only ddr3 and new socket? aauwts! what are the prices you guess?

They have SMT instructions and are modified somewhat but no more than any other Core 2. Windows won't see more than 4 cores as it is no Hyperthreading and won't assign threads accordingly. The processor itself is able to handle multiple tasks better, but until Nehalem we won't see anything resembling Hyperthreading.