Originally Posted by
Utnorris
Ok, I have a few thoughts/questions. I have a Q6600 (GO), a Q9450 (CO) and an E8500 (CO) that I have been benchmarking against each other. My q6600 was my first quad, however I was able to get a Q9450 for $170 after the live.com rebate. The Q6600 is capable of running 3.725Ghz (416x9) 24/7 with no issues. The Q9450 has been able to hit 3.7Ghz (8x463) @1.44v, again, no stability issues. I got the E8500 because I knew I could overclock it even higher, in fact I had no problem doing 500x9, although the voltage was at 1.51v for stability, hadn't tweaked it yet, so I am sure I could come off of that. Temps on all three are no issue since I have watercooling, in fact under load the highest I hit was 63c (ambient is 27c) on one of the quad cores. Anyway, I am suprised by some of the results from benchmarks that I ran, keep in mind this was some limited testing, but still suprised me. I ran PI, 3DMark06, Vantage and did a conversion of a 4gb HD MPEG2 video to DIVX using Divx6.8 converter. I was expecting that the E8500 would blow the quads out of the water due to being able to hit almost a 1Ghz faster speed, but it didn't. Sure PI was faster, but for instance on 3DMark06 the Q9450 had a better score at 3.6Ghz than the E8500 at 4.5Ghz, only a couple of points mind you, but still. The biggest difference when you break down the score was the cpu score was much higher on the quad, same thing on Vantage, although the overall score wasn't even close. On PI the E8500 killed the two quads easily, but in the Divx conversion it wasn't until I hit 4500 on the E8500 before it overtook the Q9450. I know Divx 6.8 takes advantage of the multiple cores and the new instruction set, but I would have thought the higher FSB/CPU speed would have been able to take the Q9450 out. So I guess I have two questions for everyone here:
1 - Why wouldn't you get a Q6600 for the same price as the E8500 instead of an E8500? Yes, I do realize that the newer Q6600 don't overclock like the older ones, but just from reading in this thread I haven't seen too many folks willing to push their chips further than 4Ghz, so a Q6600 at 3.2Ghz (the new Par for them) should be just as good as the E8500 and it future proofs you.
2 - Is there a reason why many people are not pushing their chips pass the 4Ghz limit? I get the "keeping the voltage low" idea, but isn't the reason that everyone wants the E8400/E8500 is for the overclocking capabilities?
Maybe I am missing something as I had high hopes for the E8500, especially since I could probably run it on far less voltage than my Q6600 and have lower temps, but I am just not seeing it. My point is not to bash the E8500, so don't take it that way, I am just trying to find a reason to go to the E8500 from the quads and I can't find it.
Convince me, please. :)
Utnorris