Quote Originally Posted by ziddey View Post
you have a very special e6600, and you're failing to see that most everyone else doesn't have as good a chip as that. in your case, definitely stick to your e6600.

as for es not being representative of the production models, it's already been well established. that said, from preliminary looks of production samples, e6850's are performing similarly to es models, and the lower models are suffering. personally, i had a e6750 l719a hit 8x400=3.2 with 1.37v actual under load. 8x420 wouldn't even stabilize with 1.5v, so it looks indeed like it hit a sharp wall somehow.
I agree the specific chip that I kept may be an exception vCore-wise, but I think hitting 3.50~3.60GHz with ~1.50V was pretty common with most E6x00 chips? (Before Intel started binning for Q6600s) Now we have these E6850s that hit 3.8~4.0GHz with 1.55V-ish vCore. Can't really see the point of upgrading, especially with their lower multipliers and loosened strap. I mean, outside professional benchers, I don't think the difference between 3.60GHz and 4.00GHz is something to go through the hassle of upgrade for.

Q6600, on the other hand, is a different story. It's unfortunate that there are only handful of apps that can take advantage of quad-cores, but for folks who use them, it's a god-send. Previously these folks had to rely on workstation boards with dual sockets for their productivity.