Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2007 3:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Million Dollar Question: Dual or Quad Core for the Same Price?
Before talk of Intel's July 22nd price cuts surfaced, we were hardly ever asked the question "dual or quad", simply because the price differential was so great. After next week everything changes, as you'll be able to pick up a quad-core Q6600 (2.4GHz) for a measly $266. At the same time, you could get a much higher clocked dual-core E6850 (3.0GHz) for the exact same price - so which do you pick?
This graph is a lot more colorful than our previous ones because the decision just isn't that clear. If you look at the average, quad-core gains an advantage over dual-core over all of our benchmarks, but if you look at the tests themselves you'll see some trends. Encoding and 3D manipulation benchmarks have the quad-core CPU clearly ahead, while general usage and gaming benchmarks mostly favor the higher clocked dual-core E6850. So, which do you choose?
If you're strictly building a gaming box, you'll get more performance out of the dual-core E6850. However, if you do any encoding or 3D rendering at all, the quad-core Q6600 is a better buy. Our pick is the Q6600 and if you want to make up the performance difference you can always overclock to E6850 speeds, but the chip only makes sense if you're running apps that can take advantage of four cores. As the chart above illustrates, those applications are almost exclusively limited to video encoding and 3D rendering.
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DolphinAMD - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
nooo! I just bought an Core 2 Duo E6420 for $186The replacement seems like the E6750 at $183
Sunrise089 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
sorry buddy, but these prices weren't exactly a secret.lennylim - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
If you go according to max. multiplier, an important number for overclocking, the pricing makes some kind of sense.Looking at dual cores only, here's the pricing by multiplier.
7x multiplier : $163
8x multiplier : $183
9x multiplier : $224 (E6600) / $266 (E6850)
10x multiplier : $316
Still a damn good price for C2D. And the E6600 is actually a good deal for overclockers.
hubajube - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
The price of the X2 6000 is $169.99 on Newegg not $180. Even though the new stuff is quicker than AMD's best it's only a little quicker and the $10 difference between them plus the cheaper motherboards for AMD will still pretty much seal the deal for my next upgrade. If the quad cores were $180 then I would be willing to stretch for the extra cost of the Intel motherboards (Intel or Nvidia chipset).MrKaz - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Finally someone with brains.I already have said the same with different words.
Did you also notice they only mention the extra price cost on the AMD motherboard because of Quad FX, they don’t mention Intel extra price premium on the motherboard.
The Intel motherboards are very expensive, the ASUS P5N-E SLI for example in my country costs 120€, the AMD version the M2N-E SLI 80€. Its 40€ difference.
Also the only interesting Core 2 Duo is the E6550 which costs $163. Lower than this you get one castrated CPU from Intel.
AMD X2 3600 costs 60€ in my country so its 60+80=140€
Intel E6550 168€ so its 120€+168€=288€
Its “just” 148€ difference or one X1950PRO if you prefer.
Accord99 - Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - link
Why compare the E6550, which is faster than all but the AMD 6000+ with a 3600+ that is slower than Intel's "castrated" Pentium E2160?
hubajube - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
I was looking at the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe which is $170 compared to the ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium for $210 here. A $40 difference that I can use towards my 8800GTS and then add the $10 from the CPU difference and I STILL get a computer that plays BF2 or whatever at WELL over 100fps.Pirks - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
exactly, this is why I'm going to use AMD for my gaming rig for the foreseeable future. cheap AMD cpu plus expensive nvidia 3D video equals best gaming experience, definitely better than that of intel FOR THE SAME PRICE. AMD is the best friend for the gamer, while Intel is the best friend for media encoder/3D renderer kind of guy, or anyone who loads all their four cores at 100%iceburger - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
I've had the same reasoning for the last 10 years- AMD platform always cost less- sometimes the difference will cover nice video card. IMHO this Intel price cut may backfire for them- the reason you spend money on marketing is to be able to get higher profit margins. Instead of dropping the price, the reasonable decision would have been to "milk" the market- maintain the current separation: high- and mid-end for Intel, low-end for AMD. This price cut is strictly a hostile move aimed to bury AMD's entire line and force them to lose even more with consecutive AMD price cut. However Intel has higher fixed development cost and even if they sell more CPUs, their profit will be lower- it's a lose-lose situation. Reminds me of GWB's tax cuts.Sunrise089 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Only problem with all of this otherwise sound reasoning is that the same folks who are enough of an enthusiast to know that the AMD MB's can save them a bit, and then apply that savings towards either the GPU or grabbing a higher-end AMD processor are very likely to overclock, and that sort of blows the AMD side of the equation out of the water.I'm and AMD fan myself, but you have to admit, anyone who even considers overclocking their CPU has no business picking the AMD side unless they just want to help the underdog.
Pointing out Anandtech's failure to mention the cheaper AMD platform is fair enough, but it was AT LEAST equally damaging to the Intel side to not show benchmarks from an overclocked 6000+ vs a 6850. Does anyone think it would be close?