The Quad Cores are down by half!

I almost bought an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600 (2.8GHz) 2 weeks ago. Good thing I waited. That time, the Intel Q6600 2.4GHz 8MB (Core 2 Duo Quad Core) was selling for a steep price of Php29,500. Well, that’s 4 cores in all so I thought the price was justified. That time, AMD announced its price cuts on all X2 and Opteron processors. Intel was supposed to follow suit after introducing their newer lines (E6550 at 2.33GHz, E6750 at 2.66GHz and E6850 3.0GHz C2D) running at 1,333MHz FSB with 4MB L2 cache.

Imagine my excitement when I checked the new prices today.

That very expensive Intel Quad Core CPU has dropped by almost half the price — Php 14,510. The newly introduced procs have also leveled with it: E6550 (2.33GZ) at Php9,050; E6750 (2.66GHz) at Php10,140 and E6850 (3.0GHz) at Php14,460. The price cuts was in effect last July 22 in the US.

The next question now is, between the Q6600 (2.4GHZ Quad Core C2D 8MB L2) and the E6850 (3.0GHz C2D 4MB L2), which one has more bang for the buck? Most would think 4 cores is better than 2 cores, but look at the raw clock speed differences and the FSB too. If you run a simple math — 4 cores x 2.4GHz at 1066 FSB versus the 2 cores x 3.0GHz at 1333FSB — the quad should win but remember these CPUs will work differently with the softwares, OSes and games you run it with. AnandTech (the kid whom I based my domain back in 2000) has a review and a chart on performance comparison.

In my opinion, the E6850 is perfect in today’s set-up as it maximizes the FSB with a higher clock speed for raw power. However, the Q6600 though lower in clock is more future-ready. As OSes and applications become quad-core optimized, they juice will kick in. Besides, with the proper cooling system, you can potentially push the Q6600 up to 3.0GHz (which theoretically makes it an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850).

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

17 Comments

rsgoldjw says:

12 years ago

very good, it’s very useful to me, thank you very much!
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joseph nigel p gutierrez says:

14 years ago

hi. just wondering where can i buy quad core desktop? thank you very much for the help :)

090533*****
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jetsky says:

16 years ago

how about core 2quad extreme laptop!do we have any?i’m interested to have 1!
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heLL says:

17 years ago

hey, how much is dual core 2 extreme QX6850 in philippines, and how much is E6850? CURRENTLY!
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Marcvill says:

17 years ago

Whenever I read Anandtech’s reviews, I go straight to the Conclusion then read everything else after. Wala lang.
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vance says:

17 years ago

i agree with fleeb, even the midrange vcards; ati 2600 and nvidia 8600 vidcard didn’t fair well.

I think there are other p35 mobos from msi, DFI and asus. but Gigabyte has one of the best reviews especially the big P35-DQ6 (thats a large box and a large mobo)
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Fleeb says:

17 years ago

P35 Motherboard? That would be none other than Gigabyte.

In my case, I still have that patience. I’ll wait until first thing next year. I’ll see what the future holds for Phenom X4, Yorkdale, nVidia 98xx, ATI 2900XTX… oh and that CAS7 1600MHz DDR3 RAM! Arrgh! DDR2 muna for the meantime.

BTW, DirectX 10 disappoints at this point in time. Better stick to DX9 Gen as there is not much performance difference between the two.
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markku says:

17 years ago

I think it would be hard to overclock a quadcore since you’d need all four cores to tolerate the increases in stress. Pag hindi kaya nung isa, damay silang lahat. May sense ba ako? Hehehe.
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itainteasy says:

17 years ago

Yugatech,

Your name is mentioned in this post.

http://abuggedlife.com/2007/07/24/thoughts-on-smart-mytv/#more-1015
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vance says:

17 years ago

@yuga, good. that is a great processor. partner it up with a good intel P35 chipset fsb1333 mobo your set… or an Nvdia 680i fsb1333 mobo.. that sweeeeet. of course aside from cpu you should also look out for ddr2 800 mems (usually by order basis) to accompany the speed of your cpu.

peace.
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Abe Olandres says:

17 years ago

@ seo training: $1 = Php45 so the QuadCores used to be in the $600=ish and dropped down to $300.

@ vance: I’m going ahead and getting that E6850. :D
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vance says:

17 years ago

well actually both are bang for the buck! the difference is the speed although the Q6600 is slower than e6850; it is well suited for video editors, sound editors, 3d modeling and such.. while the e6850 can still be a good choice for non-multitasker and gaming.
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Kiven says:

17 years ago

most new games arent (not to mention old ones) even dual core aware although these would run great for server apps. or multitaskers.

tamang tama ang timing ng price drop although ill wait for the next one along with more dx10 games and price drops on nvidia’s 88xx family.

@migs, yeah sabi nga sa tpc quad cores require some spacial mobo config/cooling
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seo training says:

17 years ago

how much does 29,500phillipino dollar come out when converted to US dollar?

Actually they’re selling you Intel Quad core for very cheap
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Miguel says:

17 years ago

However, I read in tipidpc that the quad-core Intels need special cooling and motherboard configuration.

You’re using this for gaming, right? I don’t think current games know how to use a 4xcore.

Me, I just need to build a low end PC… so I want the Athlon X2 BE-2350 with only 45W power/heat. But, no sign of it coming to the Philippines! So I’ll have to stick to X2 3600+.

AMD rules the low end because there’s the GF61xx chipset with decent integrated analog VGA for PC’s that don’t need discrete video.
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