Almost a decade ago Intel released the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor, which was the first Intel quad-core CPU for the desktop market. This being an Extreme-series chip the asking price was pretty high. However a few months later Intel released the Core 2 Quad Q6600, which also came with four cores but was much more affordable.

The main difference between the two models were overclocking capabilities since the QX6700 came with an unlocked multiplier and the Q6600 was locked down at 2.4 GHz. Nevertheless it was possible to bump the core clocks by increasing the front side bus. Thanks to the the fact that the Q6600 was affordable to a certain extent overclockable it became very popular quite quickly.

Apparently our friends over at Techspot must have liked this CPU as well, since it appears they’ve kept on for almost a decade. Interestingly they’ve run a set of benchmarks on the Intel Q6600 to see how this chip performs in combination today’s games and with modern GPUs. In addition they compared the 10 year old Core 2 Quad with a Core i5-2500K, a Pentium G3470 and a Core i7-6700K processor. All the tests have been performed with a GTX 1060 and a GTX 1070 graphics cards.

The review shows that the Intel Q6600 is pretty slow in every scenario. Although the Pentium G3470 features only two cores and two threads, it is faster than the old quad-core Q6600. In other words, pairing the Q6600 with either a GTX 1060 or a GTX 1070 doesn’t make sense. For casual gamers the Intel Q6600 might still be useful but if you’re thinking about playing recent titles then a platform with a Q6600 will be a bottleneck




Source: Techspot