Performance

Within our performance test session we will compare the dual-core Core 2 Duo E6850 running at the default 3.0GHz frequency and overclocked to 3.85GHz against the quad-core Core 2 Quad Q6600 working at the nominal 2.4GHz and overclocked to 3.6GHz.

PCMark05

PCMark05 benchmark is pretty old, its multi-core processor support is quite superficial. Nevertheless, a lot of users out there use this particular benchmark to evaluate the systems performance, that is why we simply couldn’t give it up.

The total PCMark05 score indicates that Core 2 Duo E6850 outperforms Core 2 Quad Q6600 in nominal mode. However, since we managed to overclock the quad-core processor by 50%, while its dual-core brother hit only 28.5% higher frequency, the picture changes to completely the opposite during overclocking.

CPU Benchmarking suite is slightly better optimized for quad-core processors, it even has a test where the CPU is loaded with four resource-hungry tasks at the same time. As a result, the situation is a little different from what we just saw on the previous diagram: Core 2 Quad Q6600 defeats the competitor in this case even in the nominal mode. And after overclocking, its advantage becomes even more convincing: it appears over 23% faster than Core 2 Duo E6850.

However, during the memory subsystem tests quad-core processor performs a little worse. Core 2 Duo E6850 and Core 2 Quad Q6600 have identical multiplier of 9x. However, the quad-core processor runs at lower FSB frequencies. This appears the major factor limiting the data transfer rate between the Core 2 Quad CPU and the system memory.