E6420 versus E6600 - Price vs Performance

[Jason W]

Have others here had to make this same decision? Have you saved the roughly $35 by going with the E6420, then overclocked it to match the E6600's 2.4GHz?

Or even better, can both of these CPUs be reliably overclocked to match an E6700 or X6800?

Just debating on which processor to get. Thanks for your help.

Jason

[continuum]

I've overclocked a few, and most tend to hit 3.2ghz+ without too much difficulty. If you're not planning to run at stock clock speeds I would grab the E6420. Only catch is with the 8x multiplier on the E6420, if you want beyond 3.2ghz you'll be OC'ing your ram as well. As I personally tend to go for fairly mild OC's and my RAM hits 450mhz (DDR2-900)+ anyway, that's good enough for me.

[jojo4u]

The 6420 should have a higher stepping -> lower power consumption.

[Redzo]

Have others here had to make this same decision? Have you saved the roughly $35 by going with the E6420, then overclocked it to match the E6600's 2.4GHz?

Or even better, can both of these CPUs be reliably overclocked to match an E6700 or X6800?

Just debating on which processor to get. Thanks for your help.

Jason

Go with E6420 as it will oveclock to 3-3.4 very easy. Dont worry about RAM, you can use dividers if you don't want to overclock RAM.
And they dont have lower power consumption then "older" steppings TDP is still at 65W

[jojo4u]

Go with E6420 as it will oveclock to 3-3.4 very easy. Dont worry about RAM, you can use dividers if you don't want to overclock RAM.

Lowest dividor on intel chipsets is afaik 1:1. This means 400 MHz FSB max if you want to keep your DDR2-800 sticks within spec.

[chienpourri]

I took the E6420 and raised FSB to 333 giving 2.67 GHz - not a great overclock, but enough for my needs and a match to my RAM (4 GB of Corsair TWIN2X2048-5400C4 @ 4-4-4-12). Did not even have to change any voltage settings, and my CPU is stable with EIST enabled.

[jackylman]

If you're not going to miss the extra cache (look at the benchmarks to determine if it affects any tasks you commonly perform), I would recommend the E4400. It gives you a 10x multiplier to play with, so you can keep the FSB nice and low, run your RAM within spec, and have your CPU idle at a lower speed when Speedstep kicks in. Also, half the cache means lower power consumption.

Edit: I should also mention that the E4400 doesn't have Virtualization Technology (VT). I don't think that affects most people, but I thought I should mention it just in case.

[angelkiller]

Just curious, would there be any advantages of picking the E6600?

[jackylman]

Just curious, would there be any advantages of picking the E6600?

As continuum pointed out, it has a higher multiplier available (9x), meaning you wouldn't have to raise the FSB quite as high as the 6420 to get a given clock speed, and subsequently, will be able to push your CPU farther without OC'ing the RAM. As I've pointed out, a nice advantage to keeping your FSB lower is that the CPU will idle lower when Speedstep kicks in, which will save some power. Another possible advantage is that you may be able to tighten the timings, since the RAM isn't running as fast.

[Redzo]

Go with E6420 as it will oveclock to 3-3.4 very easy. Dont worry about RAM, you can use dividers if you don't want to overclock RAM.

Lowest dividor on intel chipsets is afaik 1:1. This means 400 MHz FSB max if you want to keep your DDR2-800 sticks within spec.

You are right there, but there is nothing saying that you have to use intels chipset. Nvidia 650i or 680i (680lt) are all able to use dividers and are cheaper too.

[GnatGoSplat]

If you just want to match the E6600's performance by overclocking a cheaper chip, why not save $110 and just run an E4300 at 2.4GHz?

[angelkiller]

If you just want to match the E6600's performance by overclocking a cheaper chip, why not save $110 and just run an E4300 at 2.4GHz?

The technical answer is because the E4300 only has 2MB of L2 cache rather the Conroe's 4MB. But in reality, cache doesn't have a huge effect on performance.

[Jason W]

Ideally, I want to get a stable and reliable 3.0GHz out of my system.

I was originally planning to get the E6600 and DDR2 800 RAM to get there, but am now wondering if I can accomplish the task with lower-priced CPU and RAM.

I'm not sure if having 4MB of L2 cache versus 2MB is any better for photo editing or video editing, e-mailing, internet browing, or working with any MS Office applications. I guess I figured more was better in this case. Maybe not?

Thanks to all who have responded so far. Keep it going!

Jason

[vmole]

In General, YMMV, Don't Quote Me:
For a single user system, I'd expect the cache difference to be negligible. The advantage tends to show up more in multi-process server work loads.

[Lawrence Lee]

Both the E6320 and E6420 should be able to hit 3.0Ghz without any problems but your decision might come down to memory. At 3.0Ghz:

E6320: 429Mhz x 7 (DDR2-800+)
E6420: 375Mhz x 8 (DDR2-667+)
E6600: 334Mhz x 9 (DDR2-667)

[Jason W]

Both the E6320 and E6420 should be able to hit 3.0Ghz without any problems but your decision might come down to memory. At 3.0Ghz:

E6320: 429Mhz x 7 (DDR2-800+)
E6420: 375Mhz x 8 (DDR2-667+)
E6600: 334Mhz x 9 (DDR2-667)

Here is what I was thinking, tell me how much overkill this is for wanting to be at a stable and cool 3.0GHz that will last for years:

P182 case
P5W DH Deluxe motherboard
E6600 with a fanless Ninja rev. B
2GB or 4GB of CAS4 DDR2-800 RAM (depending on if using XP Pro or Vista)
Gigabyte fanless 8600GT

Do you think I will have to mess with voltages at all with that setup in order to achieve a stable and cool 3.0GHz?

Thanks!

[jackylman]

Jason W,

For the tasks you listed above, you don't need the extra cache of an E6xxx. All that extra cache will do is draw more power. You could easily hit 3.0GHz with an E4400 (10x300) or even a Pentium E2160 (9x333). Those processors are much cheaper and you won't miss the cache.

To hit 3.0 GHz, you probably will need to up the core voltage a bit.

[CoolColJ]

cache size only effects gaming and even then not much difference between the 2 megs and the 4megs of the 2 chips. Now there is a bigger difference between the E2160's 1meg and the 4meg in the E6600

but when you o/c the E2160 up to the E660, hardly and difference in apps and 3D rendering!

An E2160 will o/c up to 3 ghz fairly eaisly, and boom for a cheap chip you got X6800 performance in everything but gaming