I recently upgraded my Core 2 Duo 6420 to a Core 2 Quad 6600 and of course I was very curious to check out the differences between them. So after doing all my testing in Vista and Xp I decided why not share my results to let other people know what's up with these Quad Core CPUs and if they really are worth it.

My C2D 6420 is one of the newer models (relatively speaking of course) with the 4mb cache as opposed to the 2mb of the original C2Ds, and it runs at a stock speed of 2.13Ghz, but I easily hit 3Ghz while overclocking. The C2Q 6600 I just got runs at 2.4Ghz, which really isn't much more than the C2D 6420 overall, a couple hundred Mhz isn't going to drastically effect any testing results so I think they'll make a good comparison basically.

So I ran both through my standard series of tests, SiSoft Sandra, 3dMark06, SuperPi, Video Encoding and a couple video games as well on both Vista and Xp to see if it was worth it for me to upgrade and maybe help you decide if it's worth it as well, especially since the prices of these quad cores have come down... So read on to see what I learned from all of this...

C2D 6420 vs C2Q 6600 – Quad Vs. Dual Comparison

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Specs you see here were taken mostly from NewEgg, with some missing details filled in by me, as that's where I got my Q6600 from.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe 2.13GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor 

Brand: Intel

Processors Type: Desktop

Series: Core 2 Duo

Model: BX80557E6420

CPU Socket Type

CPU Socket Type: LGA 775

Tech Spec

Core: Conroe

Multi-Core: Dual-Core

Name: Core 2 Duo E6420

Operating Frequency: 2.13GHz

FSB: 1066MHz

L1 Cache: 32KB+32KB

L2 Cache: 4M shared

Manufacturing Tech: 65 nm

64 bit Support Yes

Hyper-Transport Support: No

Virtualization Technology Support: Yes

Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, EM64T

Voltage: 0.85V – 1.5V

Thermal Power: 65W

NewEgg Product Link HERE

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor

Brand: Intel

Processors Type: Desktop

Series: Core 2 Quad

Model: BX80562Q6600

CPU Socket Type

CPU Socket Type: LGA 775

Tech Spec

Core: Kentsfield

Multi-Core: Quad-Core

Name: Core 2 Quad Q6600

Operating Frequency: 2.4GHz

FSB: 1066MHz

L1 Cache: 128KB+128KB

L2 Cache: 2 x 4MB

Manufacturing Tech: 65 nm

64 bit Support: Yes

Hyper-Threading Support: No

Virtualization Technology Support: Yes

Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3,SSSE3, EM64T

Voltage: 0.85V – 1.5V

Thermal Power: 105W

NewEgg Product Link HERE

As you can see the voltages and FSB are the same for both CPUs as is some of the other basic specs, where we they deviate of course is four cores as opposed to two cores and the L1/L2 caches mostly.