E6300 v E6600

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FooAtari

Weaksauce
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Jan 25, 2007
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Planning on building a system shortly.

At the moment I intend on getting a E6600 as it has 4mb cache. But I have read that the E6300 is very clockable, up to the speeds of the higher end CPU's.

So question is, what kind of difference will the extra 2mb cache make. Would I be better saving on the CPU to get a better mobo, graphics card? and clocking the 6300?
 
e6600 is better, but u could get the e6300 and overclock and make it as good as e6600, couldnt you?
 
Indeed I could. but im missing 2mb cache. And thats where I wondered if I would take a performance hit.
 
I hear all the time that you could clock a E6300 to a E6600. Well yeah, you can clock it to its stock setting, but you can't clock it as high as you can clock a E6600, and thats the point isn't it? I mean, sure, you can squeeze 2.6 outta your E6300, but you can also squeeze at least 3.1 out of the E6600, hell on air you might be able to get 3.6 out of it if your set up right.
 
$cooter said:
I hear all the time that you could clock a E6300 to a E6600. Well yeah, you can clock it to its stock setting, but you can't clock it as high as you can clock a E6600, and thats the point isn't it? I mean, sure, you can squeeze 2.6 outta your E6300, but you can also squeeze at least 3.1 out of the E6600, hell on air you might be able to get 3.6 out of it if your set up right.
Click to expand...
That's a really good point. Most people are able to get 3.1 minimum out of E6600 without the need to buy fancy Ram and Motherboard. Plus E6600 will perform slightly better than the E6300 at the same clock speed, because of the 4MB cache.
So the question is do you want the best bang for the bux, or a better performer.
 
Why not go for the E6400? You are guaranteed an overclock, most likely more than the E6300, that will be able to surpass the E6600. You may get up to 3.2GHz easily ;)
 
I think I might stick with the 6600 to get the cache and clock "safely" over 3Ghz.
 
i have a e6600 and with the stock intel heatsink and the fan speed reduced by two thirds(700rpms) and my voltage set to 1.18 in the bios i was able to get to 3.2 stable. I recently added my old trusty XP-120 from yester-year and i am at 3.4 with 1.27 volts. My idle temps are 31 and load is 47 C. I plan to go to about 3.73 but i added the XP-120 yesterday and i want the as5 to cure alittle and give my e6600 a few days at 3.4 before giving it alittle more voltage. Alot of people think they have to give there processors 1.4-1.5 to get good over clocks, but its just not the case. In fact alot of people that give too much voltage end up actually hurting there over clocks due to over heating. Most people set there processors to 1.35 at stock...lol....at 3.73 i will most likely not go that high. Oh and there are a few acticles at Anandtech that show an e6400 clocked to 3.5 and it was about dead even with a stock (2.93) X6800 in most of the bench marks, from general stuff to gaming. The extra cache is better than people give it credit for. Although some games dont make as much difference as others. Id give you the link but im too lazy to find it, im sure you could see it with little effort should you choose to.
 
$cooter said:
I hear all the time that you could clock a E6300 to a E6600. Well yeah, you can clock it to its stock setting, but you can't clock it as high as you can clock a E6600, and thats the point isn't it? I mean, sure, you can squeeze 2.6 outta your E6300, but you can also squeeze at least 3.1 out of the E6600, hell on air you might be able to get 3.6 out of it if your set up right.
Click to expand...

Ive never seen a E6300 that couldnt do 3ghz.
 
My E6600 runs at 3.6GHz with only 1.385v.

What board are you going to be using? My ASUS P5W DH won't do anything over 410MHz FSB. On a E6300 that only comes to 2,870MHz. On my Striker Extreme, I can do 437.5MHz FSB. That only takes me to 3,065.2MHz. However, my E6600 can do 3,690MHz on the P5W DH. On the Striker Extreme the E6600 can do 3937.5MHz. (Cooling is a huge issue at 3,937.5MHz.)

That's the difference a multiplier makes. If you've got a motherboard that can do 500MHz FSB, then you can reach only 3.5GHz or so using an E6300. If you get an E6600 you can do a theoretical 4.5GHz. Granted, you'd need serious water cooling, voltage increases and or phase change cooling to make that happen, but I think you get the idea. In contrast an X6800 is simply going to be limited by the constraints of it's silicon. See? You do get what you pay for.
 
Well I have a new twist.... I plan on getting a Asus P5N-E by the way.

I had a similar discussion over at Toms Hardware, and someone suggested a E4300 and use the money id save to get a GTX over a GTS. One guy thought that while the GTX might seem like over kill for a 20" monitor, he thought it would pay off as more demanding games came along. So for the moment I have thrown the plan of getting a GTS with the view of sticking in a second one in a year out of the window. The 4300 can clock to 6600/6800 on air cooling as far as i know, which is pretty damn good value. The mobo can take a quad core CPU so that would make a nice upgrade later. thats my thinking at the moment, which might be totally illogical of course... So I came up with the following system.

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650
Intel Core 2 DUO E4300
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 160GB 1600AAJS SATA-II 8MB
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
Antec TruePower Trio 650W PSU
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter
Dell E207WFP 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit Edition DVD

That is pretty much on the limit of my budget. I think this is a pretty clockable system. Anyone know how the BFG clocks on the stock cooler?

Previously I had this in mind;

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 160GB 1600AAJS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS
Antec TruePower Trio 650W PSU
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter
Dell E207WFP 20" Widescreen
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD
 
Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650
Intel Core 2 DUO E4300
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 160GB 1600AAJS SATA-II 8MB
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
Antec TruePower Trio 650W PSU
Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter
Dell E207WFP 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit Edition DVD
Click to expand...

Dump the GTX for a GTS. Dump Western hard drives for Seagate. Dump the Antec PSU and get a Seasonic or Corsair. Dump Vista and get XP Pro. Dump the Arctic Cooler and get a Scythe Infinity, Ninja, or a Tuniq Tower 120.

Now you have a much quiter, less heat and more overcloakable system but less money.
 
Thanks for that. It works out at around £1000 cheaper here in the UK, which is pretty much the price difference between the GTS and GTX. I have been wondering weather I should go with the GTX or not....
 
Some of the people in this thread are smart - some are plain retarded. For instance - those who seem to think you can barely pull 2.6 - 2.8 out of an E6300. I am currently running 3.195 at 48C under load - 10 hours of Orthos. STABLE. I have an EVGA 680i mobo - my current FSB is set to 1826 - compared to the stock 1200 or 1300. My RAM is at 2:1 - 913 MHz. I am using Corsair XMS2 DDR2 5400 (stock clock is 675). Current voltage is at 1.29.

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=161338

The E6300 is an overclocking champ. Check out Toms Hardware - at my current speed - my 170 dollar chip is out performing the x6800. Sure you can overclock the x6800 - it all comes down to price point / performance.


What performance are you looking for and at what price point.

Even with my 2 megs less cache - my chip is still currently out performing the x6800.

When I built my machine - I looked at a number of things.

1. What is it going to be used for?
-Gaming
-Media
-Storage
-Music Production (I am a musician)

2. How much money will I have to spend?
-My price point was $1600 on the entire thing - case - psu - hd's - proc - mobo - vid card - ram

3. What can I "downsize" on to allow for better performance elsewhere?
-Processor - 300 vs 170 - that is a difference of 130 dollars. You MUST remember that your motherboard will decide if your computer is fast or not. You can have amazing hardware and a shitty motherboard and the whole machine will move slow.

I.E. - I have a 300 horsepower engine strapped to a 17 foot wide 9 foot tall wall - the wind resistance of the wall is going to keep that engine from going fast.

Just do a little homework before you waste your money.

Are you going to game? Are you going to produce? Are you going to be running a lot of server side apps? Are you going to be doing a lot of encoding and decoding?

So far I have spent just over $900 on my pc
-Antec NeoHE 500 - $90
-Antec P180b - $120
-Intel E6300 - $170
-EVGA 680i Mainboard - $225
-Corsair XMS2 DDR 5400 RAM - $210
-3 Maxtor 200 GB SATA 300 HD's - $150
-I am currently using my old video card (7900 GS) until the ATi cards come out - I want to see what happens to prices/performance when they bring their next bad a$$ toy to the table.

Just remember - when your on a budget - spend the big money on what you HAVE to. And then clock everything else up LOL.
 
Argh. I havent built a PC in several years, I had forgotten how hard it can be lol. Comming to final desicion is difficult....

Having a very quick scan around the sites here in UK the e4300 and e6300 is the same price give or take a few quid. So I would be better going for that would I not?

My main reason for upgrading is for gaming, hence the 8800 card. I think I want to get the GTX if possible, sure I can clock the GTS to nearly the same speed, but the GTS has less Stream Processers etc etc. So I think I'd rahter spend more on the video and overclock the CPU.

From what I have read the P5N-E motherboard is very good, and great for clocking.

The only thing im really stuck on is the best CPU/GPU combo....
 
SentToSchool said:
Dump the GTX for a GTS. Dump Western hard drives for Seagate. Dump the Antec PSU and get a Seasonic or Corsair. Dump Vista and get XP Pro. Dump the Arctic Cooler and get a Scythe Infinity, Ninja, or a Tuniq Tower 120.

Now you have a much quiter, less heat and more overcloakable system but less money.
Click to expand...

Yeah, do all that stuff. My WD died today. I had to do data recovery to get files back. My Seagate is still running strong and has never acted wierd. Plus my Seagate is much more quite thanthat loud WD.
 
I'd get the 6400, its minimally more expensive, almost guaranteed 3.4 and about 3.6 with some water. The 4MB cache is hardly an improvement, about 5% per Tom's Hardware.
 
Well I have decided against the E6600. I was more trying to decide between the e4300 and e6300 which are priced identical at the moment. The e6400 is a little more here, £20 i think.
I have only ever heared good things about WD drives, but I have an old Seagate drive that is still going strong as well.
 
my testicles finally dropped, i put away the ps3, xbox 360, and erased from my memory all the pc builders(maingear, alienware, falconnw and VM) and decided to build first my first rig.
Can you point me to a guide for overclocking the E6300?:D
 
SentToSchool said:
Dump the GTX for a GTS. Dump Western hard drives for Seagate. Dump the Antec PSU and get a Seasonic or Corsair. Dump Vista and get XP Pro. Dump the Arctic Cooler and get a Scythe Infinity, Ninja, or a Tuniq Tower 120.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Definetely get the GTS, Ninja, and Seagate drives, but there is nothing wrong with Antec power supplies or vista. Antec's NeoHEs are great for the money, and Vista is a must for your DX10/8800GTS card.
 
If you are looking for high capacity, the WD 500GB KS is am amazing drive for both low noise levels and speed. I found the Seagate 7200.10 perpendiculars extremely noisy, and if you get a noisy one, there is no way to turn on the acoustic management like there is for WD drives. It's more of a hit and miss and I didn't want to take a risk the second time so I opted to go fully WD who are leaders in noise levels at this point.
 
InternalStorm said:
If you are looking for high capacity, the WD 500GB KS is am amazing drive for both low noise levels and speed. I found the Seagate 7200.10 perpendiculars extremely noisy, and if you get a noisy one, there is no way to turn on the acoustic management like there is for WD drives. It's more of a hit and miss and I didn't want to take a risk the second time so I opted to go fully WD who are leaders in noise levels at this point.
Click to expand...

Try 15,000rpm Ultra 320 SCSI drives. You'll never think of any SATA drive as loud again.
 
Get a 8800GTX, not only it clocks faster but it also has a higher pipeline(or whatever they called it these days)
 
Honestly, the only difference you'll really ended up getting is:

cheaper ram needed for the e6600, and maybe a 10% performance increase over the e6300 clock for clock depending on what you're doing. (but that's like 300Mhz+ in the 3-4Ghz range, not exactly, but just saying).

*Wishes my chip could do 3.6 under 1.5V but no, it takes 1.52 in the bios to do that* - to much for air cooling. But then again I've my c2d since August, so I've been enjoying it for quite some time now :)

I'd wait for e6320 at this point, an e6300 with 4mb cache.
 
Dan_D said:
My E6600 runs at 3.6GHz with only 1.385v.

My ASUS P5W DH won't do anything over 410MHz FSB. .
Click to expand...

hmmm, that's some limitation! While trying to dial in my replacement 6600, I was running my P5WDH somewhere above 425 though I decided I didn't like the 1.58 volts I was using to get there very much. I'm sure my board has a limit, but so far I haven't been able to afford a cpu and ram with enough headroom to find it.

Might be time for you to sell that one...
 
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