Don't you want to e-buy? The retailer next door doesn't give a damn about steppings? Anandtech has all the relevant information compiled for you. Not just regarding the Q6600, but all G0s out there. As stated previously, you still need to get a hold of it, but you don't even have to open the box. OEM parts can be distinguished in a similar fashion.

In the case of Q6600 it comes down to it being the G0 based Q6600 (S-Spec: SLACR) or it's B3 predecessor (S-Spec: SL9UM).

They also conducted a couple of tests: power consumption and overclocking. The first one tells us what we already knew from Intel specs (10W lower power consumption), but the second one is somewhat deceiving (not much better than the older stepping). It all depends on particular chips. Just keep in mind that, even at the same speed, the new Q6600s run much cooler, almost 20W @ 3.33Ghz.

CPUs with two cores were introduced in 2005 and made popular in 2006 after the release of Intel's new offerings and the price war that ensued shortly after that. This year will probably see a similar situation when AMD launches Phenom and Intel makes it's move, only this time we will be talking about four cores, not just two. And all this while gamers still wonder if a second core is of any use at all. 

Legion Hardware has an article about CPU scaling performance when using different Geforce 8 cards. Conclusions are easy to anticipate, but comparing an Intel Celeron 440 (2.00GHz, one core, 512Kb) with a Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.00GHz, two cores, 1Mb) paints a rather clear picture of how an up to date game like Far Cry can take advantage of the additional processing power, no matter what kind of a GPU you have. In fact, is intriguing that the cheaper one gets the bigger boost (67% at 1280x1024), when all would point to it as the major bottleneck.

8600 GTS buyers beware, if you play new games, they are likely to benefit from dual core CPUs, even if it's trough patches (Far Cry). In this case, you better buy at least a Core 2 Duo from the "E" series along with your graphics card.

On the other hand, it's main competitor is quite confident in the possibilities of Penryn. Should it be necessary, it looks like they can raise the working frequency of the CPU to 4 Ghz, some leaks indicate.

The sheer notion of Intel getting behind in the clock-for-clock battle doesn't seem very realistic, though. Just take a look at these benchmarks:

- a 115.63% increment in DivX encoding speed (thanks to SSE4)

- a 31.12% fps gain under Half Life 2 (thanks to the bigger cache?)

- a huge reduction in power consumption (thanks to the die shrink)

If you forgot about all the innovations the new processor will bring along, Daily Tech has an updated summary of all those changes, as well as a recap on different versions and the road ahead after Penryn.

For a long time now, over a year, you have heard nothing but bad news coming from the AMD camp. Neither their main business nor their new graphics venture was going as planned, but you might see something worthy coming from them before year's end.

Barcelona will still be released a little bit late and a little bit slow, but the desktop part you are probably most interested in, won't be (late/slow).

Here's an excerpt from xbitlabs:

"Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday demonstrated its highly-anticipated enthusiast-class quad-core AMD Phenom processor that functioned at a clock-speed that has been widely considered as unachievable for initial microprocessors based on the company’s new-generation micro-architecture.

This is already above AMD expectations for this year, which didn't place quad-core chips at frequencies of more than 2.60GHz. Now, we only have to see if it performs better than Core 2 for the battle to be renewed.

Bargain of the year?

Maybe that didn't mean much to you. After all, lots of people want Core 2 for overclocking, and it was a known fact that the Q6600 was not only the cheapest, but also the worst performer in this area. Add to that the introduction of the new 1333 FSB processors that boast even higher potential and you could almost completely dismiss the idea of buying one of these "budget" quads. Notice that I'm using the past tense, because as of July 16 (this week) you may also buy a G0 stepping Q6600.

Reading trough this Intel document, one sees that the power needed has been reduced by 10W and the "operating temperature" has been raised 11ºC. Both characteristics help the overclocking capabilities of the chip, bringing it to par with the rest of the Core 2 line.

The most difficult task will be to tell them apart. Intel isn't going to label them differently (CPUID is changed from 06F7 to 06FB, but you need to have it at hand to verify that) and most online stores don't make any distinction. You can either order it at a shop that guarantees the stepping, wait some time for the stock to be replenished or buy it from a trusted source that won't give you any grief in case you wished to return it.

Vr-Zone had the chance to test one of the unreleased Core 2 Extreme QX6850 based on the new stepping, and the results couldn't be more encouraging.

The latest incarnation of the Kentsfield processor together with an EVGA Rev A2 vintage 680i SLI Motherboard reached 4792MHz. With just 1.55v, it ran through 3D Mark CPU Test with phase change cooling. Upping the voltage to 1.65v allowed them to score 5133MHz! "[...] looking at this, probably 3D Mark stable at 5GHz with LN2 cooling is quite easy."

News about AMD's Barcelona place it around 2 Ghz in September (probably October). The breach is widening.

Choosing your Core 2 Duo is not an easy task anymore. You have the 6xxx series with 4 MB of cache and a FSB of 1066 Mhz (not the 6300 and 6400, please). Down the ladder you may buy a 4xxx processor with 2 MB and 800 Mhz. Or you can grab an even cheaper 2xxx CPU (named Pentium) with just 1 MB and the same 800 Mhz FSB. All that without even counting one-core Celerons or four-core Core 2 Quads. And now there is a new member in the family: 1333MHz FSB processors that will be available later this summer.

Both Anandtech and xbitlabs have tested the E6750 and have reached more or less the same conclusion when it comes to overclocking:  the new G0 core stepping (expected to boast better frequency potential) gains a few hundreds Mhz more. It goes to show that Intel's 65nm process is as mature as it will get, at this point. Remember that this same year, they will be introducing the first 45nm processors.

At stock voltage with a retail Intel heatsink/fan Anandtech was able to run the system at 3.68GHz (460 x 8.0), while xbitlabs used a Zalman CNPS9700 LED and raised Vcore to 1.5V, hitting 3.69GHz. More or less the same, right? The reason is that the CPU goes up all the way until the FSB Wall stops it from going any further. The increase to a 333MHz FSB frequency may prevent some new Core 2 Duo to overclock to their limits. Those frequency multipliers are just too low. On the other hand, the Core micro-architecture was not in need of a faster bus (quad-core processors apart). Quite a mixed bag.

Three weeks ago, AMD launched the new low-power Athlon X2 BE processors. Since they were nothing more than a rebranding of the (totally unavailable) Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 35W TDP, I just thought: boring, boring.

With a slightly higher 45W TDP rating, the BE-2350 and the BE-2300, were intended to replace the old 3800+ and ensure availability. Know what? Today, you still can't find them at major e-tailers like Newegg. That's not so boring anymore.

AMD says parts are available in Korea and Japan and to expect to see these processors for sale at Newegg "in about a week or so."

Having lost the performance race, AMD continuosly promises low-power CPUs in volumes it can't deliver. They look good on paper, though.

Link: The Tech Report.

One area where AMD has been able to hold the upper hand on is the business of promoting their graphics processing units as general-purpose processors. First was the Folding@Home program last September. More recently, during the R600 launch, they spent a lot of time looking at applications for their GPU other than just graphics and added features in the GPU to aid future GPGPU projects.

Maybe not having to compete with Intel made them feel rosy, but now NVIDIA is announcing their progression into the world of high-performance computing (HPC): Tesla.

HPC is not your average piece of software, coding for multi-threaded processors is much more difficult than serial processing, which means that only tasks that are multi-threaded in nature find the bottleneck in hardware. NVIDIA's Tesla wants to be the answer for those problems. HPC applications require much more processing power because they access immense amounts of data simultaneously; for expamle: simulation of neural circuits, computational microscopes, seismic and reservoir simulation, cell phone design... There are other applications for HCP in researching electromagnetics, energy, biomedical, pharmaceutical, industrial, financial and military operations.

What does it have to do with you? Not much at the moment, but this is the beginning of a transition from clock speed to multi-core power. Consumer level programs will gradually take advantage of more than a couple of cores, and prices for solutions like Tesla will go down (right now they range from $1500 for a GPU card to $12,000 if you want a S870 server).

Link: PCPerspective.