C2D 6420 vs C2Q 6600 Quad Vs. Dual Comparison

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Testing and Comparison on Vista

The system specs are exactly the same under the Vista OS as under the XP OS, I’ve got both operating systems installed on my system on two separate hard drives, and as I mentioned already both are of the 32bit variety.

Basically the same tests again, no explanations this time around:

3dMark06

No surprise here, the Q6600 is a clear winner.

FarCry

Here we see more of the same as with XP, no real differences…

SuperPi

Here we see a 3.28 second lead by the Quad core under Vista.

TMPGEnc

Exactly the same times as we saw while using XP, no changes.

Time to check back in with SiSoft Sandra:

SiSoft Sandra Cache and Memory test

Benchmark the processors’ caches and memory access (transfer speed).

Combined Index: is a composite figure representing the overall performance rating of the entire Cache-Memory performance in terms of MB/s. (Higher is better, i.e. better performance)

Speed Factor: is a figure representing the speed differential between the CPUs cache and memory. (Lower is better, i.e. the memory is not very much slower than CPUs cache)

More of the same, we see nice Combined Index score but the Quad Core takes a hit on the Speed Factor Test. I’m still wondering why exactly…

CPU Arithmetic Benchmark

Benchmarks the ALU and FPU processor units. Shows how your processors handle arithmetic and floating point instructions.

Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Processor Multi-Media

Benchmark the (W)MMX, SSE/2/3/4 processor units. 

Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark

Benchmarks the memory bandwidth of your computer.

Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Here we see using the Q6600 has a slight advantage but not as much as I would have thought…

Memory Latency Benchmark.

Benchmark the latency (response time) of processors’ caches and memory

Results Interpretation : Lower index values are better.

My memory apparently likes the C2D much better.

Multi-Core Efficiency

Inter-Core Bandwidth :Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Inter-Core Latency :Results Interpretation : Lower index values are better.