Benchmark Results

WinRAR 3.61

In this test, we tested the processors' ability to compress 600MB of poorly-compressible files like MP3, WMA, DiVX, JPEG files.

The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 was 26.7% faster than the Core 2 Duo E6600, but was that due to the higher clock speed or the extra cores?

To find out, we dropped the QX6700 to 2.4GHz and retested. At the same clock speed, the quad-core Kentsfield was 23.7% faster than the dual-core Conroe. Evidently, most of the improvement in compression speed is mostly due to the extra processor cores, with very little due to the higher clock speed.

PCMark05 (CPU)

In the PCMark05 CPU test, we saw the QX6700 beating the E6600 by 38.6%. At 2.4GHz, the QX6700 was still faster than the E6600 by 24.5%.

While the performance difference at the same clock speed isn't as large as we had hoped, it was still a significant boost in performance.

PCMark05 (Memory)

In the Memory test, we see the QX6700 delivering just 4% better performance than the E6600.

But even that's due to the higher clock speed because when the QX6700 was reclocked to 2.4GHz, it was actually slower than the E660 by 2%.