Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 / 2.4 GHz processor > Reviews (22)

Since building my first PC in 1999, I had used AMD processors. Initially, it was just an enthusiast, cost-based decision. But as the Athlons improved, and then gave way to the Athlon 64s, I truly believed that AMD were making the best processors.

It was with a feeling of unfaithfulness, then, that I began to research the Core 2 Duo processors, having heard some incredible things about them. It seemed that these processors were better overclockers, but at the same time, less power-hungry.

For the non-technical readers here, overclocking is a method used by us 'geeks' to run the CPU at a higher speed than it is rated for. By and large, it is a safe procedure, as long as you know what you are doing. If you compare the costs of processors, it becomes apparent that overclocking a slower rated processor, to run at the speed of a faster rated processor, can effectively be a money saver.

Having read many articles concerning the Core 2 Duos, I decided that I did, indeed, wish to move across to this architecture. One small problem though, was that my old system had effectively reached the end of the upgrade line. This meant that I would need to buy new:

- processor
- motherboard
- DDR2 memory
- PCI Expressgraphics card
- SATA hard drive (not essential, but advisable)

I weighed up the pros and cons between the different Core 2 Duos, and decided that the E6600 was the way to go. I wanted the slowest rated version of the 4MB cache CPU. This doubled (from the 2MB of the E6300 and E6400) cache is another factor of the CPU that can speed up number crunching processes.

I won't go into details of the rest of the hardware that I bought - it's largely irrelevant here. It will suffice to say that I bought an Intel 975X chipset motherboard, 2GB of RAM, and a middle-of-the-road graphics card.

When the system arrived, I built everything else, and arrived at the installation of the CPU. The processor has no pins on it's underside - that was the first thing that I found strange. Instead, it has a matrix of copper pads, which touch the pins sticking up from the 'socket' on the motherboard. It was easy to determine which way the processor went in, and it was also extremely easy to close the processor retainer.

Once the processor was in though, I attempted to fit the heat sink and fan. It was a strange process. It all fitted together OK...it's just the 'feel' of it that I didn't like. Basically, the heat sink fits onto the socket using four corner pins.Once these are in place, it's a case of pressing each one until it clicks. The pressure required is worryingly hard...but despite my worst fears, everything engaged correctly, and nothing was broken.

After getting everything installed onto the hard drive, I fired up SiSoft Sandra (a benchmarking tool), and checked that the processor was running at a speed commensurate with it's rated clock frequency. No problems.

Without going into major details, using the supplied heat sink and fan, and without increasing any voltages to the processor, I managed to overclock this CPU from it's rated 2.

4GHz to 2.9GHz without any issues at all. I actually had it running at 3GHz for a while, but it crashed when I ran a game. 2.93GHz seems to be the highest stable speed for me. That's really not bad at all, when you consider that is the speed of the Extreme X6800 processor, which retails for some £400 more.

All in all, I have been extremely pleased with this processor. It backs up DVD movies very quickly. It does photo editing really quickly. Virus scans are no longer an issue with the dual core to take the strain.

Windows Vista has no issues with this processor - it runs exceptionally well, with no performance problems. I run Vista in 64-bit mode, whilst I still use XP in 32-bit mode. There have not been any compatibility issues (aside from drivers for external peripherals) to date.

I thoroughly recommend the Core 2 Duo processors. Even if you are not interested in overclocking it, the fact that they DO have so much headroom for running faster illustrates they are a superb processor regardless.