Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300

Your q6600 sample, is it the old stepping on the newer G0?

"Things aren’t entirely as they might appear, though, as most Yorkfields have 12MB of L2 cache with 6MB for each core while the Q9300 only has 6MB with 3MB per core"

The Q9300 has 4 cores, so surely that's 1.5Mb per core :p

I don't understand this review - or rather the results...

The graphs all show that the overclocked Q6600 beats the Q9300 on all accounts except for power usage (due to the manufacturing process no doubt) However your written results hint at the Q9300 being better...

Surely going by the results visible the Q6600 is the better option if you want performance/overclockability? How did the result "well worth the extra money. Kentsfield is history and Penryn rules the heights" come from the Penryn on test losing all tests (bar power) to the Kentsfield?

I'm not sure of the Stepping on my Q6600. I'll have to plug it in and have a look. In fact my sample is a bit of an oddity as it is identified as a Xeon 3220. Same spec as a Q6600 but a different ID.
As for the cache of Q9300 it's poor wording on my part as the 6MB of L2 is divided between the two dual core packages so 3MB per dual core.
As for my conclusion, the Q9300 doesn't manage the same clock speed as the Q6600 but it has the same level of performance and uses much, much less power in the process.

Its a pitty you didnt put up some Temperature data of the two chips, I have a Q6600(G0) in my Silverstone SG03 and it can run hot in an SFF Case, I would have liked to seen how the 9300 compares, at a guess due to its less power I would say it would run a lot cooler?

The Q9300 seems like a good CPU but it doesn't seem very well priced at the moment. At £175 it's a lot more then the Q6600 for it's fairly small advantages and the Q9450 with double the cache, a higher clockspeed and a better multiplier isn't that much more at £200.

My Q6600/X3220 is a B3 revision

ChaosDefinesOrder - If you pay closer attention, the Q6600 just BARELY beats out the Q9300 in (not all) those areas and it is clocked considerably higher than the Q9300 (3Ghz vs 3.4Ghz).