Quad Core vs Dual Core: Q9550S vs. E8600, Part III – CPU Scaling with CrossFire

Welcome to Part 3 in ABT’s quad-core vs. dual-core series, with our emphasis continuing on CPU scaling and gaming performance.  Here we continue the battle of Intel’s popular CPUs – overclocked Core 2 Duo vs. Core 2 Quad – E8600 vs. Q9550S. We decided to break our rather extensive review of Q9550S into several standalone but related sections and this is the third and final part. Up-until-recently, we have always depended on our Core 2 Duo E8600 to set the benchmarks for our video cards.

A few weeks ago, Intel provided AlienBabelTech with an engineering sample of Q9550S which is their new 65 watt TDP low-power Core 2 Quad stock-clocked at 2.83 Ghz. We put our then brand-new Q9550S into continuous and extensive testing to finally try to answer the question: “Is a quad core CPU necessary to get the best out of today’s modern PC games, even paired with a powerful video card?” Until recently the answer was in doubt as the Core 2 Duo processors are clocked a bit higher than their Core 2 Quad counterparts and often they would get a much higher overclock than the warmer-running quad core CPUs.

Part One of “Quad Core vs Dual Core” Shootout: Overclocking Intel’s Q9550s with Cooler Master Hyper N520, was a short introductory overclocking article.  We wanted to know what effect overclocking the CPU has on graphics performance and ultimately how it affects the frame rates of the newer games we play as we set up for Part 2 benchmarking. Of course, we are consistently testing at two of the most popular demanding wide-screen resolutions, 1680×1050 and 1920×1200, 4xAA plus 16xAF and with maximum DX10 details whenever it is available.

In Quad Core vs Dual Core” Shootout: Intel’s Q9550s vs. E8600, Part Two, we actually compared game benchmarks with the Q9550S and our E8600 both overclocked to 3.99 Ghz. We then maxed our Core 2 Duo out at 4.25 Ghz on our then ASUS P5E deluxe motherboard that later suffered a massive failure as detailed here.  We also tested at several clocks for Q9550S to try to find the “sweet spot” for a CPU overclock for playing PC games with HD4870 and GTX280 video cards.  We found the results rather inconclusive, with an edge going to Q9550S over E8600. We now move on to testing with multi-GPU in this Part 3 with a much expanded 15-benchmark testing suite, and will now also compare both CPUs at 4.0 Ghz.

We were totally impressed with Intel’s new Q9550S as it does everything our E8600 does, and then some!  It runs 30 watts lower TDP than the “non-S” Q9550 and our only potential issue was its $100 price premium over regular Q9550 CPUs.  However, it will find an immediate place with OEM builders that specialize in rack-mounted servers as these cooler running Q9550 “S” CPUs are absolutely perfect for these builders. We gave our Q9550S “4-1/2 Stars” and an Editor’s Choice Award and we stick by it. Our weeks spent with Q9550S has replaced E8600 as our CPU of choice. We now want to show you how quad core gaming compares with dual core gaming with multi-GPU, 4870-X2 and CrossFireX-3.

4870+4870-X2 = CrossFireX-3

For the graphics, we will be using two multi-GPU configurations this time; last time it was not so clear with single-GPU powerful cards, HD4870 and GTX280. We are now benchmarking with  HD4870-X2 and CrossFireX-3 which pairs the 4870-X2 with a 4870 to link all three 4870 graphics cores together.  Here we will show the effects of increasing core speeds of both our Q9550S and E8600 with today’s most demanding games. For this Part 3,  we will use our full benchmark suite:  Call of Juarez, Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky, PT Boats: Knights of the Sea demo, FarCry2, World-in-Conflict,  X3 Terran Conflict, Enemy Territories: Quake Wars, F.E.A.R., Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, HalfLife 2 Lost Coast Demo,  Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – plus 2 synthetic Futuremark tests, 3DMark06 and Vantage.  So, let’s head for the testing bench and check out full disclosure.