AMD Phenom vs. Intel Quads

[michiguel]

I am buying a quad really soon (this week), mainly for number crunching (floating point) for work, but it can always be tested with some other interesting piece of software

It looks like the consensus is that the intels are better, but... what does it mean better, and how much better? Did anybody compared them with the AMD Phenoms? The thing I do not like is that the phenoms seem to have higher watts. But, is that the only main difference?

Is the intel compiler better with intel cpus?

I saw an interesting post by Zach Wegner that bought a Q6600. Are you happy with that build? There is now a Q6700. Is that worth 70 more bucks?
If I want the same machine in the very near future to build a minicluster, would you be inclined for which one?

Miguel
PS: The mini cluster certainly won't be for chess.

[Zach Wegner]

I saw an interesting post by Zach Wegner that bought a Q6600. Are you happy with that build? There is now a Q6700. Is that worth 70 more bucks?

I am very happy with it. Compared to my old computer, a dual 1.25 GHz G4 Mac, it is light speed. I never experience any sort of stalls or anything.

At the time, I would have gotten the Q6700 as it would have been only 30 dollars. But now, I don't think it's that important. I am planning on eventually getting some type of better-than-stock cooling setup, so I can overclock it. I don't know if the Q6700 can overclock higher than the Q6600, but I would doubt it...

PS: The mini cluster certainly won't be for chess.

Now that is just criminal... Would you let me use it?

[M ANSARI]

The Q6600 and the Q6700 are basically identical chips with slightly different multipliers. It is possible that the Q6600 could overclock a little better because of the lower multiplier ... thus if you run it on a motherboard with a P35 chipset or higher you could probably get it to run at 3.6 Ghz by simply using a 400 Mhz memory speed since it locked at a 9x multiplier. Just remember to get memory rated PC6400 CAS 4 or better ... this will guarantee that memory speed will not be your limiting factor. The Q6700 will also do good and at the same memory speed should go even higher. But realistically speaking if you plan to want a headaches free overclock, I would recommend you be happy with 3.2 Ghz ... and for that the Q6600 will perform better than the Q6700 due to its slightly lower multiplier. The price where someone could build an extremely powerful Quad core computer today is mind boggling. I would guess anyone could upgrade his old system for around $400 ... add a 64bit OS like XP 64 bit ... and you have a very powerful Rybka chess entity.

I have a similar chip which is the QX6700 ... the older unlocked version (Extreme Edition) and have had it running 24/7 at 3.2 Ghz for I think just over 2 years. I would think the newer chips will easily do 3.2 Ghz and probably much better.