Progress: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 put in shade by Pentium J5005

Sometimes it is worth looking back at how far computing power has come, to put things in perspective. Helping many PC enthusiasts do just that is a recent Reddit post by dylan522, who pitted two PC processors, old and new - a decade apart, against each other in PassMark Software's CPU tests.

HEXUS has a couple of old reviews featuring the Intel Core2 Quad Q6600. First of all, back in September 2007, Tarinder got his hands on a PC Specialist Apollo Q6600-X system. A couple of months later, he went on to pit the popular Intel Core processor against the AMD Phenom 9600. This marked the beginning of a protracted period of Intel strength due to its processor performance, not just market dominance.

The official processor comparison table above provides the background to the feat achieved by the entry level Intel Pentium Silver Processor J5005. Until recently this would have been marketed as an Atom product, and it leverages the Gemini Lake 'Goldmont Plus' architecture, as a successor to Bay Trail, Braswell, and Apollo Lake parts.

PassMark CPU test results 2018

Two impressive metrics to check out are the J5005's lower base frequency, and its power sipping performance. Both the J5005 and Q6600 are quad-core parts, which makes this a clearer contrast, rather than some other decade apart processor comparison. Another great plus for the J5005 is that it comes packing Intel UHD Graphics 605 - one is left wondering how that would compare to a mid-range GPU from 2007…

Thanks to the anonymous HEXUS reader for the Reddit link.

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Sorry Hexus crew, but how is this even vaguely meant to be news? After 11 years, I would hope that Intel's entry level chips could outperform the 11 year old flagship. And ‘put in shade’ is a bit rich - it's basically matched, on one benchmark. Then there's the pricing - the J5005 isn't exactly budget; it has a recommended customer price of $161. That's more than a Ryzen 5 2400G….

Although this does make me wonder what kind of TDP you'd see if you scaled-down and fabbed a Q6600 directly to 14nm…

+1 scaryjim.
And there is a big question - is the J5005 free form spectre and meltdown by the chip design? How/If does the fixes affect the benchmark then.

anyhow - i am happy to see more x86 at lower TDP with ok performance.

scaryjim
Sorry Hexus crew, but how is this even vaguely meant to be news? After 11 years, I would hope that Intel's entry level chips could outperform the 11 year old flagship. And ‘put in shade’ is a bit rich - it's basically matched, on one benchmark. Then there's the pricing - the J5005 isn't exactly budget; it has a recommended customer price of $161. That's more than a Ryzen 5 2400G….

Although this does make me wonder what kind of TDP you'd see if you scaled-down and fabbed a Q6600 directly to 14nm…

I agree, this is apparently news worthy but Spectre 3 and Spectre 4 aren't. Makes me question the validity of anything Hexus does.

Edit: I'm going to an extreme, but it thoroughly hacks me off that a fake tweet makes its way to the front page because no one did their appropriate fact finding but something that affects every CPU made in the past 10 years world wide is ignored. Most people won't know that the mitigation is off by default so therefore their security is potentially compromised and won't know how to turn it on. Or that turning it on will potentially incur a varying performance hit.

That is more newsworthy than “oh look, here we were to here we are”, that's pocket lint falling out the forum.

DevDrake
… there is a big question - is the J5005 free form spectre and meltdown by the chip design? …

In this case that's less of a question, because AFAIK the Q6600 is out of order and speculative and so is also vulnerable to those attacks…

AFAIK Intel aren't meant to have any silicon mitigations until later this year, so regardless of how biug a question it actually is, I'd punt for “No” being the answer…

scaryjim
Then there's the pricing - the J5005 isn't exactly budget; it has a recommended customer price of $161. That's more than a Ryzen 5 2400G….

You can buy one in a NUC for £150: https://www.ebuyer.com/828230-intel-nuc-june-canyon-nuc7pjyh-pentium-j5005-barebone-boxnuc7pjyh3

At least Intel have moved the memory crippling to 8GB these days, but still I think I'm done with Atom boards however they want to try and brand them.

Progress: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 put in shade by Pentium J5005

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