TechRadar Verdict
A good middle of the road option for a decent price
Pros
- +
Good value
Cons
- -
Limited overclocking potential
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A fine chip to be sure, and the Core 2's last gasp before the Intel performance-to-pennies juggling act really starts to fall apart.
With the E6420 turning up in our Froogling for just a nose over £100, the extra £30 on the asking price for this becomes hard to justify.
The E6420 doesn't have a vast deficit on the 6600, especially now both have 4MB of L2 cache, and its huge amount of overclocking headroom means it can cruise past this and off into the sunset on a bog standard Intel air cooler.
That said, in terms of the numbers the 6600 pluckily stands its ground, going almost nose-to-nose with its four-core sibling, the QX6800, on pretty much everything except our multi-threading knobbler test. And that's at £150, not £350 - worth thinking about before reaching for the folding stuff...
