With Intel’s drastic price cuts earlier this week the newly introduced dual-core 3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 with 1333 MHz FSB has the same $266 list price as the quad-core 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 1066 MHz FSB.
In a set of benchmarks AnandTech looks at the CPU tech question of the summer: which is better for playing games and running applications?
The answer: backed by a GeForce 8800 GTX the faster dual-core E6850 out-performs the quad core in many games but by at most 13.7% but is handily defeated in multi-threaded applications such as Encoding and 3D manipulation. Overall unless you are sure that your key application or game is much faster with a higher frequency dual-core chip, the quad-core chip looks to be the winner.