Intel Core i7-4610M vs Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

Core i7-4610M vs Core 2 Quad Q6600 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core 2 Quad Q6600 performs better than the Core i7-4610M. Despite this, the Core i7-4610M has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core 2 Quad Q6600 has significantly more cores with 4 cores compared to the Core i7-4610M that has 2 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Core i7-4610M has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core 2 Quad Q6600. A Core i7-4610M CPU outputs less heat than a Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU because of its significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i7-4610M has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.