3DMark 06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking. The software uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to measure next generation gaming performance today.

3DMark's overall score depends on the processor. If we believe what 3DMark 06 says, the Intel Q9300 should be faster in games, even by a small margin, compared with Intel E8600. Is that true? Let's find out by looking at the gaming results after running Crysis (1024x768) CPU benchmark and Unreal Tournament 3 Demo.

With Crysis the Intel E8600 was somewhat faster. However there shouldn't be any practical difference between them in real life applications. In fact, the Intel Q9300 has more chances to work better with upcoming games since they will be designed to take advantage of all four available cores.

With Unreal Tournament 3 demo, we saw some small performance gain, in favor of the Q9300, but again it shouldn't be considered as so important.