Gaming performance is where we see the Core 2 Quad Q9300 stumble a bit. The Q9300 has a smaller amount of L2 cache compared to the Q6600, but has a slightly higher clock speed to help offset this fact. The end result is that gaming performance is roughly equal to the Q6600 at stock speeds for this new generation model. Frankly, not terribly impressive, but this chip certainly can provide very solid overall gaming performance, especially when overclocked. However, if you’re a gamer, we would recommend checking out Intel’s latest generation of highly clocked dual-core chips, which perform very well in gaming environments.
