Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor review - Page 1 - Introduction

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad-Core Processor
Intel's new 45nm Yorkfield chips tested and tortured

Hey everyone and welcome to yet another review here at Guru3D.com

Man, a lot is happening at this very moment in the hardware industry. It's called silly season, and every manufacturer will try to deliver it's best and most refreshing product just in time for you to purchase at Christmas. We'll see some interesting hardware from companies like NVIDIA, AMD-ATI and obviously that big blue giant Intel.

Now you guys know that all our test-systems are running on an Intel Core2 based processor as quite frankly this is the mainstream product series of choice when it comes to processors. Intel's release last year with Core 2 Duo was huge, really really huge, and AMD is still suffering from that greatly. AMD is not sitting still though no Sir, Phenom processors are just around the corner which promise great performance and TDP. In fact when you read this article I expect the first samples to arrive in our labs. It's time though that they get that product actually launched.

Since the testosterone levels between AMD and Intel are pretty significant obviously Intel is not sitting still either. They can act and will counteract any move made by AMD. Whether that is low, mid or high-end .. Intel can serve any market. Today we are focusing at the high-end segment of processors. Intel's cream of the crop quad core processors.

Seriously, we can have an entire discussion whether quad-core is really needed or not since 95% of the applications out there in software land are single-threaded. That meaning they utilize precisely one core. The dual-core trend has most definitely played a big role in software housed to acknowledge multi-threaded applications. For that matter I'm a strong believer of multi-core processing, because when needed and supported it can boost your processing performance by a factor of four.

See, a Core 2 Extreme X6800 is pretty much the fastest desktop processor in the world, yet adding two more cores gives you the absolute best of both worlds. Get the highest stock clock speed Intel offers for the best performance in lightly multithreaded (or single threaded) applications, and a total of four cores for those heavy multitasking or CPU intensive multithreaded scenarios. Really, you can't lose there now can you ?

Right now three systems in our lab already have Core 2 Quad processors equipped. Face it, it is the future and you have to accept that. This is also why Intel this year released the Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor. It really was the first attempt to get the quad-core CPU into mainstream. A fantastic processor with 4 cores running at 2,4 GHz each priced below 250 EUR. Now for the freaks there however is an Extreme edition of the quad core processor available, currently the top of the line QX processor, the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Quad-Core. Four cores clocked at 3.00GHz, 4x2MB cache, 1333MHz FSB, it's pretty much the fastest processor money can buy. Until today that is.

Today the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad-Core Processor is released, yes the Penryn family of processors has arrived. And oh my Gawd does this processor rock. Let's go to the next page please where we'll quickly strawl through some technical features, the changes opposed to the QX6850, some photo's of the new CPU, benchmarks and a verdict on Intel's newest kid.

Guys, meet the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad-Core Processor, the best processor money can buy to date.