Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - The 45nm Era Begins

Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
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Intel will be launching their first 45nm desktop processor in a few weeks, but we have an in-depth look for you here today. Penryn brings improved efficiency, new high-k metal gate transistors, additional cache and something that will make multimedia buffs rejoice: SSE4. Welcome to the 45nm era!

You can read the full review here and discuss it here.
 
Merlin

Merlin

The Tech Wizard
The Q6850 ( 266.00 ) is so close to the Q9650 ( 1 arm, 1Leg )( both at 130 watts ).
L2 cache at 4 mb And the Q9650 at 6mb.
Hardly any increase for the price difference, that I can see.
just my 2 cents

Merlin
 
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Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
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Overclocking was left out due to time constraints (not Intel's fault).

Merlin: I agree that the QX9650 might not look that impressive, but where video encoding is concerned, it's incredible. I believe that the dual-core offerings will prove even more impressive once released, $ for $.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Well if you go >4ghz on air this WILL have effect on gaming.
 
T

Timo

Guest
Thanks for the extensive review and testing.

Looks like power economy and SSE4 are pretty much the only factors that differ between the two chips (QX9650 vs. QX6850), with a minor increase in some apps.

Seeing as SSE4-supported programs are currently scant (other than DivX) and that it looks like it'll stay that way for the near future I think I'll stick to QX6850 for the time being.

Roll on Nehalem! (Which should be fun!)

Cheers.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
are the benchmark results correct?

I just stumbled upon this review and while it is somewhat informative it raises another question.

The benchmarks all show the E6750 CPU at 2.4GHz while in reality the native clock frequency of this CPU is 2.66GHz. So which was it tested at, 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz? Was an E6750 tested and under-clocked or an E6600 tested and incorrectly denoted? It does make a difference.

It would have been nice to see how the E6850 at its native 3.0GHz clock stacks up against these 3.0GHz Core2Quad's. One has to wonder how significant the benefit would be going with a Core2Quad over a Core2duo of the same frequency.

Just wondering...
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
That's an unfortunate typo... I would never run over or underclocked processors for our performance benchmarks unless explicitly stated (the only case would be comparing overclocked results to stock).

I don't have an E6850 on hand, which is why it wasn't used in the review. There won't be major speed differences unless using multi-threaded applications or want better multi-tasking. Clock for clock, single-threaded applications would perform identically.

Perhaps our most recent CPU review will have better results for you:

http://techgage.com/article/intel_core_2_duo_e8400_30ghz_-_wolfdale_arrives/4
 
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