Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650

not that much more speed then the 6850 then (ant this an Tock chip (tick tock))

Q6600 @ 3.2-3.4Ghz match it (for most tests) as well saveing you £500 for it as well (the extra cache has to help some how)

bah bring on the cheaper units, dammit

Is it just me, or is there a terrific amount of unused die-space around the ends of the L2 cache? :|

Not as amazing as I thought it'd be, but still pretty damn good.

I'll take three.

Hm, the thing I love most is that ten months or so ago this would never have interested me and I never would have understood it. Now, it interests me enough to read it before going to work and I can understand some of it. Nice one Tim!

I'm impressed by those power consumption figures. It's about time AMD caught up.

sadly the prices for the intel xtreme editions are also extreme...

well, i'll just wait for the cheaper 45nm quads to come along.

woo, looks pretty, i want i want i want.

Sam

Considering conroe hasn't actually been around that long, it's quite impressive that Intel have migrated to 45nm quite successfully. The power figures are always good news, 45nm notebook processors should be quite frugal.

As for the overclocking, it'll be interesting to see how the lower clocked mainstream parts do at the beginning of next year. Especially as new steppings will be introduced (e.g G0 for the Q6600) which should make power requirements even lower!

All in all I'm quite happy, I've got a p35 board ready for 45nm quad sometime next year. Should be quite a nice jump in performance for little cost.

I thought that Hard OCP had done well, then I come to BT, and see a rather not so amazing cooler getting this beast to 4.35 ghz. Water at Hard as well. Let me see how many friends I can sell...

Interesting that March 2008, seems to be date for wider availability of the new 45nm desktop CPU from Intel (Penryn).

A tiny little bit dissapointed (but not altogether surprised) that it's not the dramatic performance boost that dual core originally was . . . . so feel a decision to get the Q6600 today is still a valid one. Although I have yet to see the most relevent tests for me of Photoshop and sony vegas video editing. For my photoshop work I think memory and hard disc speed are more bottle necks than cpu.

Was surprised by the reduced power consumption compared to the Q6600 . . . as other reports had stated the same TDP for both (or maybe even higher I think for the QX9650), which I'd previously thought was a usefull guide . . . I'm not so sure now.

Originally Posted by lamboman
I thought that Hard OCP had done well, then I come to BT, and see a rather not so amazing cooler getting this beast to 4.35 ghz. Water at Hard as well. Let me see how many friends I can sell...

Well overclocking is entirely CPU (and motherboard) dependent and these are ES chips remember, not retail. We may simply just be lucky (for a change).

Heli - we could spend all day/all year doing every different bit of software but we have covered video encoding with two different codecs and software, as well as image manipulation using Paint.NET :)

Roto - it's just representative mate, don't read into it too much. EDIT: Ahh crap!! I completely forgot I've got a ton of die pics on the camera so I'll whip them out and we can see what the actual dies look like.

Afaik Intel is supposed to release several 45nm processors in Jan, then later (as yields increase and depending on what the competition does) more speed versions. Where'd you read March?

Great article. Got a bit of a typo though "The difficulty in working with projected guidelines before a process is properly developed is fully evident with Tejas - the 90nm process was not was it cracked up to be" to "was not what it was cracked up to be"

Originally Posted by Rocket733
Great article. Got a bit of a typo though "The difficulty in working with projected guidelines before a process is properly developed is fully evident with Tejas - the 90nm process was not was it cracked up to be" to "was not what it was cracked up to be"

Thanks, I'll fix that - my eyes were getting dreary at 5am this morning (and I've not been to sleep yet!) ;)

I must say that you guys' hard work is really appreciated tbh, some awesome reviews, as usual. :)

I'm surprised that AMD is sitting idly at 90nm SOI. I really hope they pull a clincher SOON or else... else... I have nothing else to buy and Intel can sweep prices.

Originally Posted by kickarse
I'm surprised that AMD is sitting idly at 90nm SOI.

I'm pretty sure that they're using a 65Nm process..

Originally Posted by Mankz.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kickarse
I'm surprised that AMD is sitting idly at 90nm SOI.

I'm pretty sure that they're using a 65Nm process..

Only X2 5000+ and below at the moment. Phenom is also 65nm :)

Originally Posted by Krikkit
I must say that you guys' hard work is really appreciated tbh, some awesome reviews, as usual. :)

Cheers XD

why is the amd x2 6400 missing from page 9?

Because Steam in all its infinite glory updated the engine, which broke our all our timedemos between the 6000 and 6400 numbers :(

Hows about these too:

http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/2007/10/intel_core_2_extreme_qx9650/die-800.jpg

http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/2007/10/intel_core_2_extreme_qx9650/wafer-800.jpg

http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/2007/10/intel_core_2_extreme_qx9650/wafer2-800.jpg

http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/2007/10/intel_core_2_extreme_qx9650/wafer3-800.jpg

110mm2 die size on a 300mm wafer means you get about 800-odd dies (considering it's circular), at $1000 a pop makes that worth...

Ooo, nice pics../

I want to wait now (small, screaming, smelly thing may get in the way of PC build project in a couple of weeks:D) until January/February before making my final decision on a new build. I am currently looking at the Q6600, but could be swayed if the 45nm processors (particularly the quad core parts) are just as cheap and work just as well.

Of course, the wild card is AMD. If they bring out a killer chip at a good price point, I may just remain an AMD fanboy

Any thoughts on what's coming from AMD?

Andy

No idea mate, samples are tighter than a squirrels backside I've been told. We're naturally pressing AMD for a chip though ;) I have a 790FX AM2+ board in already.

EDIT: Added Windows Media Encoder x64 Ed9 Results :)

You guys seem pretty swamped with lovely tasty new hardware at the mo...