Intel also plans to introduce a less expensive Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU at some point in the first quarter of next year. You’ll want to check with the motherboard maker to ensure compatibility before taking the plunge.īecause the QX6700 is an Extreme Edition processor, it comes with a customarily robust price tag of $999 and an unlocked upper multiplier to facilitate easy overclocking. Then again, Intel says previous revisions of its own D975XBX “BadAxe” mobo aren’t designed for use with the QX6700, so nothing is certain. Some mobo makers have already published compatibility lists for Kentsfield.
In fact, the QX6700 should be compatible with many existing Core 2-compatible motherboards via nothing more than a BIOS update. That’s quite enough heat production for a desktop processor, and Intel has already established a 130W thermal envelope for Pentium Extreme Edition CPUs that use this same LGA775 infrastructure. Fittingly, the QX6700’s TDP is exactly twice that of the E6700 at 130W.
The E6700’s thermal rating, or TDP, is 65W, while the X6800’s is 75W. (The Core 2 Extreme X6800 is the fastest at 2.93GHz.) Intel probably chose not to push any harder on clock speed in order to keep the QX6700 inside of a reasonable power envelope. The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 runs at 2.66GHz on a 1066MHz front-side bus, so its clock speed matches that of the second fastest Core 2 Duo, the E6700. Cosmetically, it looks for all the world like any other recent Intel desktop CPU. The result of this multi-chip fusion is a processor that plugs into a regular LGA775-style socket and packs four processing cores alongside a total of 8MB of L2 cache.
Lashing together two separate chips rather than making one large chip makes good sense from an economic standpoint, because smaller die areas tend to make for higher yields of good chips from each wafer. Intel has used this multi-chip packaging technique in the past to create “dual-core” processors, such as the “Presler” Pentium D. If you want to know more about the Core 2 Duo’s basic technology, I suggest you read our review of that processor. This product, which lived its early life going by the code-name Kentsfield, really is two Core 2 Duo chips mounted together on the same package. We won’t dwell too long on the specifics of the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. What hath Intel wrought with this quad-core beast? Do four CPU cores make sense in a desktop PC, and what sort of applications can really take advantage of such power? Let’s have a look. The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 isn’t exactly cheap and doesn’t run especially cool, but it will turn your spare bedroom into the computing equivalent of a government astrophysics lab and make the neighbors terribly jealousprovided your neighbors are total geeks. Now comes the CPU de grâce, a processor that takes advantage of the Core 2 Duo’s modest heat output by cramming two of those chips together into a single socket, a product Intel can plausibly claim is the world’s first quad-core CPU. Since it offers a better combination of processing power, energy efficiency, and overclocking headroom than the Athlon 64, the Core 2 Duo has quickly become an enthusiast favorite, capturing prominent spots in our system guide recommendations and prompting a new round of upgrades for many folks.
After struggling mightily with performance and power consumption problems in the latter-day Pentiums, Intel came roaring back with the Core 2 Duo, producing a chip that goes like stink without spinning the electric meter into a frenzy. Y OU’VE GOTTA LIKE Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors.
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