D_o_S
Dec 15, 2006, 06:08 PM
[page=Introduction]
Introduction
My sincerest thanks go out to Intel (http://www.intel.com) for providing both the QX6700 CPU as well as the Bad Axe 2 motherboard.
When you enter the computer world, one of the first companies you will come across is Intel. And quite rightly so. After all, you cannot have a functioning computer without a CPU – that would be like trying to build a car without an engine. Intel has been with us for almost 40 years. All that time, it has been powering PCs, constantly increasing their performance over time.
In the last years, however, Intel was struggling to deliver the performance we are used to. AMD gained advantage in both gaming and benchmarking, sponsoring many events, and bragging about the capabilities of its 64-bit processors. Intel wasn’t asleep though – it did what it could to offer high performance solutions, yet it wasn’t too successful. There was something “wrong” with Intel’s CPUs – either they ran hot, or had large power requirements, or were simply slower than the AMD counterpart. So, the PC enthusiast world split up into two groups – those that were running AMD, and enjoying performance, and those that stayed with Intel, hoping for the return of the king.
Intel took the world by storm when news about its new Conroe architecture started appearing all over the Internet. Intel fans started to rejoice. They knew that now was the time for the enterprise to strike back at AMD, and regain the performance crown. Those in favor of AMD simply didn’t know what to think. At first, waves of amazement started to appear. But then, doubt kicked in – how on earth could Intel possibly achieve such benchmark scores on a CPU that was going to be run 24/7, and not just some super-cooled test sample? Is Intel playing a trick on us? As the official launch date got closer, even the most die-hard AMD supporters knew that, in order to enjoy maximum performance, they would have to step over to the dark side. There was no turning back.
It has now been half a year that we have enjoyed the benefits of the Core 2 architecture. Intel has risen from its own dust, showing people all around the world that it is in better shape than ever. Being very ambitious, Intel is prepared to launch a new architecture every two years, prolonging the applicability of Moore’s law. Since Intel stepped away from its own race for Gigahertz, it has shown a healthy trend in producing fast CPUs. Now, the “hit of the season” (I sure hope it lasts more than a year) is parallel computing – having more cores on a CPU, which in turn means faster processing in applications that are multi threaded.
Today, we take a look at the latest and greatest from Intel – the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. Sporting 4 cores, this CPU is bound to scream. But are there enough programs and benchmarks to take full advantage of what this CPU has to offer? How much of a performance increase can we expect, going from two cores to four? Read on to find out!
Intel Conroe CPUs
Below, you can find a table that lists Intel’s current Core 2 offerings
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" class="resulttable">
<tr>
<th align="center">Model</th>
<th align="center">Core Clock (MHz)</th>
<th align="center">Cores</th>
<th align="center">L2 Cache (MB)</th>
<th align="center">Front side bus (MHz)</th>
<th align="center">TDP (W)</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6300</td>
<td align="right">1866</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6400</td>
<td align="right">2133</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6600</td>
<td align="right">2394</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6700</td>
<td align="right">2667</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>X6800</td>
<td align="right">2933</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">75</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>QX6700</td>
<td align="right">2667</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">2x 4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">130</td>
</tr>
</table>
[page=The bundle - Processor and Motherboard]
We received the test kit at the office in a large brown box. Inside waited some basic instructions, as well as the motherboard with the CPU already mounted, and Intel’s stock heatsink.
Intel QX6700
Intel’s Core 2 Extreme is to be considered the first Quad-core CPU out on the market. Below are its main features:
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr>
<th scope="row">Brand ID</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Core 2 Extreme</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Processor number</th>
<td scope="row">QX6700</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Core Frequency</th>
<td scope="row">2.66 GHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">System bus frequency</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">1066 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">TDP</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">130 W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Stepping</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">B-3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Number of CPU cores</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">L2 Cache</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">8MB (2x 4MB)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">CPUID</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">06F7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Core to bus ratio limit</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">10:1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Max Processor Input Voltage</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">1.350V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">PECI Enabled</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Enhanced Intel Speed Step Technology (EIST)</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Intel 64 Technology</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Intel Virtualisation Technology</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Package/Socket</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">FC-LGA775</td>
</tr>
</table>
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cput.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpub.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpuz_1.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpuz_2.gif
Well, what is under the heatspreader? Intel’s engineers have managed to squeeze two E6700 cores under one IHS – a marvelous feat that offers quad-core performance today. After all, it makes a lot of sense from Intel’s stand point – instead of spending a lot of money on developing one die with four cores in it, it is much easier to put together two dies, each with two cores. Also, Intel can pick the best E6700 chips for its QX6700 CPUs, and not have to worry about refining the manufacturing process as it would with a whole new core. Worth noting is also the massive amount of L2 cache – 8 MB in total, 4 MB per die, 2 MB per core.
Below, you can see what the two cores look like in real life:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/intelcput.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/intelcpub.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/intelcpu2.jpg
Intel Bad-Axe 2
I won’t go into a lot of detail with the motherboard that was used. It was supplied as part of the test kit, and is Intel’s top-of-the-line motherboard, utilizing the 975X chipset. The Bad-Axe 2 features numerous improvements over its predecessor, mainly in the overclocking segment. Most importantly, it supports Core 2 Quad CPUs.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardb.jpg)
Our Bad-Axe 2 motherboard was a pre-production sample. This meant that it did not have automatic fan control, so the fan had to be set to a specific percentage in the BIOS. Retail boards can control the fan speed automatically depending on temperature. I also hope that Intel provides a better manual with their retail motherboards, we only received a simple poster explaining the main features and a simplified diagram of how to put together a computer.
Heatsink
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsftopt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsftopb.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsfbottomt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsfbottomb.jpg)
We received Intel’s stock heatsink for testing. “Stock” may not be the correct word however. Intel has gone as far as redesigning the heat sink for Quad-core CPUs. It has expanded in almost every direction; the increase in height is especially noticeable. To cool the processor, Intel has strapped-on a rather loud fan that spins at 5000 RPM.
[page=Installation, Overclocking]
Installation
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardreadyt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardreadyb.jpg)
Since Intel provided us with a CPU and motherboard, we were basically building a whole new PC. The components used are listed below:
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel QX6700</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Bad Axe 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB Kingston Value RAM, DDR800</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Gainward GeForce 6800 Ultra</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Seagate Barracuda 7200.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Silverstone ST-65 ZF</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Forceware 93.71</td>
</tr>
</table>
For benchmarking Intel's lower clocked dual-core CPUs, the multiplier was lowered and the additional cores were disabled. This means that the E6400 was benchmarked as having 4 MB of L2 cache.
As I pressed the power button, I was shocked. With my Sunon 7W fans I run on my radiator, I thought I had heard it all. Yet, when I started this PC, it really sounded like a vacuum cleaner. So, my very first impression: LOUD! I couldn’t even hear the fan of my 6800 Ultra over the one on the CPU HSF.
The PC switched itself on for about two seconds, and then shut down. Uh oh – do I have a short circuit or some other culprit somewhere? Just as I finished that thought, the PC came to life again.
After consulting this with some colleagues, I found out that this behavior is completely normal – the PC behaves like this because it has to set the FSB strap in the Northbridge.
After looking over the BIOS briefly, I proceeded to install Windows and appropriate drivers, as well as benchmarking programs.
My next step was to decrease the fan speed – the lowest value that could be selected from BIOS was 60%, much more acceptable to my ears.
First Impressions
Like a boy who gets a new present once in a while, I was so excited to be able to review Intel’s Quad-core CPU. As I am a passionate gamer, I was most interested in game performance, but also in multi-tasking – what else can I do while gaming?
I also wanted to know what the heat output is like. When the Core 2 Duo was launched, many people reported temperatures in the 65°C range. I downloaded Core Temp, a program that reads the temperature of the CPU directly from one of its registers. At idle, the temperatures were not too bad – around 40°C – but not too great either. To load the CPU, I tried a brief run of SysRool’s stress test. Instantly, temperatures rose to 55°C, and continued to climb until they settled at around 60°C. I didn’t know wether I should be pleasantly surprised or disappointed. Surprised, because the temperature is almost identical to that reported by dual-core users, while this CPU has four cores. Disappointed because Intel’s redesigned heatsink didn’t have great cooling capabilities, paired up with a very noisy fan.
I could instantly judge that this CPU doesn’t go together too well with air cooling. Water is obviously this beast’s natural habitat. But more about that later.
Overclocking
Even though the temperatures of the CPU’s four cores were not too great, I attempted to overclock the processor. SysRool does not yet support the clock generator located on the Bad Axe 2 motherboard, so all overclocking had to be done from BIOS.
I slowly started raising the FSB in 5 MHz increments, booting into Windows each time, and checking stability with SysTool’s stress test (Pattern size: 4 Million). I eventually got to 330 MHz, with the 667 divider on the RAM, and leaving the multiplier at 10x. It was getting late to conduct benchmarks, and so I decided to call it a day.
The next morning, I was shocked to see that the PC would no longer boot - all fans were spinning, but there was no signal to the monitor. And everything was stable for over an hour using SysTool’s test the day before! Anyhow, by changing the BIOS JUMPER to CONFIG mode, I managed to boot the PC. I set everything back to stock, changed the jumper to normal, and booted the PC again. Next, I set the overclocked values, with the PC booting fine. However, the computer would still lock up at POST randomly.
After checking Intel’s website, I found out that a new BIOS had been released. After I updated the BIOS, everything worked fine, and the motherboard was much more stable than before in terms of booting.
The voltage was slightly raised to 1.3625V to assure stability.
The temperature of the overclocked CPU was at 65°C at load.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpuz_1_oc.gif
[page=Semi-synthetic benchmarks]
While synthetic benchmarks are not the "real thing" they give quite a good impression of a computer's performance. The general rule is the higher the score, the better.
3DMark 01 SE
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d01.gif
3DMark 2001 sees a little boost from four cores. Considering that the benchmark is five years old and does not support multi-core CPUs, this is still better than nothing.
3DMark 03
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d03.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d03cpu.gif
In 3DMark 03 we get to see a new type of test - CPU. While the increase in the overall score from two to four cores (E6700 to QX6700) is very close to zero, the CPU test shows a greater spread between the two processors.
3DMark 05
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d05.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d05cpu.gif
3DMark 06
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d06.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d06cpu.gif
The latest incarnation of 3DMark is multi-threaded, and clearly shows the benefit of having a quad-core CPU. The overclocked QX6700 has almost 2x the score in the CPU test compared to the E6700, which only has two cores.
3DMark does not yet incorporate the CPU score into the overall score, but the 2007 version may do so. This is quite a debated issue, as some think that 3DMark is becoming too CPU dependent.
PCMark 05
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pcmark05.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pcmark05cpu.gif
PCMark, unlike the 3DMark series, attempts to analyze the whole computer in terms of performance. Therefore, it incorporates the CPU score into the final result. If we consider the overall score, the QX6700 has an advantage of about ~1000 points over its brother, the E6700. We can spot that each 266 MHz, the score increases by around 400 points (E6400->E6600->E6700). To gain an increase comparable to going quad core, we would theoretically have to add ~660MHz to the clock speed of the E6700 (which would mean a final clock speed of 3.3 GHz).
The CPU score shows a 700 point increase for every 266 MHz added. Going from two to four cores, while maintaining the same internal clock speed, we see a boost of 1700 points.
Aquamark
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/aq3.gif
Science mark
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/sciencemark.gif
Cinebench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cinebench.gif
Cinebench clearly shows the performance advantage of four CPUs. It is almost as if you literally added another E6700 to your system.
[page=Game tests]
Game tests
Computer games are to be considered one of the toughest tests for a computer system - to play a game at its highest resolution, with full anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, you not only need a powerful graphics card, but also a fast CPU, that is capable of delivering data to the GPU.
F.E.A.R.
To benchmark F.E.A.R., the ingame utility was used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/fear.gif
Our first game test shows quite a disappointment - only a 3 FPS gain with using four cores. More interestingly, overclocking the CPU had no effect whatsoever on the final framerate.
Quake 4
Games based on the Doom 3 engine support multi-core CPUs. We tried Quake 4 with the latest patch installed, with both SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) enabled and disabled.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/q4.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/q4smp0.gif
I personally found this test very interesting. Let's take a close look at how much performance we gain on each CPU model by enabling SMP. Starting with the lowest two of the lot, the E6400 and E6600 receive an increase of 35 FPS. Next, we have the E6700 - the average FPS is improved by 32. Our quad core QX6700 - this achieves 29 more frames each second with four cores instead of one. Lastly, the overclocked Kentsfield - only 14 frames difference!
As we can clearly see, in our benchmark, the performance increased the higher/better the CPU used was, but the increase was not proportional. This leads me to believe that some component, in this case most probably the graphics card, was limiting the performance of the whole computer, and the CPU.
Call of Duty 2
To benchmark Call of Duty 2 the techPowerUp! demo was used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cod2.gif
Unreal Tournament 2004
Even though UT2004 is not among the newest of games, it still is one of my favorites. Its 2007 sequel is highly anticipated.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/ut2004.gif
We can see a decent, 12 FPS increase by going Quad Core.
[page=System tests]
System tests
For compression tests (WinRAR and FFMPEG), the Pirates of the Carribean 2 HD trailer was used. Track 19 from the Linkin Park Reanimated album was used to benchmark LameEnc.
WinRAR
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/winrar.gif
FFMPEG
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/ffmpeg.gif
LameEnc
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/lame.gif
Adobe Photoshop CS2
The Driver Heaven Photoshop CS2 benchmark was used to obtain results.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/ps2.gif
In all the system tests we ran, with the exception of LameEnc (perhaps our file wasn't big enough for any large difference to be noted), quad core is faster than its dual core counterpart. If this difference is big enough, that is up to you to decide. I'm sure that if you use your PC to encode video daily, or you work with large amounts of data that need converting to some form or another, you will be grateful for every second or minute you can shave off. On the other hand, if you just encode video that you gather from your holiday trip once in a while, this time difference is not great enough to justify the purchase of a quad-core cpu.
[page=SuperPI, Pifast & Memory throughput]
SuperPI, Pifast
Super-PI mod 1.5 was used. SuperPI and Pifast are very popular in the overclocking circles, as they shows raw CPU and memory performance well.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi32m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi1m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pifast.gif
As both programs are single-threaded in their nature, it was good to see at least a little performance boost.
Everest
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/everestmr.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/everestmw.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/everestml.gif
The Quad Core derivative seems to be a little slower when it comes to working with memory than the two core original.
[page=Multitasking]
Multitasking
In order to use the performance of all four cores the QX6700 features, you can run more than one application simultaneously. Obviously, a human being cannot do two things on a computer at once - so, for example, playing two games at once on a dual-monitor system is out of the question (for the moment).
Let's take the following scenario: you have just been on a holiday to Hawaii with your family. Being the geek that you are, you captured thousands of photos and hours of video. Upon returning home, you know that you want to resize all your photos, encode your video into DivX, and play a game (because after a holiday, you have to be tired!). Now, this is exactly what the quad core CPU will allow you to do! Provided that other components can keep up with the speed.
This is where the main problem with quad-core (or x-core CPUs, for that matter) comes into play more than ever before. Feeding one core with data was no problem for our current generation of hardware. 2 cores, OK, a little bit of a struggle, but still doable. With 4 cores, I must say - either have a full blown top notch system, or forget it.
The slower your PC is in the first place, the less it will benefit from your quad core investment. This is a thing that struck me during testing, and wouldn't go away. Many editors from famous web sites around the Internet have tested and benchmarked Intel's Quad core CPUs, and they were taken aback by the performance. They surely used top of the line memory (preferably 2 gigs of it), a Raptor hardrive and the latest and greatest graphics card. Yes, the QX6700 does shine in this case.
Our test bed was far from ideal - 1 GB of DDR800 memory (with horrible CL-5 timings) was used, and a definitely out-of-date GeForce 6800. Here, instead of the graphics card being limited in games, it was the CPU - it just couldn't show its full potential.
I decided to run SuperPI 4x, in order to see how the whole system would do. Below is a screenshot of the run:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pimultit.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pimultib.jpg)
The 1M run was just as expected, slower than running SuperPI once. I assumed that the same scenario would occur if I ran SuperPI 4x with the 32M option. How terribly wrong I was. The system took off fine, but after a while, I could hear loud sounds of the hard-disk swapping - the system had ran out of memory, and the whole calculation was terribly slow.
After backing off to 16M, the run completed successfully:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi16mt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi16mb.jpg)
Now, things like 2 GB and 4 GB memory kits start to make sense. Super power graphic cards too. However, there is a grave problem to the new path both manufacturers, AMD and Intel, have chosen to follow. Before, only the company could be blamed (or blame itself) for a slow processor. Now, all the components come into play - the memory, hard-disk, graphics card. I am afraid that one day, we may find ourselves at a dead end again - the CPU power will be here, but other components will prevent us from utilizing it all.
Intel has realized that this problem exists, and has presented its visions of tackling this problem at IDFs all around the world.
Multi-core scaling
How much performance does one gain by switching from one to two cores, two to three and finally three to four? We have investigated several multi-threaded apps, below are our results. First up, Quake 4:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/quake4cores.gif
From one to two cores, the FPS heightens by about 30 frames. Adding more cores, on the other hand, did not show such results - the performance levels off, and actually decreases from two to three cores.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cinebench4cores.gif
Cinebench performance is much more pleasing when increasing the number of cores. The graph is almost linear, adding a core gives approximately a 400 point increase in the benchmark.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3dmark4cores.gif
The 3DMark graph is most similar to that of Cinebench, but we can see indications of the performance slowly levelling off.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pcmark4cores.gif
Lastly, we have PCMark performance. From one to two cores, there is a large performance increase, and from two to three and three to four, the line seems to follow a different equation, but remains linear.
[page=Value and conclusion]
Value and conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 retails for $1399 at Newegg. Fry's has the same CPU for $1199</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
First commercially available quad-core CPU
Performance
Overclockability
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Price
Heat output
Stock HSF
</td></tr>
<tr><th>9.5</th>
<td>
The QX6700 from Intel is a CPU like no other, it is the first quad core CPU that you can buy at almost any computer store. I must say that Intel rightly deserves to be called performance king.</br>
First, I would like to comment on Intel's Extreme CPUs in general. I love any extreme product, even if it isn't that great. Why? When I see anything that bears the name "Extreme", it is not so much the product I am interested at first - it is the fact that a part of the community, and that could be any community, has been recognized. Extreme "anything" shows that the manufacturer has realized that there is a big enough market for it to sell goods to those that think about price second, performance first. On the other hand, an extreme product will not last, if it is not good enough - the process of natural selection will automatically eliminate it. Take the memory market for example. Once a manufacturer starts to produce "extreme" memory, people looking for the best are likely to try it. Other manufacturers will join in, they obviously don't want to loose potentional customers. Through Extreme CPUs, Intel is definitely promoting healthy competition on the CPU market. Also, mere mortals already have something to look forward to - the technology from extreme merchandise is often used in "normal" versions, once the manufacture process is cheap enough. The rule is applicable in our case, too - Intel's quad core CPU that won't cost an arm and a leg is scheduled for the start of next year...</br>
Next, I would like to comment on the multi-core path Intel has decided to follow. Intel has stood up on its feet again, delivering the performance we were all used to. There are certain problems that Intel will have to face - it will not only have to develop CPUs, but also aid in the production of other components to keep up. I am glad to see that Intel already has products - compilers and Intel's Building Blocks software - that aids programmers in making their applications as multi-core friendly as possible.</br>
I am much fonder of this CPU than of its other Extreme colleague - the X6800. While the latter does have a higher clock speed, it really doesn't bring anything that new - let's face it, the same clock speed can be achieved with any normal E6600 or E6700, which both cost much less. The QX6700, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Intel has accelerated the multi-core era with this CPU by squeezing two E6700s under one heatspreader. However hard you try, you will not be able to squeeze any more cores into your dual core processors, that is what makes this CPU unique.</br>
So, is this CPU for everyone? No. In order to enjoy the full benefit of having a quad-core "engine" under the hood, you must have a equally high-tech PC. It is sort of like stuffing a Hemi 427 into an Opel Corsa - without upgrading the whole drivetrain, you have no chance of utilizing its full potential (or, without breaking something real quick). Before one invests into a quad-core CPU, I feel that he should have at least 2 GB of RAM and a fast graphics card - Radeon X1950 or GeForce 8800 series would do. You must also remember - an investment into any quad-core CPU is an investment into your computer's future. Most applications are not ready to support multi-core CPUs, but the situation is slowly improving. It is also a risk - the technology is not quite mature yet, so perhaps waiting for 45nm quad-core CPUs would be wise. Then again, you could wait forever... </td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/editorschoice.gif</td></tr>
</table>
Introduction
My sincerest thanks go out to Intel (http://www.intel.com) for providing both the QX6700 CPU as well as the Bad Axe 2 motherboard.
When you enter the computer world, one of the first companies you will come across is Intel. And quite rightly so. After all, you cannot have a functioning computer without a CPU – that would be like trying to build a car without an engine. Intel has been with us for almost 40 years. All that time, it has been powering PCs, constantly increasing their performance over time.
In the last years, however, Intel was struggling to deliver the performance we are used to. AMD gained advantage in both gaming and benchmarking, sponsoring many events, and bragging about the capabilities of its 64-bit processors. Intel wasn’t asleep though – it did what it could to offer high performance solutions, yet it wasn’t too successful. There was something “wrong” with Intel’s CPUs – either they ran hot, or had large power requirements, or were simply slower than the AMD counterpart. So, the PC enthusiast world split up into two groups – those that were running AMD, and enjoying performance, and those that stayed with Intel, hoping for the return of the king.
Intel took the world by storm when news about its new Conroe architecture started appearing all over the Internet. Intel fans started to rejoice. They knew that now was the time for the enterprise to strike back at AMD, and regain the performance crown. Those in favor of AMD simply didn’t know what to think. At first, waves of amazement started to appear. But then, doubt kicked in – how on earth could Intel possibly achieve such benchmark scores on a CPU that was going to be run 24/7, and not just some super-cooled test sample? Is Intel playing a trick on us? As the official launch date got closer, even the most die-hard AMD supporters knew that, in order to enjoy maximum performance, they would have to step over to the dark side. There was no turning back.
It has now been half a year that we have enjoyed the benefits of the Core 2 architecture. Intel has risen from its own dust, showing people all around the world that it is in better shape than ever. Being very ambitious, Intel is prepared to launch a new architecture every two years, prolonging the applicability of Moore’s law. Since Intel stepped away from its own race for Gigahertz, it has shown a healthy trend in producing fast CPUs. Now, the “hit of the season” (I sure hope it lasts more than a year) is parallel computing – having more cores on a CPU, which in turn means faster processing in applications that are multi threaded.
Today, we take a look at the latest and greatest from Intel – the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. Sporting 4 cores, this CPU is bound to scream. But are there enough programs and benchmarks to take full advantage of what this CPU has to offer? How much of a performance increase can we expect, going from two cores to four? Read on to find out!
Intel Conroe CPUs
Below, you can find a table that lists Intel’s current Core 2 offerings
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" class="resulttable">
<tr>
<th align="center">Model</th>
<th align="center">Core Clock (MHz)</th>
<th align="center">Cores</th>
<th align="center">L2 Cache (MB)</th>
<th align="center">Front side bus (MHz)</th>
<th align="center">TDP (W)</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6300</td>
<td align="right">1866</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6400</td>
<td align="right">2133</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6600</td>
<td align="right">2394</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E6700</td>
<td align="right">2667</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>X6800</td>
<td align="right">2933</td>
<td align="right">2</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">75</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>QX6700</td>
<td align="right">2667</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
<td align="right">2x 4</td>
<td align="right">1066</td>
<td align="right">130</td>
</tr>
</table>
[page=The bundle - Processor and Motherboard]
We received the test kit at the office in a large brown box. Inside waited some basic instructions, as well as the motherboard with the CPU already mounted, and Intel’s stock heatsink.
Intel QX6700
Intel’s Core 2 Extreme is to be considered the first Quad-core CPU out on the market. Below are its main features:
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr>
<th scope="row">Brand ID</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Core 2 Extreme</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Processor number</th>
<td scope="row">QX6700</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Core Frequency</th>
<td scope="row">2.66 GHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">System bus frequency</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">1066 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">TDP</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">130 W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Stepping</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">B-3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Number of CPU cores</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">L2 Cache</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">8MB (2x 4MB)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">CPUID</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">06F7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Core to bus ratio limit</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">10:1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Max Processor Input Voltage</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">1.350V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">PECI Enabled</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Enhanced Intel Speed Step Technology (EIST)</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Intel 64 Technology</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Intel Virtualisation Technology</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Package/Socket</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">FC-LGA775</td>
</tr>
</table>
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cput.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpub.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpuz_1.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpuz_2.gif
Well, what is under the heatspreader? Intel’s engineers have managed to squeeze two E6700 cores under one IHS – a marvelous feat that offers quad-core performance today. After all, it makes a lot of sense from Intel’s stand point – instead of spending a lot of money on developing one die with four cores in it, it is much easier to put together two dies, each with two cores. Also, Intel can pick the best E6700 chips for its QX6700 CPUs, and not have to worry about refining the manufacturing process as it would with a whole new core. Worth noting is also the massive amount of L2 cache – 8 MB in total, 4 MB per die, 2 MB per core.
Below, you can see what the two cores look like in real life:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/intelcput.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/intelcpub.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/intelcpu2.jpg
Intel Bad-Axe 2
I won’t go into a lot of detail with the motherboard that was used. It was supplied as part of the test kit, and is Intel’s top-of-the-line motherboard, utilizing the 975X chipset. The Bad-Axe 2 features numerous improvements over its predecessor, mainly in the overclocking segment. Most importantly, it supports Core 2 Quad CPUs.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardb.jpg)
Our Bad-Axe 2 motherboard was a pre-production sample. This meant that it did not have automatic fan control, so the fan had to be set to a specific percentage in the BIOS. Retail boards can control the fan speed automatically depending on temperature. I also hope that Intel provides a better manual with their retail motherboards, we only received a simple poster explaining the main features and a simplified diagram of how to put together a computer.
Heatsink
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsftopt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsftopb.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsfbottomt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/hsfbottomb.jpg)
We received Intel’s stock heatsink for testing. “Stock” may not be the correct word however. Intel has gone as far as redesigning the heat sink for Quad-core CPUs. It has expanded in almost every direction; the increase in height is especially noticeable. To cool the processor, Intel has strapped-on a rather loud fan that spins at 5000 RPM.
[page=Installation, Overclocking]
Installation
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardreadyt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/boardreadyb.jpg)
Since Intel provided us with a CPU and motherboard, we were basically building a whole new PC. The components used are listed below:
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel QX6700</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Bad Axe 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB Kingston Value RAM, DDR800</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Gainward GeForce 6800 Ultra</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Seagate Barracuda 7200.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Silverstone ST-65 ZF</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Forceware 93.71</td>
</tr>
</table>
For benchmarking Intel's lower clocked dual-core CPUs, the multiplier was lowered and the additional cores were disabled. This means that the E6400 was benchmarked as having 4 MB of L2 cache.
As I pressed the power button, I was shocked. With my Sunon 7W fans I run on my radiator, I thought I had heard it all. Yet, when I started this PC, it really sounded like a vacuum cleaner. So, my very first impression: LOUD! I couldn’t even hear the fan of my 6800 Ultra over the one on the CPU HSF.
The PC switched itself on for about two seconds, and then shut down. Uh oh – do I have a short circuit or some other culprit somewhere? Just as I finished that thought, the PC came to life again.
After consulting this with some colleagues, I found out that this behavior is completely normal – the PC behaves like this because it has to set the FSB strap in the Northbridge.
After looking over the BIOS briefly, I proceeded to install Windows and appropriate drivers, as well as benchmarking programs.
My next step was to decrease the fan speed – the lowest value that could be selected from BIOS was 60%, much more acceptable to my ears.
First Impressions
Like a boy who gets a new present once in a while, I was so excited to be able to review Intel’s Quad-core CPU. As I am a passionate gamer, I was most interested in game performance, but also in multi-tasking – what else can I do while gaming?
I also wanted to know what the heat output is like. When the Core 2 Duo was launched, many people reported temperatures in the 65°C range. I downloaded Core Temp, a program that reads the temperature of the CPU directly from one of its registers. At idle, the temperatures were not too bad – around 40°C – but not too great either. To load the CPU, I tried a brief run of SysRool’s stress test. Instantly, temperatures rose to 55°C, and continued to climb until they settled at around 60°C. I didn’t know wether I should be pleasantly surprised or disappointed. Surprised, because the temperature is almost identical to that reported by dual-core users, while this CPU has four cores. Disappointed because Intel’s redesigned heatsink didn’t have great cooling capabilities, paired up with a very noisy fan.
I could instantly judge that this CPU doesn’t go together too well with air cooling. Water is obviously this beast’s natural habitat. But more about that later.
Overclocking
Even though the temperatures of the CPU’s four cores were not too great, I attempted to overclock the processor. SysRool does not yet support the clock generator located on the Bad Axe 2 motherboard, so all overclocking had to be done from BIOS.
I slowly started raising the FSB in 5 MHz increments, booting into Windows each time, and checking stability with SysTool’s stress test (Pattern size: 4 Million). I eventually got to 330 MHz, with the 667 divider on the RAM, and leaving the multiplier at 10x. It was getting late to conduct benchmarks, and so I decided to call it a day.
The next morning, I was shocked to see that the PC would no longer boot - all fans were spinning, but there was no signal to the monitor. And everything was stable for over an hour using SysTool’s test the day before! Anyhow, by changing the BIOS JUMPER to CONFIG mode, I managed to boot the PC. I set everything back to stock, changed the jumper to normal, and booted the PC again. Next, I set the overclocked values, with the PC booting fine. However, the computer would still lock up at POST randomly.
After checking Intel’s website, I found out that a new BIOS had been released. After I updated the BIOS, everything worked fine, and the motherboard was much more stable than before in terms of booting.
The voltage was slightly raised to 1.3625V to assure stability.
The temperature of the overclocked CPU was at 65°C at load.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cpuz_1_oc.gif
[page=Semi-synthetic benchmarks]
While synthetic benchmarks are not the "real thing" they give quite a good impression of a computer's performance. The general rule is the higher the score, the better.
3DMark 01 SE
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d01.gif
3DMark 2001 sees a little boost from four cores. Considering that the benchmark is five years old and does not support multi-core CPUs, this is still better than nothing.
3DMark 03
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d03.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d03cpu.gif
In 3DMark 03 we get to see a new type of test - CPU. While the increase in the overall score from two to four cores (E6700 to QX6700) is very close to zero, the CPU test shows a greater spread between the two processors.
3DMark 05
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d05.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d05cpu.gif
3DMark 06
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d06.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3d06cpu.gif
The latest incarnation of 3DMark is multi-threaded, and clearly shows the benefit of having a quad-core CPU. The overclocked QX6700 has almost 2x the score in the CPU test compared to the E6700, which only has two cores.
3DMark does not yet incorporate the CPU score into the overall score, but the 2007 version may do so. This is quite a debated issue, as some think that 3DMark is becoming too CPU dependent.
PCMark 05
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pcmark05.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pcmark05cpu.gif
PCMark, unlike the 3DMark series, attempts to analyze the whole computer in terms of performance. Therefore, it incorporates the CPU score into the final result. If we consider the overall score, the QX6700 has an advantage of about ~1000 points over its brother, the E6700. We can spot that each 266 MHz, the score increases by around 400 points (E6400->E6600->E6700). To gain an increase comparable to going quad core, we would theoretically have to add ~660MHz to the clock speed of the E6700 (which would mean a final clock speed of 3.3 GHz).
The CPU score shows a 700 point increase for every 266 MHz added. Going from two to four cores, while maintaining the same internal clock speed, we see a boost of 1700 points.
Aquamark
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/aq3.gif
Science mark
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/sciencemark.gif
Cinebench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cinebench.gif
Cinebench clearly shows the performance advantage of four CPUs. It is almost as if you literally added another E6700 to your system.
[page=Game tests]
Game tests
Computer games are to be considered one of the toughest tests for a computer system - to play a game at its highest resolution, with full anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, you not only need a powerful graphics card, but also a fast CPU, that is capable of delivering data to the GPU.
F.E.A.R.
To benchmark F.E.A.R., the ingame utility was used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/fear.gif
Our first game test shows quite a disappointment - only a 3 FPS gain with using four cores. More interestingly, overclocking the CPU had no effect whatsoever on the final framerate.
Quake 4
Games based on the Doom 3 engine support multi-core CPUs. We tried Quake 4 with the latest patch installed, with both SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) enabled and disabled.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/q4.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/q4smp0.gif
I personally found this test very interesting. Let's take a close look at how much performance we gain on each CPU model by enabling SMP. Starting with the lowest two of the lot, the E6400 and E6600 receive an increase of 35 FPS. Next, we have the E6700 - the average FPS is improved by 32. Our quad core QX6700 - this achieves 29 more frames each second with four cores instead of one. Lastly, the overclocked Kentsfield - only 14 frames difference!
As we can clearly see, in our benchmark, the performance increased the higher/better the CPU used was, but the increase was not proportional. This leads me to believe that some component, in this case most probably the graphics card, was limiting the performance of the whole computer, and the CPU.
Call of Duty 2
To benchmark Call of Duty 2 the techPowerUp! demo was used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cod2.gif
Unreal Tournament 2004
Even though UT2004 is not among the newest of games, it still is one of my favorites. Its 2007 sequel is highly anticipated.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/ut2004.gif
We can see a decent, 12 FPS increase by going Quad Core.
[page=System tests]
System tests
For compression tests (WinRAR and FFMPEG), the Pirates of the Carribean 2 HD trailer was used. Track 19 from the Linkin Park Reanimated album was used to benchmark LameEnc.
WinRAR
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/winrar.gif
FFMPEG
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/ffmpeg.gif
LameEnc
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/lame.gif
Adobe Photoshop CS2
The Driver Heaven Photoshop CS2 benchmark was used to obtain results.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/ps2.gif
In all the system tests we ran, with the exception of LameEnc (perhaps our file wasn't big enough for any large difference to be noted), quad core is faster than its dual core counterpart. If this difference is big enough, that is up to you to decide. I'm sure that if you use your PC to encode video daily, or you work with large amounts of data that need converting to some form or another, you will be grateful for every second or minute you can shave off. On the other hand, if you just encode video that you gather from your holiday trip once in a while, this time difference is not great enough to justify the purchase of a quad-core cpu.
[page=SuperPI, Pifast & Memory throughput]
SuperPI, Pifast
Super-PI mod 1.5 was used. SuperPI and Pifast are very popular in the overclocking circles, as they shows raw CPU and memory performance well.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi32m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi1m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pifast.gif
As both programs are single-threaded in their nature, it was good to see at least a little performance boost.
Everest
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/everestmr.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/everestmw.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/everestml.gif
The Quad Core derivative seems to be a little slower when it comes to working with memory than the two core original.
[page=Multitasking]
Multitasking
In order to use the performance of all four cores the QX6700 features, you can run more than one application simultaneously. Obviously, a human being cannot do two things on a computer at once - so, for example, playing two games at once on a dual-monitor system is out of the question (for the moment).
Let's take the following scenario: you have just been on a holiday to Hawaii with your family. Being the geek that you are, you captured thousands of photos and hours of video. Upon returning home, you know that you want to resize all your photos, encode your video into DivX, and play a game (because after a holiday, you have to be tired!). Now, this is exactly what the quad core CPU will allow you to do! Provided that other components can keep up with the speed.
This is where the main problem with quad-core (or x-core CPUs, for that matter) comes into play more than ever before. Feeding one core with data was no problem for our current generation of hardware. 2 cores, OK, a little bit of a struggle, but still doable. With 4 cores, I must say - either have a full blown top notch system, or forget it.
The slower your PC is in the first place, the less it will benefit from your quad core investment. This is a thing that struck me during testing, and wouldn't go away. Many editors from famous web sites around the Internet have tested and benchmarked Intel's Quad core CPUs, and they were taken aback by the performance. They surely used top of the line memory (preferably 2 gigs of it), a Raptor hardrive and the latest and greatest graphics card. Yes, the QX6700 does shine in this case.
Our test bed was far from ideal - 1 GB of DDR800 memory (with horrible CL-5 timings) was used, and a definitely out-of-date GeForce 6800. Here, instead of the graphics card being limited in games, it was the CPU - it just couldn't show its full potential.
I decided to run SuperPI 4x, in order to see how the whole system would do. Below is a screenshot of the run:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pimultit.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pimultib.jpg)
The 1M run was just as expected, slower than running SuperPI once. I assumed that the same scenario would occur if I ran SuperPI 4x with the 32M option. How terribly wrong I was. The system took off fine, but after a while, I could hear loud sounds of the hard-disk swapping - the system had ran out of memory, and the whole calculation was terribly slow.
After backing off to 16M, the run completed successfully:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi16mt.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/superpi16mb.jpg)
Now, things like 2 GB and 4 GB memory kits start to make sense. Super power graphic cards too. However, there is a grave problem to the new path both manufacturers, AMD and Intel, have chosen to follow. Before, only the company could be blamed (or blame itself) for a slow processor. Now, all the components come into play - the memory, hard-disk, graphics card. I am afraid that one day, we may find ourselves at a dead end again - the CPU power will be here, but other components will prevent us from utilizing it all.
Intel has realized that this problem exists, and has presented its visions of tackling this problem at IDFs all around the world.
Multi-core scaling
How much performance does one gain by switching from one to two cores, two to three and finally three to four? We have investigated several multi-threaded apps, below are our results. First up, Quake 4:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/quake4cores.gif
From one to two cores, the FPS heightens by about 30 frames. Adding more cores, on the other hand, did not show such results - the performance levels off, and actually decreases from two to three cores.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/cinebench4cores.gif
Cinebench performance is much more pleasing when increasing the number of cores. The graph is almost linear, adding a core gives approximately a 400 point increase in the benchmark.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/3dmark4cores.gif
The 3DMark graph is most similar to that of Cinebench, but we can see indications of the performance slowly levelling off.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/QX6700/images/pcmark4cores.gif
Lastly, we have PCMark performance. From one to two cores, there is a large performance increase, and from two to three and three to four, the line seems to follow a different equation, but remains linear.
[page=Value and conclusion]
Value and conclusion
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The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 retails for $1399 at Newegg. Fry's has the same CPU for $1199</td>
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First commercially available quad-core CPU
Performance
Overclockability
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Price
Heat output
Stock HSF
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<tr><th>9.5</th>
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The QX6700 from Intel is a CPU like no other, it is the first quad core CPU that you can buy at almost any computer store. I must say that Intel rightly deserves to be called performance king.</br>
First, I would like to comment on Intel's Extreme CPUs in general. I love any extreme product, even if it isn't that great. Why? When I see anything that bears the name "Extreme", it is not so much the product I am interested at first - it is the fact that a part of the community, and that could be any community, has been recognized. Extreme "anything" shows that the manufacturer has realized that there is a big enough market for it to sell goods to those that think about price second, performance first. On the other hand, an extreme product will not last, if it is not good enough - the process of natural selection will automatically eliminate it. Take the memory market for example. Once a manufacturer starts to produce "extreme" memory, people looking for the best are likely to try it. Other manufacturers will join in, they obviously don't want to loose potentional customers. Through Extreme CPUs, Intel is definitely promoting healthy competition on the CPU market. Also, mere mortals already have something to look forward to - the technology from extreme merchandise is often used in "normal" versions, once the manufacture process is cheap enough. The rule is applicable in our case, too - Intel's quad core CPU that won't cost an arm and a leg is scheduled for the start of next year...</br>
Next, I would like to comment on the multi-core path Intel has decided to follow. Intel has stood up on its feet again, delivering the performance we were all used to. There are certain problems that Intel will have to face - it will not only have to develop CPUs, but also aid in the production of other components to keep up. I am glad to see that Intel already has products - compilers and Intel's Building Blocks software - that aids programmers in making their applications as multi-core friendly as possible.</br>
I am much fonder of this CPU than of its other Extreme colleague - the X6800. While the latter does have a higher clock speed, it really doesn't bring anything that new - let's face it, the same clock speed can be achieved with any normal E6600 or E6700, which both cost much less. The QX6700, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Intel has accelerated the multi-core era with this CPU by squeezing two E6700s under one heatspreader. However hard you try, you will not be able to squeeze any more cores into your dual core processors, that is what makes this CPU unique.</br>
So, is this CPU for everyone? No. In order to enjoy the full benefit of having a quad-core "engine" under the hood, you must have a equally high-tech PC. It is sort of like stuffing a Hemi 427 into an Opel Corsa - without upgrading the whole drivetrain, you have no chance of utilizing its full potential (or, without breaking something real quick). Before one invests into a quad-core CPU, I feel that he should have at least 2 GB of RAM and a fast graphics card - Radeon X1950 or GeForce 8800 series would do. You must also remember - an investment into any quad-core CPU is an investment into your computer's future. Most applications are not ready to support multi-core CPUs, but the situation is slowly improving. It is also a risk - the technology is not quite mature yet, so perhaps waiting for 45nm quad-core CPUs would be wise. Then again, you could wait forever... </td></tr>
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