Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 review

We tested the QX6700 on Intel's own 975X motherboard, the D975XBX2. In terms of features it's nothing special, but it is nevertheless a decent motherboard. The test system was equipped with 2GB of DDR2-800 memory and a Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD. For comparison, we used previous results from our benchmark database, among which those of the Core 2 Duo, the 'old' dualcore Core 2 Extreme, the Athlon 64 (FX) and a dualcore Opteron. Unfortunately, not all systems are perfectly comparable: the AMD system turned out not be stable with 800MHz of memory. Neither Adata memory, which was used for the Kentsfield test, nor a combination of 2x 512MB Corsair XMS1066 and 2x 512MB OCZ DDR2-1000 sufficed, hence we were forced to fall back on 667MHz.

The Opteron is the same as the one we used for the database test. Since Socket F does not support DDR2-800 yet, we used 667MHz on that machine, too. A further difference is that the Opteron had a RAID5 of four Raptors instead of a single disk. Results of disk-intensive benchmarks such as Photoshop and Winstone are not tremendously comparable because of this. However, other tests, such as 7-zip, LAME, Windows Media Encoder and Cinebench are not negatively affected. Unfortunately we cannot yet show any game benchmarks in this article because not all systems were equipped with the same graphics card, but it is not to be expected that today's games can draw any profit from a quadcore processor.

With the exception of Winstone, all tests were executed using the 64bit version of Windows XP. Of Cinebench, 7-zip and the Windows Media Encoder we also used versions that can utilize the x64 extension. We used a LAME version that supports both multicore and x64. All processors were configured to use their power saving features. Even though we know that this can sometimes degrade performance a little, we believe most people will choose to have Enhanced Speedstep or Cool 'n' Quiet switched on.

Test configuration (Intel)

Processor	Core 2 Duo	Core 2 Duo	Core 2 Extreme	Core 2 Extreme
Model	E6400	E6700	X6800	QX6700
Sockets / cores	1 / 2	1 / 2	1 / 2	1 / 4
Clock speed	2.13GHz	2.66GHz	2.93GHz	2.66GHz
Cache	2MB	4MB	4MB	2x 4MB
TDP	65W	65W	75W	130W
Memory capacity	2GB	2GB	2GB	2GB
Memory speed	DDR2-800 5-5-5-12	DDR2-800 5-5-5-12	DDR2-800 5-5-5-12	DDR2-800 5-5-5-12
Mother board	Intel D975XBX	Intel D975XBX	Intel D975XBX	Intel D975XBX
Chipset	Intel 975X	Intel 975X	Intel 975X	Intel 975X
Graphics card	ATi Radeon X1900XTX	ATi Radeon X1900XTX	ATi Radeon X1900XTX	nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2
I/O controller	Intel 975X	Intel 975X	Intel 975X	Intel 975X
RAID-level	Single	Single	Single	Single
Hard disks	WD Raptor WD740ADFD	WD Raptor WD740ADFD	WD Raptor WD740ADFD	WD Raptor WD740ADFD

Test configuration (AMD)

Processor	Athlon 64	Athlon 64	Opteron
Model	FX-62	X2 5000+	2216
Sockets / cores	1 / 2	1 / 2	2 / 4
Clock speed	2.8GHz	2.6GHz	2.4GHz
Cache	2x 1MB	2x 512KB	2x 1MB
TDP	125W	89W	95W
Memory capacity	2GB	2GB	2GB
Memory speed	DDR2-667 5-5-5-12	DDR2-667 5-5-5-12	DDR2-667 5-5-5-12
Mother board	Asus M2M32-Sli Deluxe	Asus M2M32-Sli Deluxe	MSI MS-9185
Chipset	nVidia nForce 590SLI	nVidia nForce 590SLI	ServerWorks HT1000
Graphics card	ATi Radeon X1900XTX	ATi Radeon X1900XTX	nVidia GeForce 5200 PCI
I/O controller	nForce 590SLI	nForce 590SLI	Areca ARC-1280 512MB
RAID-level	Single	Single	4x RAID 5
Hard disks	WD Raptor WD740ADFD	WD Raptor WD740ADFD	WD Raptor WD740ADFD