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Intel Core2 Extreme QX9650 3.0GHz Processor with 12MB Cache

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 | CPU Processor Reviews, Gaming Computer Reviews | View Comments

The Intel Core2 Extreme quad-core CPU offers the best in computer performance today. Four cores will carry you four times as far, and you sure have to pay for this level of performance.

At the end of the Pentium 4’s era, there was an AMD vs Intel battle to speed up processors to extreme levels. When processors became hot enough to cook on, there was obviously something that had gone wrong. Intel was quick to release a dual core Pentium, and then its Core2 range. The Core2’s managed to bring power consumption back to sane levels and regain much of Intel’s street cred.

After dual-core, the obvious next step is quad-core. As the technologies to produce the internals of a CPU get more sophisticated, so more cores can be stuffed into a single processor. But is there a tradeoff?

Intel Core2 Extreme offer a huge performance leap over their smaller brothers and sisters. By definition, the Extreme series leave the bus and multiplier so they can be adjusted by the user. This is useful for those who like to overclock, but not for the vast majority of desktop computer users who just want things to work.

This processor offers a large 12MB L2 cache, which amounts to 3MB per core. This is an increase of 50% of what is found in the other dual and quad-core processors in the range. This is a real performance booster, as L2 cache allows information to be stored close to the processing core, for much faster operations on data.

A new motherboard will be necessary, look for one that supports DDR3, to really stay ahead.

When building a super-fast computer for gaming or heavy duty office work with processor intensive programs, this is a processor worth considering. Stay ahead of the curve, but pick something else from the range if you want value for money.

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Taking a closer look at AM2

Thursday, September 28th, 2006 | CPU Processor Reviews, News | View Comments

AM2 was supposed to be the things of the future delivering the ultimate performance where socket 939 left off. With more memory bandwidth and a whole host of other features the new socket has not lived up to it’s much hyped beginnings.

XYZcomputing takes a look at the AMD AM2 to see just how it performs. Or more specifically, just what makes this computer processor that little bit unexciting.

AMD has a hard time keeping up with massive Intel, who have built such a strong market position that even a series of messups have managed to put much of a damper on their market sector. And although AMD were able to make the best of those blunders by Intel, Intel has now come back in force to once again compete with AMD.

XYZcomputing takes you through the overview to see what’s going on.

Super low power consumption AMD dual-core platform

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 | CPU Processor Reviews, News | View Comments

Energy savings is big business, especially in big businesses where the power bills for feeding hundreds of power hungry machines can be mind boggling.

AMD have had a great emphasis on how much power their processors can save, but this has mostly been aimed at the server market. These kinds of power saving are now available to the consumer market with the EE range of energy effiecient dual-core processors.

The biggest power savings come with the “Energy Efficient Small Form Factor” EE and SFF model which uses a pretty low 54W at idle. This is quite a saving compared to the Intel rivals, but might not be enough warrant it.

Perfect for use in home theater systems though and small form factor boxes where cooling is a very sensitive issue.

The full low-down can be found at Tom’s Hardware

AMD’s AM2: Athlon 64 FX-62 X2 5000+

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 | CPU Processor Reviews, News | View Comments

The new AM2 socket from AMD is developing a lot of interest in the computing world. With the untroduction of AM2 comes the introduction of nearly a full line-up of AMD processors.

AMD have released nearly all of their processors using this new socket. Most of this range have also been moved over to dual-core, which now makes up the majority of their range. As reported on bit-tech, this is in line with their strategy to slowly phase out single-core in favor of dual-core.

The 2 new top-end offerings are the FX-62 and X2 5000+. These processors feature all the new stuff to come along with these chips, both of them are dual-core and both of them have built-in DDR2 memory controllers.

The main rivals to these new offerings are the Core Duo series from Intel. Although they manage to beat out the AMD chips sometimes, there are other times where the AM2 chips shine above them.

The uniform socket connection through the range will certainly make upgrading that much easier, being able to upgrade straight to a high-end processor from a mid-range one without changing the motherboard is great.

Waiting a while would be the recommended course of action for those looking to upgrade, as there are likely to be changes made before the whole deal settles down and prices come to reasonable levels.

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Overclocking the Intel Pentium D 805 processor

Thursday, April 20th, 2006 | CPU Processor Reviews, News | View Comments

The Intel Pentium D processor provides a bottom of the range option for those looking for a dual core processor without the cost involved in getting many of them.

This chip is fairly new to the market and mates two smithfield cores together, with a FSB of 533MHz, one L2 cache of 1MB each for the cores. Unlike its brothers and sisters in the 800 series of dual-core processors from Intel, which all run at 800MHz, this one runs slower at 533MHz, with a multiplier of 20 to get to a speed of 2.67GHz.

In the review at legitreviews.com they managed to push the FSB up to 760MHz without any problems from the processor and loaded up Windows and ran their tests without any problems. The actual increase in performance did not quite match the rise in processor speeds, with the overall change being about a 29% in performance or so.

The processor goes past the levels of the 840 processor and starts to come near the level set by the 840 Extreme Edition.

There is a lot or praise for this chip on the site and the test scores go to show how much it can perform, and how much you can get for your money from the lowest priced dual-core processor around. With a decent motherboard for under a hundred bucks, you will be able to get a processor that is capable or running up to 3.8GHz with a little bit of overclocking.

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