Author: Tim Smalley & Richard Swinburne, 29th Oct 2007
The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
As an Extreme Edition processor, it not surprisingly carries the same $999 USD per chip in 1,000 unit quantities price tag as its predecessor, the Core 2 Extreme QX6850, meaning that it’ll probably set you back somewhere between £650 and £700 (inc. VAT) at your favourite e-tailer. If that’s well out of your price range, fear not because Intel will be launching some lower-priced alternatives at the start of next year.
For now though, we’ve got the QX9650 in-hand, which comes clocked at the same 3GHz clock speed as the QX6850 it’s replacing. It also uses the same 1,333MHz front side bus too, but there’s more to CPU performance than just raw clock speed – we’ve known that since long before the days of Pentium 4. The Penryn family is no exception to this rule and there are changes – some quite significant – in, well... most things.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/yv4voe