Product Listing

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 - Quad-Core Power for Desktops

By Zachary Chan - 2 Nov 2006

Conclusion

The Empire Strikes Back... Again!

Intel has been on a roll since the launch of the Core Duo 'Yonah' mobile processor and there isn't any sign of stopping them anytime soon. Within four months of the Core 2 Duo desktop processor launch, Intel has now made the leap forward to introduce desktop quad-core processing, a move that leaves little room for AMD to breathe at all. When the Core 2 Duo was launched, AMD's salvo was supposed to be their enthusiast driven 4x4 platform. Anticipating its rival's move, Intel came first to market with a quad-core solution. While we've yet to see an AMD 4x4 system in action, we'll have to say that the Kentsfield would probably make more sense and the key difference isn't actually performance, but compatibility. The AMD 4x4 will require a platform change and most definitely high power consumption with dual high-end processors, while Kentsfield support can be as simple as a BIOS upgrade on your existing Core 2 compatible LGA775 motherboard. AMD's acquisition of ATI and announcements of new CPU/GPU fusion technologies is something we are closely monitoring, but we won't be seeing anything till late 2007 or 2008; and even then that's charting new and unproven territory. In the here and now, Intel is King once again.

Now let's get back to the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 and the big question of "Why quad-core?" Why indeed! After raving about the Conroe core and Intel's new microarchitecture, isn't the Kentsfield another revolutionary step for Intel? Well, yes it is and no it isn't. Intel is once again the moving force behind the microprocessor industry. However, as mentioned before, the Kentsfield is a move to maintain Intel's leadership in the market, but not necessarily what the market needs. After our in-depth benchmarking, there seems to be little reason to actually go for a quad-core platform right now and probably not for the next few quarters. In the enthusiast or gamer consumer space, there is nary a game right now that will scale with the QX6700. Even the threaded Quake 4 shows little improvement and looking at F.E.A.R., the biggest hurdle is still GPU limitations. The only high-profile multi-threaded game to probably make full use of quad-core technology is Alan Wake and Intel was quick to show it off in the recent Fall IDF. Highly threaded games have been committed from people like Ubisoft, THQ and Remedy entertainment and should hit late in 2007, but today you have 3DMark06, and that isn't exactly what we'd call a real need to upgrade. Some may say Windows Vista's hogging system requirements would see some merit, but a dual-core processor is more than sufficient in reality for most consumer usage. What we can safely speculate is that Windows Vista will be more multi-core friendly than Windows XP Professional and hopefully produce slightly better gains from the operating system level being able to schedule loads more accurately. As soon as Windows Vista goes gold, we'll explore this possibility.

The drool-wrothy Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 ushers true quad-core processing into the consumer desktop area. Now, we just need to wait for the market to catch up.

For general consumers, the list of highly threaded applications are also scant and those that are available are mostly expensive professional or industrial CAD/CAM, rendering and modeling tools. In retrospect, most desktop applications today would run on the quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX6700 with the same performance as the dual-core Core 2 Duo E6700 and our overclocking shows that this is a linear scale with frequency. A 3GHz Kentsfield performs mostly on par with the dual-core X6800. Throughout out benchmarks though, the age-old question of whether the current 1066MHz FSB is sufficient has been answered. Looking at all the applications that do take advantage of all four cores (eg. SPEC CPU2000, Lightwave 3D, Cinebench), performance increase is linear with the number of cores available and doesn't seem hampered at all by bandwidth bottlenecks, so it'll probably still be a while before Intel will bump desktop FSB speed to 1333MHz.

We will admit the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is the most powerful desktop processor (or maybe even workstation processor) that we've ever tested, that is simply a fact and after all things considered, the enthusiast in us is screaming for one of these babies. Like the saying goes, power is seductive and the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is as sweet as it comes. If you were to ask us, we'd say that the Kentsfield is like fine wine. Give it time to age properly and your hefty investment will pay off. Depending on the development of better-optimized and threaded consumer software, its 4-Star value today that may eventually mature to a 4.5-Star performer a year down the road.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.