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Intel Core 2 Extreme: 1333MHz PSB and Beyond

By Zachary Chan - 12 Aug 2006

More Games and Conclusion

Results - Quake 4 and UT2004

Under real gaming environments, we find that newer games are becoming more and more GPU restricted with the latest generation of processors. Running on a single GeForce 7900 GT, even Quake 4 began to show symptoms of this as we push the boundaries of Core 2 speeds. In both the benchmarks with and without SMP enabled, Quake 4 showed an instant jump in frame rates once we pushed the PSB up from the standard 1066MHz over the X6800, but levels out even at 3.6GHz.

UT2004 on the other hand was able to scale much better with the CPU and system bus increments since it doesn't stress the graphics subsystem as much as newer games.

Parting Words

Needless to say, our overclocking experience with the Core 2 Extreme X6800 went very well. The processor effortlessly clocks to 3.33GHz and the P965 works well with a 1333MHz PSB and DDR2-1000 memory, so Intel could have delivered a desktop Extreme processor at those speeds - if they wanted to. At 1333MHz PSB, the Core 2 Extreme would have been a real powerhouse compared to the X6800. However, considering the comfortable lead Intel is already enjoying at the moment with the X6800, they've probably made a wise decision to stick with the 1066MHz PSB standard for now to keep voltage and temperatures lower.

Looking at all the benchmarks above, our overclocked Core 2 Extreme at 3.6GHz makes even the current X6800 look slow. It is clear that the Core 2 scales well with increased CPU frequencies, but provides a better and more linear performance increase through both CPU and FSB overclocking.

Despite its shorter pipeline and low power requirements, the Core microarchitecture possesses very good overclocking bandwidth and from our processor and bus overclocking, we can see that Intel has plenty of breathing room to plan a roadmap to counter almost anything their competitors can throw at them till perhaps the fight is taken into the quad-core arena. Time will tell if our educated guess turns out to be true or not, but that's our forecast for now.

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