Brian's Brain

The embargo on published benchmarks for Intel's first 45 nm consumer-targeted microprocessor, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, was October 28. But Intel didn't release pricing on the CPU and its enterprise-class Penryn peers until yesterday at noon PST. Unfortunately, a combination of other personal and professional to-dos, coupled with the continued non-availability of Intel-designed motherboards based on the latest X38 chipset, has conspired to keep me from finishing my testing on my own QX9650 sample...although I hope to have a motherboard in-hand by month end (I prefer to use Intel-branded mobos with Intel CPUs, having struggled with far too many hardware and firmware bugs with third-party boards in the past). Until then, I'll share with you the Intel Developer Forum testing results that I alluded to in a prior post.

First off, some pictures:

Two views of the quad- vs octal-core desktop system shootout (note in the specs that follow that both systems were based on Penryn CPUs, and that each quad-core CPU package comprises two dual-core die)

Two close-ups of the octal-core desktop system

The mobile Penryn-vs-Merom shootout (note that both of these systems were based on the Santa Rosa chipset, running at identical front-side-bus frequencies and with identical sizes and speeds of DRAM and HDD)

More detailed specifications:

Continue reading with 'Penryn Goes Public: Benchmark Scrutiny'...