Jeremiah Hoyet

Intel released it new (and expensive) Core 2 Extreme CPU yesterday, the QX9650. The stock clock speed comes in to just 3ghz, but as reviews have already shown, this chip has more power hiding under the hood than first meets the eye.

TomsHardware (UK) writes:

Finally, we attempted to reach the magical clock speed of 4 GHz. This time, we reverted to the 333 MHz FSB and used a 12x multiplier, giving us a clock speed of exactly 4 GHz. In our first attempt, we were just barely able to glimpse the BIOS POST before the motherboard froze.

Since the board wouldn’t even boot with these settings, we knew that we would have to increase the voltage further – a lot further. With a heavy heart we set the voltage to 1.4375 V in the BIOS, which amounts to an increase of 0.1875 V. At this high voltage, we were not only able to get the QX9650 to boot, but also to complete the Prim95 stability test.

4ghz, 4000mhz, on a Quad core, on air cooling. This is simply amazing! To put that into perspective for you non-geeks, the current Conroe “Core 2 Quad” Q6600 runs at about 65C on all four cores under full load at 3.6ghz - with water cooling. In TomsHardware.co.uk’s review, the full load temperatures at 4ghz were merely 60C - with air cooling!

These exciting times really bring out the geek in me, but at $1000 a chip, I’m waiting for the “mainstream” Penryn release in Q1 of 2008.