Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Late last year Intel unveiled the world’s first quad-core desktop processor, stealing a bit of thunder from the amazing Core 2 Duo range. For a whopping $999, the new Core 2 Extreme processor would become Intel’s new flagship product.
Although the Core 2 Duo remained the best value choice for most desktop users, the technological achievement was nonetheless there as AMD had - and in a way still is - without a proper answer. Clocked at 2.66GHz the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 was essentially two Core 2 Duo E6700 processors stuck together. This meant that the thermal design power rating was doubled from 65 watts for the E6700, to a hot 130 watts for the QX6700.
Performance-wise the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 was a success, though it was more of a business-oriented processor. This was largely due to the fact that games are only now becoming dual-core friendly and almost none are ready for quad-core processors. In the other hand, certain applications such as Adobe Photoshop and QuickTime Pro showed reasonably strong performance gains when using the quad-core Intel processor. Then other more powerful applications, such as 3D Studio Max and Pinnacle Studio Plus, saw massive performance gains when moving to the quad-core processor.
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