Date:
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Author:
Paul Jastrzebski
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core QX6700 Preview

Intel today launches the world's first quad-core processor rightly dubbed the Core 2 Extreme Quad Core. What happens when you strap two Core 2 Duo processors onto one LGA 775 processor substrate? As you might imagine, you have CPU power on tap.

Introduction

While attending Intel’s Developer Forum in San Francisco this September, we were given one hour to do some rudimentary testing with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme Quad Core QX6700, their quad-core processor code named “Kentsfield.” Although we didn’t draw any hard conclusions after our brief testing, it was evident that there would be significant performance improvements depending on the applications being utilized. Now that we’ve had the CPU on our test bench for almost a month we think we have a good handle on just what Intel’s flagship Core 2 Extreme Quad Core is good for. We have been using it daily for our own applications, not just for benchmark purposes, and have gotten a very good feel for the hardware. For discussion purposes here, we will refer to this new processor as the "Core 2 Quad" in order to simply things a bit.

Thanks to Intel for actually giving [H] Enthusiast time enough to use the processor instead of just enough time to benchmark it.

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What is a Core 2 Extreme Quad Core Really?

Let's take a look at what exactly the Kentsfield core is. The Kentsfield core is essentially two Conroe dies packaged together sharing one front side bus. Each of these true dual-core Conroe cores maintains its own 4MB of L2 Cache, with the cores connected together and the rest of the platform on a shared Front Side Bus.

Intel’s architectural approach with Kentsfield is precisely the same as their approach with Smithfield, their first dual-core part. Smithfield was essentially two Prescott cores, each with their separate L2 caches, in a single package that was linked together and to the rest of the platform through front side bus.

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Packaging two dual-core die together to form one quad-core die is what many people like to call a “stepping stone” approach, a smart way for Intel to not only be first to market, but to produce next generation chips cheaply. They’ve got their Conroe manufacturing process locked down and yields are good. So in simple terms, producing a Kentsfield chip amounts to taking two qualified 65nm Conroe die off the wafer and placing them onto one package. This is why we’re seeing Intel’s first quad-core chips hit the market only 4 months after Conroe made its debut. (Gaming Perf; Apps Perf; Power Consumption)

Understandably you will hear many critics complain about how this solution is not a "true" quad-core design, or they will sound off and bash it for not being as "elegant" as what the competition is bringing to market. And they may be right, but it hardly changes the facts. The fact of the matter is that it is truly a quad-core processor whether or not it is a quad-core die. The fact of the matter is that Intel's front side bus design might be a bit long in the tooth, but there is no doubt that we are seeing tremendous performance channeled through it. To me, at the end of the day, it is all about the application performance we can squeeze out of it and how hot it gets along the way. Yes, real performance per watt is our measure.

Now let’s take a closer look at the Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700.