Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9770

We'll obviously revisit the QX9770 once we have production silicon, hopefully Intel will have some answers to us before then. The QX9770 is absolutely not an acceptable part if it does indeed come with a > $1000 price tag and these thermal issues. We can't help but reiterate though, the biggest take away of today's preview has nothing to do with the product itself. Intel's reaction to Phenom, particularly how quickly it reacted, is truly unusual for the company.

Any real "enthusiast" looking for QX9770 performance will be looking at the Core 2 Quad Q9450 with its identical 8x multiplier and rubbing their thighs in anticipation of a quick and dirty overclock from 1,333MHz (333MHz) to 1,600MHz (400MHz) front side bus. It's much the same conclusion of every Intel Core 2 Extreme Edition processor review - if you can get this kind of performance, by whatever means necessary, you will have to strap down your case because it's going to fly! So while this CPU as a product is unattainable and too expensive, the way the Penryn architecture scales performance with clock speed clearly warrants considerable respect.

After the announcement of the Penryn series it's been raining Intel's top-end processors. Having just seen the already perfectly fast Core 2 Extreme QX9650, we are being surprised with an even higher performing QX9770. This seems like with these two announcements Intel is trying to nail down the lid to the coffin of you-know-who. And also deliver the message like: "Noone is going to catch up with us in the segment of desktop top performers. Let the rivals fight for the Low- and Middle-End. But the desktop High-End is ours." And, you know, it's very convincing at the moment...

Its announcement serves to extend Intel's dominant position at the very high-end of the desktop market. It does everything the QX9650 does - being based on the same Penryn core - but doe so that little bit faster.

The new 3.2GHZ Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor offered performance that was generally 5 - 8% faster than the previously announced Core 2 Extreme QX9650 at 3GHz, across most usage models and test conditions we explored. These gains were largely realized due to the simple increase in core clock speed but also as a result of the increase in system bus speed, in conjunction with a synchronous memory interface speed at 1600MHz. All told, the new Core 2 Extreme QX9770 is the fastest desktop processor we've ever tested to date, bar none.