Monday, November 24, 2008

Intel - Core 2 Extreme QX6700


Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700
quad core CPU also known as Kentsfield or The Quad Father (02/11/2006)
Intel is on a roll after the launch of Core 2 Duo E6700 in July 2006 and here we are, a mere four months later, with the launch of the quad core Core 2 Extreme QX6700 which was codename Kentsfield during development.
No doubt when Intel releases non-Extreme versions of this processor they will be called Core 2 Quadro or Quattro or something to reflect the four cores, provided it can find a name that hasn't been snapped up by Nvidia for professional graphics cards or Audi for four wheel drive cars.
In essence Intel has shoehorned a pair of Core 2 Duo processors on to a single LGA775 die, so the quad core runs on the same 1,066MHz Front Side Bus as Core 2 Duo and is fabricated on a 65nm process. There is 4MB of L2 cache for each pair of cores, so that's a total of 8MB of cache, and the core speed is similar to Core 2 Duo.
Core 2 Duo E6700 runs at 2.66GHz and has a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 65W while the Core 2 Duo Extreme X6800 runs at 2.963GHz and has a TDP of 75W. By contrast the quad core Core 2 Extreme QX6700 runs at 2.66GHz and has a TDP of 130W so it truly is a pair of E6700 CPUs in a single processor socket. Let's not lose sight of the fact that the final versions of dual core Pentium 4 had a similar heat profile, so the technology to keep the processor cool is well established.

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INTEL TECHNOLOGIES