Speed buster



It hasn’t been a month since our processor shootout, and Intel has fired yet another salvo—the QX9650—a top rung, quad core processor based on the 45 nm manufacturing process, which is the key differentiator between the QX6850 and the QX9650—the former is built on the 65 nm process.

The QX9650 runs at 3 GHz, with 1333 MHz FSB and is well supplemented with a cache of 6 MB per die—12 MB total, 2 MB more than the QX6850 per core.

Intel has also introduced 47 new instruction sets in the form of SSE4—this should improve performance in multimedia applications.

In Sciencemark, the QX9650 shows a nearly 10 per cent performance improvement over the older QX6850 in all the subtests, except in cryptography, which is affected by clock speed.

In games such as Doom 3, Far Cry and Company of Heroes, we see a definite increase in performance by 10 to 15 per cent. 3D Mark and PC Mark also show perceivable performance differences. We’ve got to say there is definite performance improvement across the board. 

Price hasn’t been disclosed yet, but expect it to be somewhere around Rs 50,000 when it becomes available.

Specifications
Quad core, 3 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 12 MB L2 cache

Contact : Intel India Pvt Ltd
Web site : www.intel.com
Price : Rs 52,000 (approx)