Page 10 - Power Consumption and Conclusion

These readings were taken from our power monitoring chip on our motherboard. Intel SpeedStep was disabled for both processors; and if these readings were right then the QX9650, like the E7200, would be actually ridiculously power efficient at idle. It used around three times as much power as the E7200, but really, what is 7.6W anyway? I thought I read a decimal place off for both processors, but apparently I didn't. I took a look at our affiliate reviews and it seems that the overall power consumption difference between Intel 45nm and Intel 65nm CPUs is around 15-20W, and if the CPU did make that much of a difference in terms of overall power consumption, then this could be true.

Under load, all four cores kicked in and it was no surprise that the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 had the highest power consumption overall -- again, in terms of ratio, it's almost the same as it is with the E7200 in idle. Sucking around 60W, it used 20W more than the E6600 and 40W more than the E7200, but dang, it's a quad core and it's pretty darn efficient in this regard.

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Did you just say fast? Well, I just said it's an understatement. The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 may be the second fastest consumer processor Intel makes, but dang, it's one amazing product. Kicking in those quad cores, combined with an immense amount of L2 cache, plus some overclocking, not to mention excellent power consumption -- the QX9650 will blow away everything and anything. From the jaw dropping benchmarking results to, well, anything that a processor will do -- it's expensive, no doubt, but you cannot deny that the QX9650 is insanely sweet. Our unit did not scale all too well with voltages in terms of overclocking, but it seems to me that many retail box units does -- not all processors overclock the same, but we did reach 4.0GHz stably on ours at 1.45V. A Yorkfield at 4GHz -- now that's impressive. I mean, if it can get such high benchmark scores at 3GHz, it's amazing for it to operate at 4GHz. When you really do get a hold of this processor, benchmark it just to awe yourself for the next five days, or post the results to enlarge your e-peen on the internets. Enough said, the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 pwns and that's undeniable.

Special thanks to Dan over at Intel for making this review possible.

APH Recommended Award
Starting from April 30, 2007, Number Ratings has been dropped for motherboards, RAM, and graphics cards. This is to ensure the most appropriate ratings reflected without the limits of using numbers. Everything else will continue using the Number Rating System.
More information in our Review Focus.

The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 is everything you could ever dream about in your home PC.

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Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. Intel QX9650 Architecture; Test System
3. Benchmark: EVEREST CPU
4. Benchmark: EVEREST FPU
5. Benchmark: PCMark05
6. Benchmark: 3DMark06
7. Benchmark: Cinebench R10
8. Benchmark: SYSMark 2007
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M; Overclocking
10. Power Consumption and Conclusion