INTEL QX6850 Quad Core Extreme Processor Review

Earth to AMD......earth to AMD........come in AMD.........where are you?

A lot of us are asking that question these days, and to be honest, AMD had better arrive on the scene soon, as INTEL's most recent releases offer only a modest improvement over their predecessors. Looking at it from purely a business standpoint, Intel is doing it right: Why compete against yourself? Until AMD gets their act together and releases a processor that forces Intel's hand, there's really no point in bringing any major upgrades to market. While that may be good for Intel's bottom line, its bad for us enthusiasts who wait with baited breath for the next best thing.

All of this should change toward the end of the year, as Intel's Penryn and AMDs Phenom are now on the horizon. But for now, we're basically limited to refreshes of Intel's current Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad lines of processors.

Today we take a quick look at Intel's QX6850 Core 2 Extreme. For those of you with no mortgage, no bills, a great job, or rich parents, the QX6850 is currently the pinnacle of the processing world.

The QX6850 is the Barry Bonds of processors, a steroid freak designed for pure power. Offering four cores each operating at 3GHz, unlocked multipliers giving the enthusiast every possible overclocking option, and 8MB of L2 cache, the QX6850 is a serious ass kicker.

The performance comes with some caveats. First, the QX6850 will set you back a pretty penny, with retailers asking $1100-1400 for Intel's top of the line processor. Then there's the hardware aspect, As the QX6850 has a TDP of 130W, it produces quite a bit of heat, meaning you'll need to invest in a decent cooling solution if you plan on doing any sort of overclocking. During our testing the QX6850 idled at 51C and jumped to 64C under load with the stock Intel cooling solution. With the Thermaltake V1, those temperatures dropped to 48C/60C, and under the Corsair Nautilus500 we saw 43C/55C at the default clock speed of 3GHz.