Test Setup and Methods
Hardware Configuration

• Case: Vigor Force
• Power Supply: PCP&C Silencer 750 EPS12V
• Motherboard: Intel Desktop Board D975XBX (Bad Axe)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Varying MHz) | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (Varying MHz)
• Hard Drive: Western Digital 2500KS 7200RPM, 250GB with 16MB Cache Buffer
• Video: eVGA NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT KO Superclocked (580/1580)
• Memory: 1024MB (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2 PC2 6400 (TWIN2X1024A-6400)
• Optical Drive: Lite-ON SHW160P6S05
• Cooling: Vigor Monsoon II
• Audio: Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic

Software Configuration

• Motherboard BIOS: D975XBX2 Express
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
• Video Driver: NVIDIA ForceWare Version 91.47 WHQL Certified (September 14 release)

Methods
Testing methodology for this processor is slightly different than for the processors we’ve tested before, or any processor for that matter. The simple reason for this is that it has 4 cores; not 2, not 1, 4. In a perfect world, we could just run all of our normal benchmarks and see a representative 100% increase over dual core processors. Unfortunately, there are quite a few things stopping this from happening. One such thing is that just because there are now twice as many cores, there is not going to be twice the performance. There are several reasons for this in itself, but the main reasons are bottlenecks in and around the chip that prevent it from performing twice as good as a dual core. Another reason we won’t see the full potential of this chip is because most applications are single-threaded, meaning they are designed to run on one core. Without running multiple instances of a single-threaded application, the point of which is highly questionable, or running one of the relatively few multi-threaded applications, we aren’t going to see huge performance increases while adding more cores.

Therefore, our main focus in this review will be the multi-tasking performance of the processor. To clarify what we mean by this, we’re going to get our usual performance numbers in addition to numbers achieved when multitasking. We will be testing the processor in games and synthetic benchmarks, under normal and multi-tasking conditions, to get an idea of performance increases and decreases. Specifically, in synthetic benchmarks, our multi-tasking of choice will be running three communications programs and one instance of Prime95. In gaming benchmarks, we will be loading the processor with streaming audio, two communications programs, steam downloading games, and one lovely instance of Prime95. This will allow us to record performance hits with each processor to see how good they are at multi-tasking.

Also, before we start, it should be noted that the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 ships with a clock speed of 2667MHz. We will be testing the performance at this setting first, and then overclocking it to 2933MHz in an effort to go apples-to-apples with its predecessor, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2933MHz). Oh, and speaking over overclocking, we will also be overclocking these processors to the maximum stable speed. For reference, it just so happened that both processors ended up at the same overclocked speed, but that is more a result of the motherboard than the processors themselves. We will touch more on that in the overclocking section. Now let’s take a look at the applications we will be using to test the Core 2 Extreme QX6700.