Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - Penryn Ticks Ahead

Final Words

It's almost a bit disheartening to see Penryn launch at only 3.0GHz, as we know the architecture is capable of so much more. Unfortunately, what it looks like we're seeing here today is an artificial slowing of Intel's roadmap in response to the competition. While the tick-tock model is still very much in play and Nehalem is on track for a late '08 release, we're getting a 1333MHz FSB 3.0GHz QX9650 today instead of a 1600MHz FSB 3.2GHz Q9770 because there's no competitive reason for anything more. AMD's Phenom still isn't out and all indications are that we won't see 3GHz from AMD until sometime next year, meaning that Intel definitely doesn't have any real incentive to push the performance envelope this year.

Penryn really offers a wide range of performance; at worst it's no faster than its predecessor, but at best we're looking at low double digit performance gains. The biggest improvements seem to come in the encoding, 3D rendering and image manipulation applications, which makes sense when you look at the nature of the architectural improvements in Penryn.

The tremendous reduction in power consumption is very exciting and arguably one of the more desirable features of Penryn. The initial SSE4 results do look promising, but as we've often seen with new instructions, it's anyone's guess as to when we'll see widespread adoption of them from developers (and how much they will truly help in everyday use). The fact that we're able to bring you real world DivX performance results today though is promising.

Given that we're expecting a seamless price transition, it's tough to really find fault with Penryn. While the performance bumps can vary from minor to major, the cost should be nothing to the end user, in which case we can't complain. It's not the revolutionary step that Conroe was, but Penryn is merely making everything a little better all while driving power consumption down. So long as Intel keeps its prices the same, we're happy.

So what are the final words on it? As an evolution of Conroe, Penryn gets our vote. We just want it at lower price points, please.