History of Computers - Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700

The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 was released to a enthusiastic crowd on November 2, 2006. Boasting four cores capable of running at speeds anywhere from 2.66GHz all the way to 4.00GHz, it was the first desktop compatible quad-core cpu to be released to the public.

Hundreds of billions of transistors are crammed within the QX6700

Overview

Intel created the QX6700 by combining the architecture of two core 2 Duos into a single die. While this proved to make a processor with a significantly higher benchmarking capabilities than any of its predecessors, it was an impractical and incredibly expensive alternative to its dual-cored competition on the market. At over $1000 upon its debut, compared to an E6300 it proved to far more expensive for its performance than it should have been. Part of the reason for its impracticality was that the 8 MB of L2 memory cache wasn’t unified as it is with Core 2 Duo processors. Instead, it has two 4 MB L2 memory caches, the first one was shared by cores 1 and 2 and the second one was shared by cores 3 and 4. Because of this there were performance issues with non-multi-threaded applications due to the inability of the cpu to give all of the L2 cache's power to a single core. The QX6700 was not in any case defective though, and spurred Intel to the holder of the most powerful commercially available processors.

While it set back customers a small fortune, there was nothing unimpressive about its performance.

Significance

Compared to any of the previous dual-core chips released by either Intel or AMD the QX6700 was heads and shoulders above the competition, and forced AMD to pursue a more advanced architecture, leading to the release of the Phenom and Phenom II CPU line. Intel came back with the introduction of the i7 and i5 CPUs, and the two giants still continue to clash, releasing newer and better technology every day. The largest importance of the QX6700 was the introduction of processing power that had been unmatched and forcing chip producers to entering a new era of quad-cored personal computing.

External Links

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/395/5

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/412/19/

Page Creator: Logan Elliott