FiringSquad reviews Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor
Up until a few years ago, clock speed was the number one barometer used by many to judge a CPU's performance. It was a pretty simple formula: higher CPU clock speeds means better performance. With their Netburst Pentium 4 architecture, Intel in particular was shooting for breakthrough clock speeds. Intel had hoped to eventually hit 10GHz with Netburst. As you all certainly know by now though, Intel's plans for Netburst were never fully realized; ultimately the Pentium 4 never hit 4GHz.
While clock speed is certainly still important today, both AMD and Intel have realized that clock speed isn't everything. After all, both companies have hit brick walls in frequency scaling with their CPU architectures in the past. This dilemma presents an interesting challenge to both companies - how do you dramatically improve CPU performance without relying on hitting higher clock speeds? The answer both have come up with is simple: integrate more processing cores into the CPU's die. With two CPUs built into the same CPU die, the CPU can perform twice the amount of work as a conventional single-core CPU...
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