HotHardware reviews Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor
What goes faster than a Core 2 Quad processor at 3GHz? Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, nothing from AMD at the moment. Thankfully Intel has a few more "MHz in the can", or so to speak. Actually, it appears they may have a lot more, as you'll see in the pages that follow. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though. First, Intel had to lay the platform foundation to support higher performance. After all, a faster engine is no good to you, sitting idle.
The introduction of the Intel P35 "Bearlake" chipset and soon-to-be-released X38 chipset back in May, allowed a platform goose of the Front Side Bus speed to a snappy 1,333MHz and ushered in support for DDR3 memory synchronously, pun intended, at the same speed in concert with the FSB. It also afforded Intel the opportunity to characterize their Core 2 Quad architecture at the same quad-pumped FSB speed--perhaps a lot like many enthusiast overclockers have already been doing for a while now? You can bet on it...
[read more]
