With the Q9550 Intel offers a quite powerful CPU for a moderate price: 4x 2.83 GHz are available for about €230. PCGH checks what the CPU is really capable of.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 im PCGH-Benchmark-Test [Source: view picture gallery]
The Penryn CPUs usually are produced with a 45 nanometer structure and in this case the quad-cores really are two dual-cores on a single chip. The reviewed Q9550 is closcked to 2.83 gigahertz and has 12 MiByte Level 2 Cache, split up into 2x 6 MiByte.
Basically the 45 nm Core 2 processors match their 65 nm predecessors, but SSE 4.1 was added. The Front Side Bus of current Core 2 versions (Wolfdale, Yorkfield) is 333 megahertz. The Extreme Edition QX9770 is the only one with FSB400.
| Intel desktop processors |
Core 2 Quad Q9300 |
Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
Core 2 Quad Q9450 |
Core 2 Quad Q9550 |
Core 2 Quad Q9650 |
Core 2 Extreme QX9650 |
Core 2 Extreme QX9770 |
| Core |
Yorkfield |
Yorkfield |
Yorkfield |
Yorkfield |
Yorkfield |
Yorkfield |
Yorkfield |
| Stepping |
M1 |
C1 |
C1 |
C1 |
E0 |
C0 |
C1 |
| Socket |
LGA 775 |
LGA 775 |
LGA 775 |
LGA 775 |
LGA 775 |
LGA 775 |
LGA 775 |
| Pins |
775 |
775 |
775 |
775 |
775 |
775 |
775 |
| Number of cores phys./log. |
04/04 |
04/04 |
04/04 |
04/04 |
04/04 |
04/04 |
04/04 |
| Core clock |
2.500 MHz |
2.667 MHz |
2.667 MHz |
2.830 MHz |
3.000 MHz |
3.000 MHz |
3.200 MHz |
| FSB clock |
333 MHz QDR |
333 MHz QDR |
333 MHz QDR |
333 MHz QDR |
333 MHz QDR |
333 MHz QDR |
400 MHz QDR |
| Multiplier |
7,5 |
8 |
8 |
8,5 |
9 |
9 |
8 |
| Free multiplier |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
| L1-Cache (total) |
4 x 64 KiByte |
4 x 64 KiByte |
4 x 64 KiByte |
4 x 64 KiByte |
4 x 64 KiByte |
4 x 64 KiByte |
4 x 64 KiByte |
| L2-Cache |
2 x 3.072 KiByte |
2 x 3.072 KiByte |
2 x 6.144 KiByte |
2 x 6.144 KiByte |
2 x 6.144 KiByte |
2 x 6.144 KiByte |
2 x 6.144 KiByte |
| TDP |
95 W |
95 W |
95 W |
95 W |
95 W |
130 W |
136 W |
| Maximum temp. |
71,4 °C |
71,4 °C |
71,4 °C |
71,4 °C |
71,4 °C |
64,5 °C |
55,5 °C |
| Production process |
45 nm SS hk |
45 nm SS hk |
45 nm SS hk |
45 nm SS hk |
45 nm SS hk |
45 nm SS hk |
45 nm SS hk |
| Transistors (Mio.) |
2 x 410 M |
2 x 410 M |
2 x 410 M |
2 x 410 M |
2 x 410 M |
2 x 410 M |
2 x 410 M |
For our tests we used an Nforce 750i motherboard, the Phenom processors were tested on a 790FX chipset. The operating system of our choice was the 32 bit version of windows Vista. Switching to 64 bit is planned for next month.
The Q9550 was tested with the following benchmarks: 3DMark 06, Cinebench R10, Anno 1701, Winrar and World in Conflict - so both, synthetic as well as practical benchmarks are covered.
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