Intel core 2 quad q9550 benchmark: UserBenchmark: Intel Core2 Quad Q9550

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In one breath Intel dramatically cut pricing on its Core 2 Quads. Intel’s swift response was even faster than NVIDIA’s after the RV770 launch. In the following breath however, Intel introduced new, lower power, and much higher priced Core 2 Quad CPUs. Enter the S-line.

TDP binning is something that AMD has done for quite a while on the desktop. The e-suffix parts (e.g. Phenom X4 9350e) are lower TDP parts, sold at a premium, to those users who need lower power consumption.

The Phenom X4 9350e and the 9150e are both 65W quad-core parts from AMD, while all of Intel’s quad-core CPUs have been 95W. Unwilling to allow AMD any sort of advantage, Intel has finally responded with 65W quad-core offerings of its own. The difference here is that while AMD’s 65W quad-cores are all significantly lower clocked Phenom processors, Intel’s 65W chips are available at up to 2.83GHz.

The Core 2 Quad Q9550S, Q9400S and Q8200S are all 65W TDP quad-core CPUs. They share the same specs as their non-S brethren. The only difference here is that instead of being 95W TDP parts, these CPUs can fit in a 65W thermal envelope.

Processor	Clock Speed	L2 Cache	L3 Cache	TDP	Price
Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition	3.20GHz	1MB	8MB	130W	$999
Intel Core i7-940	2. 93GHz	1MB	8MB	130W	$562
Intel Core i7-920	2.66GHz	1MB	8MB	130W	$284
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650	3.00GHz	12MB	—	95W	$316
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S	2.83GHz	12MB	—	65W	$369
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550	2. 83GHz	12MB	—	95W	$266
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400S	2.66GHz	6MB	—	65W	$320
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400	2.66GHz	6MB	—	95W	$213
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300	2. 50GHz	4MB	—	95W	$183
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200S	2.33GHz	4MB	—	65W	$245
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200	2.33GHz	4MB	—	95W	$163

The price premium for these new S-parts is huge. The Q9550S costs $103 more than the non-S, the Q9400S will set you back another $107 and the Q8200S is the most affordable with only an $82 premium. Note that in the case of the Q9550S and Q9400S you’re actually more expensive than the entry level Core i7-920.

Intel achieves these lower TDPs by running at a lower core voltage. With a mature enough manufacturing process, which Intel’s 45nm process is, it’s quite possible to produce CPUs that run much cooler than average and on a lower voltage. CPU power varies with the square of the voltage, so any savings in voltage can result in a non-linear decrease in power consumption.

Don’t get too excited however. If you remember back to our review of the 9350e/9150e we found that the decrease in power wasn’t worth the added price. Even Intel has come forward and told us that these are primarily OEM parts and not intended for the high volume enthusiast community. With Intel being honest in its intended purpose for these S-class CPUs we don’t really have to do much to keep them honest, we just need to confirm the findings.

To do this we took a subset of our regular CPU performance tests and looked at performance, power consumption and power efficiency. We measured total system power consumption at the wall outlet, which does admittedly lessen the impact of a lower power CPU but it should give us an idea of the real world benefit of these processors. If you want to see how the Q9550/Q9550S performs across our entire suite of benchmarks take a look at AnandTech bench, our new publicly available benchmark database.

…and in case you’re wondering, no, they don’t overclock any better. Our Q9550S couldn’t get any further than the Q9550 we used in our Phenom II review.

The Test

CPU:	AMD Phenom II X4 940 (3.0GHz) AMD Phenom 9950 (2.6GHz) Intel Core i7-965 (3.2GHz) Intel Core i7-920 (2. 66GHz) Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.2GHz/1600MHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3.00GHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S (2.83GHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (2.66GHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 (2.66GHz)
Motherboard:	Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) MSI DKA790GX Platinum (AMD 790GX)
Chipset:	Intel X48 Intel X58 AMD 790GX
Chipset Drivers:	Intel 9.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12
Hard Disk:	Intel X25-M SSD (80GB)
Memory:	G. Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12) G.Skill DDR2-1066 2 x 2GB (5-5-5-15) Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20)
Video Card:	eVGA GeForce GTX 280
Video Drivers:	NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64)
Desktop Resolution:	1920 x 1200
OS:	Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

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IndexAdobe Photoshop CS4 Performancex264 HD Video Encoding PerformancePOV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing PerformancePAR2 Multithreaded Archive Recovery PerformanceFallout 3 Game PerformanceFarCry 2 Multithreaded Game PerformanceFinal Words: So Who Should Buy This Thing?

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Review and testing of the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor | Read useful articles online

General information and characteristics of the processor

Intel has again updated its range with a rather attractive, judging by the characteristics, Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor. Here we will take a closer look at it.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 runs at 2.83 GHz with 12 MB L2 cache. Agree, this is an impressive amount of cache. The processor is made according to the 45 nm process technology, which should guarantee it high performance with a more modest heat dissipation compared to processors made using a thicker process technology, and a more advanced process technology should provide it with decent overclocking, which we will see a little later. Q9550 is the big brother of Q9450? from which it is distinguished only by a larger multiplier (9, as opposed to 8.5 for the Q9450) and a slightly higher clock frequency (2.66 GHz for the Core 2 Quad Q9450).

We state the above distinguishing features of the main Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550:

• the above-mentioned 45 nm technological standard;
• reduced power consumption and heat dissipation;
• implementation of support for SSE4.1 instructions;
• increase L2 cache up to 12 MB;
• optimization and improvement of execution unit algorithms.

The processor comes in a blue «wrapper» already familiar to us, with windows through which you can see the heat distributing cover of the processor and the boxed cooler. The design of the box itself is traditional for this model range. For those who do not yet know its characteristics and specifications when buying a processor, they can be read on the box without violating its integrity, the indicators of which are transparent stickers on the sides of the box with inscriptions from Intel.

The delivery set is quite common for Intel processors — it is a cooler with a copper core E21984-001, an installation guide, a 3-year warranty, which is standard for box versions of processors, and of course, an Intel branded sticker on the case..

Judging by the tests , this cooler looks relatively efficient and quiet. It is even capable of cooling even slightly overclocked quad-core processors.

All basic information can also be seen on the heat spreader cover of the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550:

• marking SLAWQ;
• operating frequency 2. 83 GHz;
• L2 cache 12 MB;
• system bus frequency 1333 MHz;
• requirements for the PCG 05A motherboard power module;
• country of origin.

The processor is «trained» to perform a number of proprietary Intel technologies:

• Enhanced Halt State (C1E) is used to turn off some processor blocks during its inactivity to reduce power consumption and, consequently, heat dissipation;
• Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology allows you to reset the supply voltage and clock speed during low processor load, thereby also saving energy;
• Intel Thermal Monitor 2 — monitors the temperature of the processor and, in case of reaching a critical heating point, a set of measures is taken, for example, a pulse skip cycle, the so-called Throttling, a decrease in the operating frequency and operating voltage, preventing system failure.

Intel Virtualization Technology allows virtual machines to access hardware resources.

All the main features of the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor can be seen in the CPU-Z utility.

Testing

The figure below compares the performance of the tested processor in comparison with other popular models in various applications:

The Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor looks quite proud compared to the models of its line in terms of speed and performance. According to the test results, it is on average 6% ahead of its younger brother Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450, but the differences between them are not so significant. The difference in clock frequency is 166 MHz, due to the 0.5 higher multiplier. But the rest of the processors in this line of Core 2 Quad are ahead by a good margin, thanks to a faster bus, a large amount of L2 cache, and a fairly high clock speed.

Unfortunately, when working with 3D applications, i. games, the leadership is intercepted by 2x core Intel processors, tk. developers of modern games do not work on optimizing games for multithreading. But on the other hand, our processor under consideration can show itself «in all its glory» when modeling and when working with digital data and processing them. for example, converting and processing music and video, and this processor has a good archiving speed.

Overclocking

It’s time to explore the overclocking potential of this processor. The overclocking potential of the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 with the revision C1 core was a pleasant surprise, since this was not expected from the C1. For stable operation of the processor at a frequency of 4038 MHz, it was necessary to increase the voltage on the core to only 1.384 V, which indicates that the processor is not working at the limit, because. the allowable voltage for this line is 1.45 V, that is, with such overclocking, it is quite possible to use the processor in 24/7 mode at a moderate heating temperature. The system bus was increased to 475 MHz. As a result, we have a 40% higher frequency than the nominal, which is quite good, especially considering that we get additional performance absolutely free.

The results of overclocking in computing applications and games are as follows:

As expected, the performance gain from overclocking reaches 40%, that is, once again we prove the direct performance scalability from overclocking. In gaming applications, of course, this is not observed, but this is due to the fact that less depends on the processor in games.

Conclusions

In general, summing up, we can say that the Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor, thanks to its high operating frequency, fast bus and large L2 cache memory, turned out to be very productive, and with moderate heat dissipation. As a result of a good stable overclocking, you can get up to 40% increase in performance from it. But due to the fact that most games are not optimized for 4-core multithreading, in games it fails to show such a high result, unlike computational tasks. In general, if we judge the majority of everyday tasks performed by an ordinary user, then the processor copes with them very quickly, so it will suit many.