The Intel Core2 Extreme quad-core CPU offers the best in computer performance today. Four cores will carry you four times as far, and you sure have to pay for this level of performance.
At the end of the Pentium 4's era, there was an AMD vs Intel battle to speed up processors to extreme levels. When processors became hot enough to cook on, there was obviously something that had gone wrong. Intel was quick to release a dual core Pentium, and then its Core2 range. The Core2's managed to bring power consumption back to sane levels and regain much of Intel's street cred.
After dual-core, the obvious next step is quad-core. As the technologies to produce the internals of a CPU get more sophisticated, so more cores can be stuffed into a single processor. But is there a tradeoff?
Intel Core2 Extreme offer a huge performance leap over their smaller brothers and sisters. By definition, the Extreme series leave the bus and multiplier so they can be adjusted by the user. This is useful for those who like to over clock, but not for the vast majority of desktop computer users who just want things to work.
This processor offers a large 12MB L2 cache, which amounts to 3MB per core. This is an increase of 50% of what is found in the other dual and quad-core processors in the range. This is a real performance booster, as L2 cache allows information to be stored close to the processing core, for much faster operations on data.
A new motherboard will be necessary, look for one that supports DDR3, to really stay ahead.
When building a super-fast computer for gaming or heavy duty office work with processor intensive programs, this is a processor worth considering. Stay ahead of the curve, but pick something else from the range if you want value for money.
No comments:
Post a Comment