X-bit labs

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 and Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processors: Quad-Core CPUs Gone Real! (page 9)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 11/01/2006 | 10:31 PM ]

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The latest versions of popular WinRAR archiving tool support multi-threading just fine. And Kentsfield is exactly what we need here: it ensures very decent performance boost.

The results in MATLAB suite do not get any better from the suite of four processor cores: the best result here belongs to Conroe based CPUs. However, I have to point out that Kentsfield doesn’t fall too far behind Conroe in applications that cannot take advantage of parallel data processing. The reason is the relatively small difference in working frequencies of the dual-core and quad-core processors: the top Kentsfield model is only one clock multiplier step away from Conroe – 266MHz.

We also decided to include a chess game benchmark that uses a popular Fritz algorithm to measure the CPU performance. The calculation of all possible moves for a given chess position turned out to be very easy to parallelize and hence could demonstrate the advantages of having four cores in the system. Really, if the working frequency is the same, then Kentsfield proves 94% faster than Conroe, which is close to the theoretical maximum.