Intel launches Penryn-based QX9650

Monday 29th October 2007, 11:38:00 PM, written by Arun

It still feels like yesterday - but no, Intel's launch of Conroe was actually 472 days ago. Following this reign of domination, however, it was finally time for Conroe to retire and leave the top spot for its younger brother, Penryn.

Intel has pulled in the launch of the QX9650 CPU from November 12th to today; however, availability has not been pulled forward and remains slated for the 12th. The CPU itself is clocked at 3GHz, like its predecessor the QX6850. While this might not seem particularly exciting, it does allow for easy clock-for-clock comparison between Conroe and Penryn-based CPUs.

Also, the QX9650's value proposition is arguably much better than the QX6850's anyway; idle and load power are both much lower, and overclocking expectations also have improved by a significant amount. In the end, it's a slight evolution over Conroe; nothing to complain about, really, and it certainly remains more impressive than AMD's last process transition with Brisbane (with both lower IPC and clocks).

Either way, our friends at Tech Report have the full scoop with plenty of benchmarks to go around, so follow the link if you want to read more about Intel's latest attempt at staying ahead of the game.

intel ± cpu, penryn, conroe

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