Intel 'Penryn' Core 2 Extreme QX9770 and X48 chipset

Say hello to the 1600MHz desktop FSB

The QX9650 performed admirably at the stock 3.00GHz, but we were unable to overclock it on the Gigabyte as the beta Bios was a bit rudimentary.

PCMark05 Test - X38 Chipset

Longer bars are better

Switching to the QX9770 boosted performance by a small margin thanks to the extra 200MHz but it wasn’t at all clear that the move to the 1600MHz FSB yielded any extra performance in its own right.

iTunes AAC Conversion Test - X38 Chipset

Time in seconds to convert 150MB of MP3 files to AAC
Shorter bars are better

Time to overclock the QX9770, and as we had an Extreme Edition processor with unlocked multiplier we took the easy option and raised the multiplier to 9x and the clock speed to 3.6GHz. The performance increase was linear so we had another go and bumped the multiplier to 10x to give a 4GHz clock speed. This made the system slightly unstable so we had to increase the Northbridge and CPU voltages slightly to sort things out and now the QX9770 positively flew along.

DivX 6.7 Recode Test - X38 Chipset

Time in seconds to recode a 350MB AVI file
Shorter bars are better

The power draw at the socket increased by an enormous 115W under extreme load at the 4GHz speed, but despite that we had no trouble keeping the CPU cool with a Zalman heatsink, although we did have to increase the speed of the fan controller by a moderate amount.