Intel Delivers Its Fastest Enthusiast Quad-Core Processor

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, April 09, 2007, 01:30 PM EDT

INTEL DELIVERS ITS FASTEST ENTHUSIAST QUAD-CORE PROCESSOR

Added Performance Welcomed by 'Hardcore' PC Users and Developers

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Apr. 9, 2007 - Intel Corporation today advanced its enthusiast-level quad-core processor family with the introduction of the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800, the company's twelfth quad-core processor offering. Running at 2.93 GHz -- the fastest native clock speed yet reached with the Intel Core microarchitecture for the quad-core desktop -- this addition to Intel's innovative processor family sets new standards for desktop PC performance. The Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 is ideal for those gamers, digital design professionals and enthusiasts who crave the highest performing computers they can get their hands on.

At the recent Game Developer's Conference* in San Francisco, several software developers demonstrated new games that have been "threaded" to take advantage of multiple processor cores and threads. This increased performance can help deliver smoother gameplay, more realistic game effects and more lifelike artificial intelligence. Some of the most exciting titles of the year such as Crytek's Crysis*, Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander* and Flagship's Hellgate London* have undergone substantial joint engineering efforts with Intel to use more than two processing threads to their advantage.

One of the first games ever developed for the PC is also entering the quad-core era. "The latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator* X, Service Pack One (SP1), due out later this month, is a great match for the extreme multi-core processing delivered by the new Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor," said Phil Taylor, Flight Sim Program Manager, Microsoft Game Studios. "Flight Sim X SP1 greatly increases multicore utilization and will scale as more threads are available leading to reduced load times as well as frame rate improvements and greater visual complexity during flight. The Flight Simulator team at Microsoft is pleased to work with Intel to provide our end users with a great gaming experience." READ MORE...

Our evaluation of this new processor is available right here.

Tags: Intel, Core, processor, quad-core, CES, test, process, Liver, live, enthusiast, fast, Ive, SIA, pro, SSO

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com