[x5pilot]

I recently had the oppertunity to get my hands on Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (C1 stepping).
I popped out my trusty Q6600 from my Asus P5K-E board and ran some benchmarks expecting to see impressive results.
To my dismay the results came back at lower than from my (overclocked) Q6600 and really expected much better from the QX9650 even at the stock setting.
As the new chip can be returned (within 7days) I'm still playing with it but was wondering if anyone can shed some light on what I may or may not being doing right/wrong?
Is it possible for a new chip to underpreform (faulty) from new?

My system spec is: 2GB 800Mhz Kingston Ram, P5k-E, 8800GTX, Artic Freezer 7 Pro, Vista 32bit.
Yes, I do have the latest BIOS installed for the ASUS MB

For now I'd like to get a stable benchmark at stock settings on the QX9650 before I start venturing into overclocking it. All the settings in the BIOS are set to Auto in the BIOS for now.

As I type this I'm testing the chip cores with Orthoes to see how it behave - all temps and indicators are normal for the last 9 hours.


Thanks in advance for any help.

[RaV3N]

Did you check the multiplier?

[SkiBum1207]

well what was the Q6600 overclocked to? try running the q6600 at stock and then compare, but comparing a OCed chip to a non OCed chip isnt exactly fair, even if one is much nicer than the other.

[Automiketic]

like skibum said, you cant really compare the two. what did u have your q6600 oc'd to? the qx9650 is only a 3.0ghz processor so its only a little more than half a ghz faster. if you were running your q6600 at 3.4 its obviously gonna produce better results than a quad at 3.0. they are both quads, yes the qx has better silicon and higher l2 cache but that doesnt make it way faster than a regular quad. qx's handle a little more voltage and have a huge amount of room to play in the multi thats where the fun comes in, im sure youll b able to clock that qx much better than the q6600. good luck

[x5pilot]

Hi guys,
Thanks for the responses.
My Q6600 was clocked up to 3.4Ghz air cooled.
OK, I accept that the QX9650 at stock is going to give me a benchmark slightly similar to a 3.0Ghz Quad Q6600 but I guess there was a part expectation that the chip would be a hell of a lot faster even at its standard 3.0?!

I've managed to bump it up to 4.03Ghz by adjusting the multiplier to 10/400 however, the benchmarks I run are still not making sense to me.

For example, I use the 3DMark Vantage and get a cr@ppy CPU score of P7599 which places it way down the list of "similar" systems on the ORB list -
Or am I misinterpreting the figures? If I look at TomsHardware.com the CPU score for the QX9650 is stating 12593 for the CPU test for Vantage??!

I suspect I'm reading the scores wrong, I know I've not got the faster PC (yet!) but the top systems on 3DMark Vantage are in the P30000 range??

Help me see straight please guys!!