Intel-Core 2 Extreme QX9770 reviews

Late last year we reviewed the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650. This was the first 45nm Penryn processor to slip out of Intel's laboratory and, while it was impressive, it had very similar performance to the previous Core 2 Extreme QX6850. That's no great surprise as both processors run at 3.0GHz on a 1,333MHz front side bus with 12MB of L2 cache.
The benefit of Penryn is a reduction in die size which leads to lower costs for Intel and, hopefully, greater power efficiency. It would be nice to think that Intel might pass on some of the savings in a price cut to the customer, but that's none too likely until it feels some pressure from AMD, which is unlikely to be any time soon judging by Phenom.
Intel has its plans in place and is progressing nicely, with the Core 2 front side bus going up from 1,066MHz to 1,333MHz while the fabrication process drops from 65nm to 45nm. That ought to be enough to keep everyone happy for the next few months, but hard on the heels of the QX9650 we have the QX9770.
This latest Core 2 Extreme processor runs on a new 1,600MHz front side which is actually a quad-pumped 400MHz bus, so the 8x clock multiplier results in a speed of 3.2GHz which is 200MHz faster than either the QX6850 or QX9650. Intel has raised the TDP from 130W for the QX9650 to 136W for the QX9770 but that's the extent of the changes.
Although Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and the others can add unofficial support to Intel products, it would be a bit rum if Intel were to do the same thing. Right now the only company that cannot build a motherboard that supports the QX9770 is Intel, as its DX38BT motherboard tops out at a 1,333MHz front side bus with support for 1,333MHz DDR3 memory.