INTEL Q9450 Core 2 Quad Processor

Ever since Intel released their Core 2 Duo line of computer chips, they've been winning the war for processor supremacy.  And not only at the high end of the spectrum, their more affordable dual and quad core chips have shown better performance than their AMD competition at similar price points which leaves consumers hard pressed to take the AMD route.  With their foot planted firmly on the neck of the competition, the boys in blue are unleashing a killer combo of budget quad cores that make AMD's new Phenom already look dated.

It's been a few months since the release of the high end Yorkfield processor, the QX9650 Core 2 Extreme.  Today 45nm quad cores are available for the masses as the Q9300, Q9450 and Q9550 processors hit the shelves.  HardwareLogic reeled in the new Q9450 Yorkfield and put it through our vicious benchmarking suite in order to see what it was made of.  Read on to find out if this processor was worth the wait.

If you've been eyeing the QX9650 with envy the past few months but could not force yourself to throw down a grand for it, this is probably the chip you've been waiting for.  With the success of last year's Q6600 quad core, enthusiasts hold high hopes of similar overclocking success with the Q9450.  The apparent road block is the modestly locked multiplier that will require supersonic front side bus speeds to achieve high clocks.  Speculation is now over so lets find out what this chip is capable of.

We covered Penryn's new features in detail with our review of the QX9650 and the Q9450 does share several characteristics with its big brother.  They have the same L1 and L2 cache size, identical voltage range and special features including the SSE4 video rendering instructions. 

The biggest difference between the two processors is the locked multiplier found on the Q9450, which is set to 8.  You can lower the multiplier to 7.5, 7 or 6 but it won't it won't go higher.  The core stepping is now at C1 with a lower thermal design power (TDP) of 95W and higher thermal spec of 71C.  What you need to know in a nut shell is that this processors will perform better and use less power than its 65nm counterpart.  This is due to new microarchitecture, double the number of transistors utilizing high k metal gates, more L2 cache, new SSE4 instructions, and lower power requirements.