Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 review

Gaming Performance

Since games are only now starting to take advantage of dual-core processors, throwing in a quad-core processor does little to aid performance. The QX6850 takes the lead here only because it's clocked slightly higher.

F.E.A.R is predominantly GPU limited, so the Core 2 Extreme QX6850 has little chance to improve on performance. However, the slight clock advantage did help render a frame or two more than the competing processors. Most would find the advantage irrelevant as anticipated.

Quake 4 and UT2004 are pretty much maxed out and the 3.0GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850 processor only produced a few more frames per second in these two games.