Application Performance
The new QX9650 provided a reasonably impressive performance gain over the QX6850 in Adobe Photoshop as it was 13% faster. It is worth mentioning that the QX6850 holds a similar performance lead over the Q6600, but there is a 600MHz discrepancy between those two.
The QX9650 provided a marginal 3% gain in Pinnacle Studio, though this is still a positive result.
The QX9650 was back in winning form defeating the QX6850 by a 13% margin in QuickTime Pro as it completed the test 44 seconds faster than the QX6850.
3D Studio Max allowed the QX9650 to provide an 8% performance gain when compared to the QX6850 (3 second saving).
The above results are measured in KB/s and as you can see the QX9650 was impressive as it sustained a throughput speed of 2162KB/s, making it 16% faster than the QX6850. Those that often work with large compressed files will no doubt find a 16% performance gain very worthwhile.
The Cinebench test was the only one included here that didn't award the QX9650 with a clear performance advantage over the QX6850. While the QX9650 was faster, the margin was insignificant.