DriverHeaven.net: Intel Core 2 QX9770 and QX9650

PcMark Vantage

	Memory	TV/Movies	Gaming	Music	Comms	Productivity	Overall
QX9770/DDR3 1600	4609	4232	5728	5424	4877	5407	6035
QX9650/DDR3 1333	4336	4033	5476	5234	4621	5350	5554
QX6850/DDR3 1333	4321	4027	5551	5220	4632	5330	5527
QX6700/DDR3 1066	4001	3656	4610	4917	4152	4789	4921

PCMark Vantage may be Vista only and it may take a ridiculously long time to complete but it does really stress every major aspect of the system and as a result it has replaced PCMark 05 in our review suite.

Looking first at memory scores we see a similar trend to Sisoft Sandra. The two 1333MHz results are very close with the 1066 MHz result some way behind. As expected the 1600 MHz is the top performer. TV/Movie performance favours the high end QX9770 but the most notable figure is the 3656 achieved by the QX6700, it is considerably lower than the newer processors. Gaming clearly also favours the more recent processors and we really get to see just how much of a difference the 1333/1600FSB with faster memory and larger cache can make, a very tempting increase in performance for anyone on the older architecture. The music tests are a lot closer than gaming with very little to chose between QX9770 to QX6850 and only the QX6700 is lagging behind. The same trend continues through communications tests and productivity and only on hard drive performance can the 6700 compete.