Hardwarezone posted a write up on making the current Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme X6800 even more Extreme. From the looks if it, the author also suffers into thinking that the Extreme series is just a clock frequency bump and discounted the fact that it has full 4MB L2 cache versus 2MB on two mainstream market segment processors (Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6300/E6400), and upward open multiplier versus locked frequency on the other two performance market segment processors (Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6600/E6700). Heck, it's like having a free upgraded CPU by just changing the multiplier from 11x to 12x for a 3.2GHz, and 3.4GHz with a 13x multiplier. No more tweaking the RAM ratio, RAM timing, locking this and that, but just change the multiplier for instant clockability. Expand if you would like to read more...Putting 'Extreme' back into the Extreme
In our Intel Core 2 (Conroe) Performance Review article, we briefly mentioned about the initial rumors of the Core 2 Extreme clocks. There was talk about it debuting at 3.33GHz on a 1333MHz PSB, but of course that didn't happen. While we're in no position to pout about the Core 2 Extreme X6800, especially after seeing its performance, we couldn't get rid of that nagging feeling that the X6800 just wasn't extreme enough since it was just a multiplier increment over the regular Core 2 Duo E6700.
We wanted to satisfy our curiosity as to how the Core 2 Extreme would perform if it did meet the speculated specifications on release. Our overclocking platform of choice - Gigabyte's GA-965P-DQ6. At the present moment, we find that many initial Core 2 motherboards' BIOS do not properly detect Core 2 processor capabilities, sometimes restricting multiplier selection and others lack the necessary voltage and tweaking selections. The GA-965P-DQ6 happens to be one of the better boards to support the unlocked X6800 and possess great voltage granularity, a perfect combination for our overclocking efforts.
Source:Intel Core 2 Extreme: 1333MHz PSB and Beyond
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