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Written by Vladimir Dimitrijevic
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Monday, 30 March 2009 |
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Page 1 of 3  If you thought that nothing interesting is going to happen on Socket 775 scene after Core i7 was promoted, we can only tell you that you have made a wrong assumption. Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPUs are still very fast and, to be quite honest, enough for most today tasks. Intel decided to continue with optimizations of Core 2 Quad models and results are presented in form of model Q9400s that we got in our test lab.
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What is LinX
We have mentioned many times Prime95 application in many variants (Ortos, multiPrime95) that we use for testing stability and bechmarking of CPUs. Recently, new application has emerged that has similar functions to Prime95 and we found it that it is better solution.
Main advantage of LinX is the fact that it uses Intel Linpack algorithm. Intel, obviously, knows how to “attack” its CPU and to test its stability. It is designed to test performances of CPU while calculating GFlops (billion of floating point operations per second). Main advantage of LinX is the fact that it isn’t optimized too much so it makes CPU use all its resources. Beside that this test is great for memory testing because any sign of instability will show itself in this scenario. Application is still in development phase and it can run even on AMD CPUs. LinX will also detect operating system type: 32-bit or 64-bit.
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Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400s is direct descendant of C2Q Q9400 model. Probably you have noticed that only difference is in letter “s” at the end of marking. That suffix means that this is CPU with lower power consumption or smaller TDP (Thermal Design Power). TDP is lowered for 30W, so if we know that TDP of “normal” Q9400 is 95W it is obvious why we were interested into this “new” Q9400s. Intel is following “green” initiative that has gaining momentum all around the world and this new low power consumption CPU is their contribution. If you don’t understand how big improvement this result is, let us remind you on the fact that TDP of E8000 series of dual core CPUs is 65W and this new quad should have similar TDP. With CPU we also got in the package box cooler that resembles coolers that were shipped with E2000 series of CPUs. Main difference compared to those coolers is lack of copper cooler base. Despite that, during all our tests (especially LinX) this CPU had never crossed 65 degrees Celsius which is great result since low profile cooler is made entirely of aluminum.
Lower consumption didn’t have any effect on performances and those are identical to tested Q9400. This new Q9400s has also the same basic characteristics as older brother of his: 6MB L2 cache and 333MHz FSB. It is operating at 2.66GHz with multiplier 8. Maybe oveclockers among you won’t like too much this multiplier that is set lower than usual but the reality has shown that there is nothing to worry about. On our test motherboard we have managed to reach 460MHz FSB and maintain perfect stability which resulted with operating our sample Q9400s at 3680MHz. System did manage to boot up even at FSB set at 470MHz but system was unstable. Default voltage for this CPU is 1.16V while we raised that value at 1.36V to achieve stability during overclock. With this voltage you won’t need some sort of mega cooler for CPU. Instead, any cooler that is slightly better than box solution will do the job. Temperature of our CPU under load (LinX) with Thermalright HR-01 Plus cooler mounted and rotating at 1000RPM didn’t go over 65 degrees Celsius. This is great result since older brother (Q9400) was reaching temperatures that were for 10 degrees higher under same conditions.
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Processors 
