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Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad-Core Benchmarks
Slimpickin writes "Intel gave access to quad-core Kentsfield-based systems to select members of the press at IDF. The embargo has been lifted on a preview of performance numbers with the new 2.66GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor. HotHardware showcases Intel quad-core performance from a few different angles, from digital video processing and encoding, to 3D modeling and rendering, along with a few of the more standard benchmarks. the new Intel quad-core puts up performance numbers, depending on the application, at nearly double the performance of a 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo processor based system. Core 2 Quad will also drop right into existing motherboards that are compatible with the Core 2 processor line."
The Core 2 Duo, clocked to 3GHz, has a L2 cache bandwidth of 96 gigabytes per second. Not to mention latency, HyperTransport has a latency on the level of a 100-200 nanoseconds, compared to the 14 cycle latency of the Core 2 Duo L2. This works out to a 23-46 times higher latency for HyperTransport. I would expect a more modern version of HyperTransport to bring this number down quite a bit, but still, it is probably safe to assume that HyperTransport will for the forseeable future have a latency well over ten times higher than a shared cache solution.