Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S: A New 65W Quad-Core

Final Words: So Who Should Buy This Thing?

Over the past few pages of performance, power and efficiency graphs we’ve proved that the Q9550S offers lower power, but also lower efficiency than other Intel CPUs. In particular, the Core i7 is a far more power efficient processor thanks to its significant performance advantage. Then why on earth would anyone ever consider the Q9550S or any of the other new 65W parts for that matter?

The answer lies in the thermals. I took a few of the chips and used CoreTemp64 to record temperature data while running Prime95. I ran Prime95 for 10 minutes and averaged the temperatures of all four cores.

Remember the Core i7-920 that’s got such better power efficiency than the Q9550S? Well that doesn’t really matter if the CPU puts out too much heat. The i7-920’s cores got up to around 73C, the QX9770’s cores managed just under 60C while the Q9550S ran at a “cool” 49.8C.

For most users this doesn’t matter, the Core i7-920 would spend more time at idle (31.3C) than the Q9550S since it can complete tasks faster. Where this does matter however is if you’re running in a thermally constrained environment; for example, an all-in-one PC.

The Q9550S and the other 65W quad-cores are designed for OEMs or anyone trying to cram as much power into a very small space. I’d expect that these CPUs would be better suited for something like an iMac rather than a normal sized desktop. The problem is that in a normal desktop you’ve got more than enough room to keep even a Core i7 cool, but in some of these OEM designs (like the iMac or Dell XPS One 24) there’s hardly enough room for a normal heatsink and fan.

The S-series looks like it’s designed to allow OEMs to offer higher clocked quad-core CPUs in smaller form factors. If you’ve got a normal sized case however, there’s no reason to pay the price premium for one of these processors. If you do care about energy efficiency, you’d be much better off spending the extra $100 on a Core i7 system instead.