The Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Processor

When it comes to Intel processors things are pretty quiet as nothing new has been recently released and a price change hasn't happened in months. This year we have reviewed the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor, which is aimed at the entry level quad-core market, and fastest mainstream quad-core processor: the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor. Priced at $169.99 and $274.99, respectively, both are fast processors, but there is a processor available that is priced between these that could be right for your next system. At $229.99 the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 has four processing cores running at 2.66GHz, 6MB of shared L2 cache and a 1333MHz Front Side Bus (FSB).

As you can see from the March 15th, 2009 pricing sheet above, the Intel Q8300 and Q8200 processors have just 4MB of L2 cache.  For those that want more cache you can move up to an Intel Q9300 or Q9400 processor as those processors have 6MB of L2 cache, which is a 50% improvement. For those that want even more performance, the Q9550 and Q9650 offer 12MB of L2 cache. AS you can see price and CPU clock frequency also increase as the cache size increases, so depending on what you do on your computer will determine which processor you really need.

The Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 was released in the Fall of 2008 and has manufacturing availability for 7+ years, which means this processor will be an important one for the benchmark charts. The Q9400 has a Thermal Design Power (TDP) rating of 95W, which is on par with the other desktop quad-core processors.

The processor I have in my hands today is an R0 stepping with the sSpec number SLB6B. According to Intel the core voltage on this processor is 0.850v - 1.3625v, but as you can see above it was running at a core voltage of 1.192v on the ASUS motherboard.

Let's take a look at the benchmarks to see how the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 does.