Intel Q8200 CPU

Intel’s newest budget Quad put to the test.

For many years, indeed from the start of modern computing, enthusiasts had been stuck with just the one core. Then things began to change. The Dual core arose, ushering in a new plateau of performance, as well as lifting that performance bar a little bit higher. And what we’re looking at today is the culmination of all that effort of chips past – the Quad.

Manufactured on the 45nm process that Intel has been using for the rest of their current wave of chips, there are millions of transistors packed into a relatively small space. To give you an idea of this size – more than two million 45nm transistors can be packed on to the period at the end of this sentence. Four megabytes of L2 cache is divvied up between the cores, only a third of the Q9xxx series’ twelve. A 95W TDP is similar to their other Quads, but due to the ‘value’ market of this chip, it only has a 7x multiplier. This small multiplier coupled with the 1333FSB means that any overclocking will place a larger strain on the motherboard than usual – a P35 or newer board would be perfect for this, though.

As this is a budget chip, virtualisation technology has also been stripped from the CPU – if you run virtual machines then look elsewhere.



This CPU comes with the usual Intel stock cooler, but with one important difference. There is a copper slug inserted as the base of the cooler, improving the heat transfer. While we couldn’t measure the temperatures (the Q8200 is so new that it wouldn’t detect properly), we did manage to grab the sound levels. Idle sat at a quiet 49.5dBA, while load became a louder 55.8dBA, and was just loud enough to be annoying. Keep in mind that when inside a case, this will probably be less so.

Whacking on the trusty TRUE, we pushed the FSB up to 486MHz and got the Q8200 to an impressive 3.4GHz, which is pretty amazing for a CPU with such a low multiplier. From a touch-test of the heatsink (to see how warm it was under load) it remained surprisingly cool, even when overclocked and under intense load.



This CPU is a great choice for those with a budget who want to get into Quad cores, without the heat or difficulty of most others. While it might not have the best multiplier or cache, for any gamer or hardcore user, this chip is one that won’t disappoint – especially if you can get it under $300.