While AMD is desperately trying to get Phenom into the retail segment, Intel is dropping one bomb after another that pretty much steals all the thunder from AMD. We’ve already looked at Intel’s slowest and fastest product based on the Penryn architecture. Today, Intel replaces their highest-end product from the 3.0Ghz QX9650 by the QX9770.

The QX9770 is based on the same Yorkfield Core that the QX9650 uses, however, Intel has upped the Front Side Bus from 1333MHz (Quad 333MHz) to 1600MHz (Quad 400MHz). So the QX9770 is basically a 8 x 400 = 3.2GHz CPU. Here’s what CPU-Z says about it.

Although the multiplier is the above picture shows between 6-8, it is unlocked at higher multiples as well- like any other Extreme CPU. Not much that’s new besides that upped FSB so we’ll dive straight into the benchmarks. We’re sort of in a transition with benchmarks at the moment so you will probably see some benches with only one or two CPUs while others with many CPUs. By the new year, we should have most of it settled.