Quote Originally Posted by atlr View Post
Cool. Nice observations.

I think you can see this progression of lower temperatures needed for stable higher frequency operation in Intel's specs. The Thermal Specification for the highest frequency processor is lower than that of lower frequency CPUs.

A Q6600 G-0 has
Thermal Design Power: 95W
Thermal Specification: 71C

A QX6850 G-0 has
Thermal Design Power: 130W
Thermal Specification: 64.5C

I think a correct re-wording of these specs for a Q6600 G-0 is that a CPU cooler must dissipate thermal energy at a rate of 95W to keep Tcase temperatures under 71C to prevent throttling at 2.4GHz.

Likewise, the QX6850 G-0 needs a cooler to dissipate 130W to keep Tcase below 64.5C for 3GHz operation.

Just to add to your info above, they've changed the Xeon parts to some new specs recently...

A X3220 G-0 has (equiv to Q6600)
Thermal Design Power: 100W
Thermal Specification: 85C

A X3210 G-0 has (equiv to non-existent Q6400 @2.13GHz, 8x multiplier)
Thermal Design Power: 100W
Thermal Specification: 85C

...so it looks like the server parts have more headroom.