Intel has officially revealed the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, a processor built on the 45nm Yorkfield/Penryn platform. The CPU, the first Penryn chip to be announced, is said to be a dramatic improvement on past quad-core processors such as the QX6850, and incorporates features such as SSE 4 instructions, hybrid gates built with hafnium, and 12MB of L2 cache, and increase from the earlier 8MB limit. In applications which support SSE 4 -- which does require specific coding -- users should receive a performance boost. The processor is by default clocked at 3GHz, and has a 1.33GHz front-side bus. Intel says that a November 12th release date is planned, although no prices have been published. [via Ars Technica]