With AMD’s high-end Phenoms–the 2.4 and 2.6Ghz parts–now delayed until Q1 2008, it’s probably just as good a time as any to take a look at what rival Intel has in the pipeline for early next year. That’s exactly what the folks at Hot Hardware did and judging by their benchmarks, AMD is in for some stiff competition. In Q1, Intel plans to unleash the QX9770 Core 2 Extreme CPU–the company’s new high-end Yorkfield. This behemoth is a 3.2Ghz, quad-core, 45nm, chip with a 1600MHz front side bus and 12MB of L2 cache. According to Hot Hardware, the QX9770 is between 5 and 8 percent faster than the company’s current top dog, the QX9650–and quite a bit faster than the 2.4Ghz Phenom 9700, which isn’t even out yet. Yikes! Of course, all of that power will come at a price–a steep $1200 to be exact–but in the world of CPU oneupmanship, affordability isn’t usually the name of the game.

For more on the QX9770:
– see this Hot Hardware article