The Core i7 980X Review: Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 11, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Extreme Edition: 2010 vs. 2008 vs. 2005
Last year I dusted off two CPUs from 2005 and included them in Bench - the Pentium 4 660 and Pentium Extreme Edition 955. You can still compare any modern CPU to those chips in Bench, but to show how far we've come I've included the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 in today's review.
Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (left) and Pentium 4 660 (right)
When it was brand new, the 3.46GHz Pentium EE 955 cost $999. Five years later, it gets to go up against its namesake carrying the same price tag.
I've also included the Core 2 Extreme QX9770, the fastest Core 2 Quad processor that was ever sold:
In 2008 the 3.2GHz chip sold for over $1000 and remains the only desktop Intel CPU to require a 1600MHz FSB. It was indeed the last of a dying breed.
| Motherboard: | ASUS P7H57DV- EVO (Intel H57) Intel DP55KG (Intel P55) Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-UD5P (AMD 790FX) |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) Corsair DDR3-1333 2 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 (Vista 64) ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7) NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Windows 7 x64 |
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aigomorla - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
W3680 will be a workstation hexcore @ 3.2ghzIm guessing since its a 3600 series, it will be a 1 x QPI, so it will not work in tandium on a DP board.
Xeons are uber expensive tho.
And this one if its gonna be priced like the W3580's is gonna have a price of around 1499.
:X
Rev1 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I know the OC's were on stock cooling but being this chip starts out @ 3.33 ghz and having a smaller 32nm size, the OC capability seems very underwhelming. I heard this chip is good for extreme overclockers because they did away with the cold boot bug. This thing probably puts out to much heat for any current air or wc setup to get a good oc out. That being said i dont see replacing my D0 920 anytime soon.aigomorla - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
come to our cpu and overclocking forum.http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=20576...">http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=20576...
Or read one of my comments with a forum link.
I showed people what it can do on higher voltages, when you take heat away from the equation of being the limited value.
Hacp - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
With the 800 dollar premium over an I7 920, why don't you just build a second 920 system instead!aigomorla - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=20450...">http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=20450...;)
I welcome you guys to join our forums.
You'll see more info on stuff on the OC potentials in that preview.
atfuser - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Looks like the i7-860 is where gamers and people who run lots of multicore apps want to spend their money. Gamers will save $750 and will see almost no difference in performance.RaistlinZ - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Yes, gamers will still be more than satisfied with their i7 920's @ 4Ghz. Especially considering those chips are only $200 at Microcenter these days.I just hope the upcoming Xeon CPU's will have more of a mainstream price.
quickbunnie - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I think the L4D performance is actually due to the extra cores, as source engine games have n-1 multithreaded scaling. It's been shown to have diminishing returns past 3-4 cores, so a 6% bump for an extra 2 cores makes more sense to me than the extra cache, considering no other games show this level of performance increasevailr - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
What happens if you put this 6 core CPU in a non-upgraded bios X58 board? Do you then have the minimal functionality to be able to flash the bios to the updated version? Or does the system fail completely, to even show anything on the video display?Just wondering...
aigomorla - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
If your bios can not handle gulftown, it will just refuse to post.eVGA boards are even more picky. If you somehow manage to get a hold of an A0 stepping gulftown, you can not use the same bios on a B0 or B1 gulftown.
The b0 and b1 are the retail versions, while the A series were pure evaluation / testing samples.
Some asus boards should support gulftown without bios updates, however its still recommended u get one.
And if u guys come into our forums, you will see i pushed one up to 4.4ghz with HT ON, @ 1.388 vcore, so i think my 980X is better then the one Raja has.
Sorry Raja.. :P