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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LoneWolf15 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
[QUOTE]With up to 6 cores running at 3.46GHz, Gulftown is not only the fastest CPU in Intel’s lineup, it’s also the fastest quad-core Intel makes.[/QUOTE]I think you meant to say it's also the fastest "single-core" Intel makes.
yacoub - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
And for only one thouuuuusand dollars! What a deal!!
lol yeah, anyone who spent $999 on an X58 CPU can now spend $999 on a new cpu 18 months later. $2000 for two CPUs in the course of 18 months. How you can spin that as being a good thing boggles the mind. What a waste!
strikeback03 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Well, maybe you spent the ~$280 or so on a 920 in November 08, which you could now upgrade to the 980X if you wanted. Considering Intel's past history of supporting new processors on older motherboards (see, for example, P965 and Penryn) it is nice that this is supported, even if the upgrade is extremely expensive.BelardA - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Kinda sad and funny... when core 2 came out, it destroyed the P4 line and of course kicked AMD down bad.Even todays $65 intels and $45 AMDs (running about 2ghz) are still faster than those older Pentium EE chips. And what was sadder back then was that even AMD's $200 CPUs were still faster than the $1000 intels... unless your were doing 3D work and encoding video.
*sigh*
Thanks to intel's back-room deals with the major PC companies, the illegal activities has hurt competition. AMD is doing better today, but have little to work with. And we see what the lack of competition does such as ATI vs. Nvidia.
andyleung - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Why they keep the CPU frequency so high? All consumer quad cores go higher than 2.5GHz??? I really like Opterons, low frequency with more cores.Seriously I hope Phenom VI (I made it up, they may call it something else) could have a model of 6 cores with each running 1.2GHz.
My own usage is mostly programming in JEE + documentation, so I need more cores but not that fast, so I could save a few bucks on my electricity bill in a year. :)
yuchai - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
You can always underclock/undervolt if you don't need the performance from the extra speed but want the power savings.Note that this is the "Extreme" version, so it makes sense to have the fastest speeds possible. The mainstream versions that are coming will probably have lower clock speeds.
at80eighty - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Maybe I missed it - but would this have any predicted implications on the 920 price over this year span?I'm rebuilding a rig a component at a time and Im wondering if there would be much variance if I picked a 920 now or in Q4
/tard
IntelUser2000 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
"The first Core i7 did not power gate its L3 cache, Lynnfield added it and Gulftown has it as well."THANK YOU ANAND!!
No wonder this is my #1 favored site. :D
darkhawkff - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I don't know about anyone else, but I would have liked to have seen how this chip fares to overclocks of Intel's other Core i7 series. While I'm sure many people don't bother overclocking, I would wager that most people who visit this site do, and probably bought into the Core i7 920 series and overclocked it to 4 GHz or more. While I'm sure the Core i7 980X is a beast, I'd be more interested in seeing how it fares when overclocked parts are taken into account, because personally I see very little reason to make the jump from the 920 to the 980 after this review. 2 more cores are nice, but not when they are slower.B3an - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Anand, can you please include newer software for some benches. For instance you are still using 3DS Max 9 which was released in 2006.The latest is 3DS MaX 2010 (version 12).
I only ask because i'm sure that anyone who can afford this CPU can ceratinly afford the latest 3D rendering/modelling software. And besides that they might have better support/performance for these type of CPU's.