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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DarkUltra - Saturday, March 20, 2010 - link
I would love to see a task manager screenshot during the different multi-threaded benchmarks, also games, so we can see how it utilizes the six cores and two threads per core?drewintheav - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
The INTEL i7 980X has dual QPI's and will run in a dual socket mainboard!!!Such as the EVGA W555 / Classified SR-2
magnes79 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Where did you get that information from? On intel website it says 1 QPI. from what I know and what always was the case all i7 series are single QPI's.THats why you have Xeon series with double QPI.
Please do not post incorrect information, because people get stuck with expensive equipment not able to use it properly.
Aenslead - Saturday, March 13, 2010 - link
This has got to be THE most worthless, useless, expensive pice of silicon I've ever seen. An average of 13% performance increase in SOME apps AND a decrease in gaming?Give me that 1k, and I'll get myself a GTX480, an SSD, and some DDR3 modules that will give me 2x, 3x or Xx times more performance in EVERYDAY use.
Thank goodness for CUDA, Stream, OpenCL and all that cr4p.
Cableaddict - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Aenslead,I think you're missing the whole point of this cpu. It wasn't built to go fast. It was built to due serious multi-tasking. The pro A/V crowd will buy these in droves.
I can't wait to get one for my digital audio system. It will be worth every penny.
Aenslead - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
I understand your point.I do video editing myself as well as some animation, but thanks to Furry Ball (Maya) and Elemental plugins for AE and Premiere, I've come to love GPU power more than ever.
I've seen what's comming for CS5 and I do not see CPU playing an important role there.
I see very few people, like yourself, actually finding bennefit from these product launches - same goes to PII X6, although I believe this one will be FAR better priced and far more atractive.
Best,
dastruch - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Now that's what I'm saving some money for.- Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Wondering how the i7 980X would do against a 6 core Opteron,Tech Report did some benchmark numbers when the 6 core Opterons (server) first came out,going head to head againt Xeons..interesting results when you compare the new i7. This is a rough estimate, but if AMD's 6 core is based on the 6 core Opteron this could be interesting..
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/11">http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/11
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/7">http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/7
complete report
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/1">http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/1
- Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
asHsilverblue - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
I'm somewhat confused as to why, on your review, the PII X4 965 seems rather greedy, but on Toms' review of the i7-980X, AMD's offering does much better.Toms' test setups for the X58:
Gigabyte X58A-UD5 (LGA 1366) X58 Express, BIOS F4
Corsair 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 @ DDR3-1333
Yours:
Intel DX58SO (Intel X58)
I'm going to presume Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20)
Toms' test setup for AM3:
Asus M4A79T Deluxe (Socket AM3) 790FX/SB750, BIOS 2304
Corsair 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 @ DDR3-1333
Yours:
Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-UD5P (AMD 790FX)
I'm going to presume Corsair DDR3-1333 2 x 2GB (7-7-7-20)
Toms' has the PII X4 965 idling 21W lower than the 980X and 32W lower at load (using Prime95), however you have the 965 idling 10W HIGHER and using 4W more at load. Is Prime95 just favouring AMD or is there some sort of problem with your 790 rig? I will concede that the AMD rig will be using less RAM on the Toms' setup which may account for some of the difference.
One thing to note: up the resolution on a CPU-limited title such as Left4Dead and the performance gap narrows markedly. Enable AA and there's no difference at all. For graphically intensive games and/or highest settings, it won't make sense to fork out $1000 no matter how good the CPU.
It'd be nice to see how good this CPU is with multiple graphics cards... :)