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
SYSMark 2007 Performance
Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine.
With more cores and cache, the Core i7 980X inches ahead of the Core i7 975 in SYSMark 2007. Most of the SYSMark tests show the two Extreme Edition processors trading blows. Sometimes the higher latency cache penalizes the 980X, sometimes its size helps. In lightly threaded workloads, you can expect the 980X to perform like a Core i7 975 - in other words, not bad at all.
Compared to the QX9770, the 980X only 16% faster. That's not terrible given that the QX9770 is 2 years old at this point. There may just be some value in these Extreme Edition parts.
The old Pentium EE 955 can deliver around 40% of the performance of today's 980X. While its two cores and 4 threads were impressive for their time, these days you get the same core/thread count out of a $100 CPU.
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JumpingJack - Monday, March 15, 2010 - link
THG's power numbers are often screwed up, I would not trust them.Good sites for power numbers include this, TR, Xbitlabs, and lost circuits. I have never been able to come close to any of Tom's numbers even with identical HW.
OBLAMA2009 - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
how come anand says he's excited about it and then later he says he'd never spend money on itpersonally i wouldnt spend that much on a cpu but i think this thing would be a good chip for so long that if you did it wouldnt be a bad deal even at 1000. itll probably be the close to the fastest chip for the two years
Paladin1211 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I can't figure out why the i7 870 only gets 70.6 fps in WoW while the i7 920 gets 85.5 fps. Higher clock, higher turbo, same hyper threading, integrated PCIe lanes... yet the 920 is 21% faster.Someone enlightens me please :(
JumpingJack - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
That's a good question .... it shouldn't.p05esto - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I'm going through withdrawl. I've had my Core i7 920 since the day they were released and really want to upgrade, like yesterday. But I'm not spending $1k on a CPU, maybe $400 could work :) if they came out with something decent and overclockable to get near the extreme version. I feel like I'm stuck at the moment....I feel the need, the need for speed!!!bludragon - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Well it's a beast, no doubt about that. But the most interesting info here is that sandy bride is debuting as a mainstream part. Has this ever happened with a new cpu before? Is this just because they are going to start with less cores, or have they taken some other architectural departure?RamarC - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
btw, i'm trademarking "sexycore"Lazlo Panaflex - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
"I wonder where Intel will price the Core i7 970, allegedly also a 6-core Gulftown derivative"Hey Anand, if history is any indication, and there's no competition from AMD, I'll bet you a dollar that the 970 will retail for around $850 - the same price of the venerable mainstream Q6600 that was released a few months after the $999 QX6700... ;)
aigomorla - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
i heard it was gonna be near the 600 mark.It wont be cheaper then the 960, and it wont be more expensive then a 980X.
Robear - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
You start by saying, "I have to say that Intel's Core i7 980X is the first Extreme Edition CPU that I've ever gotten excited about. ... The 980X gives you its best regardless of what you throw at it. ... If money were no object, the Core i7 980X is clearly the best you can get."But then you conclude with a much more somber, "The Core i7 980X is such a difficult processor to recommend."
What really threw me for a loop, though, was this comment: "You could pick up a dual-socket Xeon board and a pair of quad-core Nehalem Xeons for a bit more than a X58 + 980X"
There are so many problems with that statement :( It's very un-anand-like.
Foregoing any assumptions about what you mean specifically, I haven't seen any 3.0+ GHz XEONs sub $1,000. Even then, I'm not convinced a dual-quad would even outperform the 980 unless you went with a couple of EPs, and that's way off the price mark. Your conclusion ends with a mild suggestion towards a platform you didn't benchmark. The 980 can put you at 3.6 GHz in a single-threaded app which you can't get from a dual-XEON.
The 980 truly is the best of both worlds, as you initially indicated.
Given that that the 960 is 3.2 GHz @ 4 cores is running ~$600, you can snag a whole 2 more cores, a speed boost, AND other 980-only perks for an extra $400. Think back to what the EE got you at its debut - another 10%-20% clock and an unlocked multiplier for something like a 100% markup over the next highest model.
This chip really seems like a bargain, but that's my opinion. I'm considering the 980X over a new 930 build just for the longevity it provides. It's just SO much power for the money. The simple fact that it puts it in the same league as a dual-quad XEON raises the hair on the back of my neck :)
Can you elaborate on a XEON system that would be comparable in performance and price to the 980? Maybe that would be a good article. I wonder what kind of performance hit you take with the QPI between two chips versus what you get with the 980. Skilltrail did okay, but the FB-DIMMs really hurt gaming. I think a 980 v. XEON would be a great article.