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
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Our Photoshop test is multithreaded, but its performance doesn't scale linearly with core count. Despite that fact, the larger L3 cache helps the 980X complete the test 16% faster than the Core i7 975.
Go back two years and the 980X is 50% faster than the Core 2 Extreme QX9770. Go back five years and then we're in the hundreds of percentage points. The Core i7 980X is the new holy grail for photographers and image editors.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
That depends on the board I believe. Intel's DX58SO may not post without the BIOS update.Take care,
Anand
Jammrock - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
One small title error. Intel's Xeon X7000-series CPUs are the first hex-core processors from Intel. Those are server only, but they are out there.http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36947&cod...">http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36...16M+Cach...
Gulftown is the first desktop hex-core though.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Corrected :)Take care,
Anand
artifex - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
3x cores and threads for less than 2x the TDP of their dual cores? sexy!Isaac the k - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I must say, I do find this rather exciting.But since I'm running a poorly threaded data-simulation app with extremely high throughput, I'm debating whether the extra latency vs. the larger shared cache could potentially harm performance.
If it wouldn't, I might actually request one for what my office is doing right now...
mikeblas - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Aren't the Xeon E7450, Xeon L7455, and Xeon X7460 all six-core Intel processors that were released before this processor?semo - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
If I understand this right Nahalem is the name of the micro architecture and not any CPU in particular. On page 2, the first die shot is captioned Nehalem. Shouldn't it be Bloomfield?BTW Anand, you are doing a good job demystifying desktop products but the mobile space is even worse
arandale http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa...">http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa... vs clarkdale http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa...">http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa...
vPro is even more confusing. E.g. AMT KVM is supposed to work on AMT 6.0 + on chip GPU yet the i3 don't apply... or the i5-661 http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/...">http://communities.intel.com/community/...ote-cont...
it would be useful if we could get some articles on mobile chips and/or vPro
iwodo - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Waiting for Sandy Bridge- which will hopefully be the true successor of Core 2 Duo.PCI - Express 3.0, SATA 3.0, USB 3.0 ( Light Peak will be even better ), Bluetooth 4.0.
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, March 13, 2010 - link
Light Peak is kinda dumb...I think that's just multi-lane USB3/PCIe, and using light instead of wires is pointless since no one needs really long point-to-point cables. Apple just wants it since they're all about marketing new flashy things. USB3 could just as easily use as many lanes as you want, but it'd be unnecessarily expensive since 1 lane at 5Gbps is much faster than anything.Pessimism - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
This is not intel's first 6 core CPU. The 6 core Xeon 7400 was announced in 2008.