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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softdrinkviking - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
it's a 2-p4 mcm at at a lower node with a lotof improvements over the older p4 manufacturing processes.
if i absolutely had to have netburst, that's what i would want.
i think it's really nice that Anand includes it in the comparison, because it gives a sense of history to the article, and it shows how much faster CPUs have gotten in such a short time.
JonnyDough - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Yep. It might be based on P4, but you can't really considered a P4. It was based on two cedar mill cores rather than smithfield with double the cache and a 200mhz bus speed jump.Dadofamunky - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
And exactly the same NetBurst architecture otherwise. And I'm sorry, but seeing that POS coming up with 40% against Gulftown signifies either one of two things: Gulftown isn't that much faster; or, the SysMark software distorts the relative performance results. That isn't a realistic portrayal of 'history.' SysMark 2007 badly needs an update. It isn't a realistic tool for the 4-to-6-core world.danielkza - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Weird, other sites managed to squeeze up to 4.4GHz of the 980X on air, and 4.7GHz on WC. I thought initially of different stability requirements from both parts, but bit-tech ran all their benchmarks at both 4400MHz and 4720MHz. Maybe Anand's DX58 isn't holding up so well after all.http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/03/11/i...">http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2...-core-i7...
DanNeely - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Anand only used a stock cooler to test. The intel coolers never have much head room in them. Luck of the draw in both mobo and CPU might be a factor but so is bit-tech's better cooling.chrisfam - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Tomshardware got a 4.13 Ghz overclock with 1.4v and with Enhanced SpeedStep and Turbo Boost enabled. Neoseeker got a 4.16 Ghz overclock with just 1.35v. And both of these were with the stock heat sink.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I've been working on a follow up to go deeper into our overclocked numbers. A motherboard swap later and a little bit of work appears to be paying off...I'm over 4.1GHz already :-)Update soon!
Take care,
Anand
chrisfam - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Updated overclock (4.13 Ghz, 1.359V) is much better. Thanks for the update.Rajinder Gill - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
That's right, 3.7-3.8GHz is the full load limit of Intel's stock cooler with these beasts. We ran out of time to really push, but I'm sure we'll find out what these chips can do in due course.regards
Raja
strikeback03 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Is the new tower cooler an improvement in any way over the old one? Is it quieter, as it doesn't seem to offer more OC headroom.Also, how does the CPU power consumption increase by 130W at load over idle, while system consumption only goes up 90W?