Thursday, March 11th 2010
Intel Lets Loose Core i7 980X Performance Evaluations
On the occasion of Game Developers Conference, an annual conclave of game developers, in San Fransisco, USA, Intel previewed to audiences its latest Core i7 980X Extreme Edition six-core processor. This meant that the media could publish performance evaluations of the new processor. Intel seems to have pulled it off with this launch. There is a broad consensus among the media that the six-core processor has a performance incentive with most of today's multi-threaded application that scales up well compared to quad-core processors.
The 980X is also the first high-performance processor based on the 32 nm Westmere architecture. The processor is able to maintain a TDP rating of 130W, on par with its 45 nm Nehalem quad-core counterparts. It has six cores operating at 3.33 GHz, with HyperThreading technology enabled, there are 12 logical CPUs (threads) for the operating system to deal with. Each core has 64 KB L1, 256 KB L2 caches, while a large 12 MB L3 cache is shared between all the cores. The Core i7 980X comes in the LGA-1366 package. Most existing motherboards with the Intel X58 Express chipset will be able to support it with a BIOS update. Intel will formally release the processor by April, at an estimated price of US $999.
The 980X is also the first high-performance processor based on the 32 nm Westmere architecture. The processor is able to maintain a TDP rating of 130W, on par with its 45 nm Nehalem quad-core counterparts. It has six cores operating at 3.33 GHz, with HyperThreading technology enabled, there are 12 logical CPUs (threads) for the operating system to deal with. Each core has 64 KB L1, 256 KB L2 caches, while a large 12 MB L3 cache is shared between all the cores. The Core i7 980X comes in the LGA-1366 package. Most existing motherboards with the Intel X58 Express chipset will be able to support it with a BIOS update. Intel will formally release the processor by April, at an estimated price of US $999.
70 Comments on Intel Lets Loose Core i7 980X Performance Evaluations
Six Cores = For hardcore engineers on video/graphic/music encoding/programming.
Quad Cores = Average user that want there bang for the buck and of course, gaming.
As you see in the review the AMD 965 BE was average with the 980x and even BETTER at some cases for the gaming part. AMD def new what they were doing when the built the 965BE.
Even more suprising is that this Intel processor is $1,000+!! AMD has the upperhand here and obviously is going to sell their Six Core Processor for ~$500 or even shock us for $300, who knows. That's my speculation.
AMD has a better marketing stragedy IMO.
Don't get me wrong Intel has great chips, but I used Intel all my life and just switched to an AMD and I haven't regretted it since :)
@ Erocker, how can I get a sig like that, that show's my BF2 stats?
www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0331322
It's got me thinking.
Price is less than the X5470. And comes with a nice cooler.
Besides, that's the same argument people had when dual cores came out, and then again with quad cores. Software will catch up.
Sadly it will probably see an end to useful mobo's way before that...making it a powerful paperweight..
I kid.... i know these are for "MOAR! POWER!! Freaks" and they don't care...
under 1k mark