Intel's Core i7-980X Six-Core Benchmarked

Ninjakicks writes "Although they won't hit store shelves for a few more weeks, today Intel has officially unveiled the new Core i7-980X Extreme processor. The Core i7-980X Extreme is based on Intel's 32nm Gulftown core, derived from their Nehalem architecture and sports six execution cores. The chip runs at a 3.33GHz clock frequency, that can jump up to 3.6GHz in Intel's Turbo Boost mode. This processor has a max TDP of 130W, which amazingly is the same as previous generation Core i7 quad-core CPUs. Of course, it's crazy fast too. Some may say that the majority of applications can't truly take advantage of the resources afforded by a six-core chip capable of processing up to 12 threads. However, the fact remains there are plenty of multi-threaded usage models and applications where the power of a CPU like this can be put to very good use."

Nice, but who has $1000 to pay on a CPU?

[Targon]

I know there are SOME people out there who have $1000 to spend on just a CPU, but until these come down a long way in terms of price, it is WAY out of my price range.

Cool

[Pojut]

Now to see what AMDs 6-core offering is like. I know that Intel destroys AMD in performance benchmarks and real-world performance, but AMD is FAR less expensive. If I was pushing an Eyefinity setup or something, then sure, I would go all out and drop a few hundred dollars or more on an Intel CPU. Considering that AMDs current flagship costs $195 [newegg.com] and is still a heck of a performer...yeah, I'll stick with AMD for now.

Re:Nice, but who has $1000 to pay on a CPU?

[rotide]

All new bleeding edge CPUs are expensive. That's not the point of the article/submission. The point here is that a very fast 6 core, 12 thread consumer level processor is now on the market.

Price will come down in due time.

Reminds me

[gaelfx]

This really reminds me of the recent Ask Slashdot article lamenting the naming schemes being implemented for most pieces of hardware. i7= 4 or 6 cores. Makes sense since the first thing I think when I hear 7 is "must be 4 or 6!" And the '980' really goes a long way towards confirming that initial suspicion. I'm really glad they put the 'extreme' in there, cause I was worried about the numbers being too low. Seriously though, can't they come up with a name that is actually descriptive of the product rather than a bunch of reassurances about the awesome-o amazingness of their processor? It seems to me that most people ask someone who knows something about computers when they need to buy a new one or replacement parts for their old one, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I really hate names that give me no real information about what the heck I'm buying. Yes, I can google the information, but the whole practice seems immature (and sometimes a little insulting).

Re:Nice, but who has $1000 to pay on a CPU?

[Vectormatic]

hey, i never said AMD was more expensive then Intel, and i bet you that if they could charge $1000 for their top end, they would (and they should, milking the high end is the easiest way to recoup dev costs)

personally i prefer AMD because of their price/performance ratio too, and they have consistently kicked intels but there

Re:Parallel apps aren't everything...

[91degrees]

Really the point is that this isn't aimed at a typical desktop user. A lot of the applications that this will be used for will easily use 12 threads. I know our 4 core i7 is great for compiling and our project is relatively small. Probably pretty good for rendering as well.

Re:Nice, but who has $1000 to pay on a CPU?

[Khyber]

"Rendering farms?"

Those would be handled by massively parallel GPU clusters, not slower than crap CPUs.

Re:Reminds me

[bdenton42]

i7= 4 or 6 cores. Makes sense since the first thing I think when I hear 7 is "must be 4 or 6!"

Some of the i7 models for mobile use only have 2 cores, just to confuse things even further.

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Re:Nice, but who has $1000 to pay on a CPU?

[Zeio]

I'd buy it on sight if it supported ECC. No ECC support = unstable system. I always have an ECC system, and I always get high "3DMarks" and frame rates and I never get a BSOD or other system errors.

Without ECC its impossible to know if memory errors are occurring, and 12GB of memory at 1333/1600MHz probably has a single bit event quite often.