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Intel Core i7-980X Extreme: Hello, Six-Core Computing
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1. Introduction

If the processor market was a game of King of the Hill…no, that’s too easy.

The fact of the matter is that Intel currently sells the fastest CPUs. Its quad-core Core i5 and Core i7s are unmatched in the desktop space—and that’s precisely the reason you pay more for them than the dual-core, Clarkdale-based Core i3 and Core i5 processors (not to mention AMD’s entire Phenom II lineup, including its flagship X4 965 Black Edition).

Of course, "being the fastest" assumes that you’re looking at the right benchmarks. Intel’s dominance is most evident in video encoding apps, threaded compression/decompression workloads, and content creation tools like 3ds Max. If you’re gaming, AMD is perfectly capable of standing right up to Intel.

Now, sure, you’ll see those folks who run their benchmarks at 640x480 in an effort to demonstrate the differences between one processor and another. Truth be told, even as high as 1920x1200, there are measurable performance gaps between CPUs. But at the end of the day, your graphics card, more than anything, determines how well your games run.

Bloomfield...Bloomfield...

...vs. Gulftown...vs. Gulftown

Why the rambling sidebar on gaming? Because Intel sees its brand new Core i7-980X Extreme Edition—previously referred to as Gulftown—as a sweet gaming processor. And it will become the fastest processor you can buy (it's technically not available yet), so it’d naturally be great in a gaming box. However, at $1,000, you’re spending an extra $800 or so that’d be better invested into a pair of Radeon HD 5870s. As a result, before we show you any benchmarks, I’ll say that this probably isn’t the processor you need for a solid gaming experience. A Phenom II X4 or Core i7-920 is still plenty potent there. With that said, if money is no object and you want a six-core CPU and a pair of high-end graphics cards, you certainly can’t go wrong.

Core i7-980X: Hello, Six-Core Computing


Six Cores Of Fury

The real reason to give Core i7-980X a long, hard look is that it’s a beast in the applications truly able to lean on its scaled-up architecture—and there are many. It leverages technologies first introduced on the Bloomfield generation of Core i7-900-series chips, like Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading. But a recent shift to 32nm manufacturing results in transistors with decreased oxide thickness, reduced gate length, and, ultimately, less leakage current.

Consequently, Intel was able to increase complexity without pushing its design over the 130W TDP established by Bloomfield, giving us a six-core CPU featuring 12MB of shared L3 cache and capable of dropping into the same LGA 1366 interface you already know. The real question is whether the Core i7-980X is as Extreme as its price.

2. Welcome To Gulftown

Of course, Gulftown is enabled by Intel’s 32nm manufacturing process—the same node we saw debut back in January with the Clarkdale and Arrandale processor families. This time, however, enthusiasts don’t have to be bamboozled by a second, on-package 45nm die handling graphics, memory control, and PCI Express connectivity. The Core i7-980X gets us performance-freaks back to where we want to be—on-die memory controller, PCI Express handled by the well-endowed X58 chipset, and discrete graphics only, please.

With Gulftown, Intel uses its 32nm process to add cores and cache, rather than push integration. As a result, we have a six-core processor with 12MB of shared L3 cache. Architecturally, Gulftown is otherwise the same as Bloomfield. Each core gets 32KB of L1 instruction cache, 32KB of L1 data cache, and a dedicated 256KB L2 cache.

The 12MB shared L3 actually is a potential performance-booster. Because the cache can be dynamically allocated, an application that only utilizes one core can conceptually monopolize the entire cache. According to Intel, there are some gains to be had in gaming, for example, but it’ll be difficult to gauge just how much of the speed-up we see comes from increased core count versus cache, particularly since we’re using very few single-threaded benchmarks any more.

Despite the addition of two cores and 4MB of L3, Gulftown employs a smaller die than its predecessor (248 square millimeters versus Bloomfield’s 263). Transistor count increases from 731 million to 1.17 billion. That’s fairly incredible, considering the Core i7-980X fits within the same 130W thermal envelope as existing Core i7-900-series processors.

Core i7-980XCore i7-980XCore i7-975Core i7-975

Gulftown’s memory controller remains unchanged, still rated for three channels of DDR3-1066 memory. This is actually somewhat interesting, since the 130W Westmere-EP processors that Intel plans to launch alongside Gulftown support DDR3-1333 (and with up to two modules per channel, no less). Nevertheless, we should see similar memory performance, as Bloomfield’s four cores clearly weren’t starved for data anyway.

The other addition worth noting is AES-NI, Intel’s hardware-based instructions for accelerating the cryptography standard. Previously seen only in the company’s Clarkdale-based Core i5s (and unfortunately left out of the other Clarkdales), AES-NI isn’t yet having a massive effect on performance. But as we’ll see in the benchmarks, there’s a ton of potential there.

2010 Intel Core i7 Processor Family

Base Clock
Max. Turbo Clock
Cores / Threads
L3 Cache
Memory
TDP
Price
Core i7-980X
3.33 GHz
3.6 GHz
6/12
12MB
3 x DDR3-1066
130W
$999
Core i7-975
3.33 GHz
3.6 GHz
4/8
8MB
3 x DDR3-1066
130W$999
Core i7-960
3.2 GHz
3.46 GHz
4/8
8MB
3 x DDR3-1066
130W$562
Core i7-920
2.66 GHz
2.93 GHz
4/8
8MB
3 x DDR3-1066130W$284
Core i7-870
2.93 GHz
3.6 GHz
4/8
8MB
2 x DDR3-1333
95W
$562
Core i7-860
2.8 GHz
3.46 GHz
4/8
8MB
2 x DDR3-133395W
$284


Hyper-Threading And Turbo Boost Persist

Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost were both interesting new additions to Bloomfield. They naturally are a part of the Gulftown story, too.

We hadn’t seen Hyper-Threading in years prior to Bloomfield. Because the software community has become better about threading since then, though, the feature was more of a boon to Nehalem than it was to Pentium 4. Thus, the same technology that allowed four cores to address eight threads now enables six cores to juggle 12. At the very least, this makes for a cool screen shot, especially from a single-socket desktop.

Turbo Boost carries over as well. We were really starting to get excited about Turbo when the Lynnfield-based quad-core chips emerged with four and five speed bins (133 MHz increments), giving us up to 533 MHz with a single core active. Unfortunately, Gulftown drops us back to Bloomfield’s more conservative binning structure. When one core is active, you’ll see two bins (or 266 MHz) of speed-up, yielding 3.6 GHz. With two or more cores active, you get a one-bin boost to 3.46 GHz.

3. Platform And Overclocking

The good news, of course, is that Core i7-980X employs the same LGA 1366 interface as Bloomfield. In fact, several vendors have already let us know that their year-old X58 boards are already working with Gulftown via updated BIOS files. So, if you’re already X58 and are looking to upgrade, you’ll likely be taken care of in the days to come as motherboard vendors update their older offerings.

No longer is there a clear segmentation, price-wise, between X58 at the high-end and P55 for mid-range folks. X58-based boards sell for as little as $160 online and we’ve seen P55 platforms in excess of $300. If you’re going for an enthusiast-class multi-GPU setup, X58 is the way to go, and a Core i7-900-series processor is your only option.

The new DBX-B thermal solutionThe new DBX-B thermal solution

Kicking Tires, Lighting Fires

When Clarkdale hit, we were super-anxious to try our hand at overclocking the 32nm processor. I hit 4.5 GHz fairly easily in my lab with the Core i5-661. However, both Thomas and Don have since fried retail Clarkdale CPUs with too much voltage. We’re naturally a little more gun-shy about our air-cooled settings nowadays.

But Clarkdale is a bit of an enthusiast’s paradox. On one hand, that tiny dual-core die should ramp up to fairly aggressive frequencies. On the other, there’s also the 45nm graphics/memory/PCIe chip to consider—it’s essentially a waste for performance-oriented gamers who’d rather have no integrated graphics, a true integrated memory controller, and chipset-based PCI Express capable of leveraging at least 32 second-generation lanes.

Conversely, Gulftown is a purely 32nm component with the more elegant memory subsystem and the QPI interface to lots of PCIe 2.0 via X58.

Because the Core i7-980X features an unlocked clock multiplier, we were able to tune it using that ratio. Starting with a 25x default, we eventually settled on 31x, or 4.13 GHz with Enhanced SpeedStep and Turbo Boost enabled (yielding 4.26 GHz most of the time and 4.4 GHz with a single core active). This proved to be a perfectly stable configuration at 1.4V; one speed bin higher put the chip over the edge. Moreover, we achieved this using Intel's new DBX-B thermal solution, which is remarkably quiet given the load we applied to it.

As you can see, there’s quite a bit of extra performance to be had from tuning Gulftown, both in single- and multi-threaded titles. Now, a $1,000 processor might not be the ideal target for overclocking, but as the only hexa-core chip in Intel’s desktop lineup, there’s certainly something to be said for almost 1 GHz of headroom, even at the flagship position.

Then we started messing with Gulftown’s BCLK and memory settings. Bloomfield offered three channels of DDR3-1066 support, officially. Core i7-980X does as well. But a number of the memory vendors are selling these triple-channel kits rated for DDR3-2000 at 1.65V. What’s less apparent is that, when you instantiate an XMP profile for DDR3-2000, you also wind up increasing the uncore voltage from 1.2V as high as 1.7V—uncomfortably aggressive, in our opinion.

Starting with Lynnfield, however, Intel altered the ratio between the uncore and memory from 2:1 to 1.5:1. No longer would DDR-2000 memory force a 4 GHz uncore (thereby requiring those extreme voltages). Instead, you’d be looking at a 3 GHz uncore. I asked Ronak Singhal, the lead architect of Nehalem, why this change was made, and his answer was a total “duh” moment for me.

Basically, Intel dropped the ratio to allow faster memory speeds without running into the need to crank uncore voltage. “Uncore frequency is a function of the silicon bin split (just like core frequency). If we only supported 2:1, that would limit the number of products that could support a given memory frequency. This was especially important with Lynnfield/Clarksfield and getting some of the faster memory speeds to lower frequency parts, especially in mobile.”

As a result, I was able to manually configure the same Kingston kit that previously required 1.7V to run DDR3-2000 at Gulftown’s automatic 1.2V setting. Although this probably won’t make high-speed memory kits any more beneficial for overall performance (even with six cores, Gulftown isn’t hurting for bandwidth), it at least minimizes the effect of one variable in your overclocking efforts.

4. Test Setup And Benchmarks
Test Hardware
Processors
Intel Core i7-980X (Gulftown) 3.33 GHz, LGA 1366, 12MB L3, Hyper-Threading enabled, Power-savings enabled

Intel Core i7-975 Extreme (Bloomfield) 3.33 GHz, LGA 1366, 8MB L3, Hyper-Threading enabled, Power-savings enabled

Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) 2.66 GHz, LGA 1366, 8MB L3, Hyper-Threading enabled, Power-savings enabled

Intel Core i5-750 (Lynnfield) 2.66 GHz, LGA 1156, 8MB L3, Power-savings enabled

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE (Deneb) 3.4 GHz, Socket AM3, 4 GT/s HyperTransport, 6MB L3, Power-savings enabled
Motherboards
Gigabyte X58A-UD5 (LGA 1366) X58 Express, BIOS F4

Gigabyte P55A-UD7 (LGA 1156) P55 Express, BIOS F4

Asus M4A79T Deluxe (Socket AM3) 790FX/SB750, BIOS 2304
Memory
Corsair 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 @ DDR3-1333

Corsair 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 @ DDR3-1333
Hard Drive
Intel SSDSA2M160G2GC 160GB SATA 3 Gb/s

Intel SSDSA2MH080G1GN 80GB SATA 3 Gb/s
Graphics
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB
Power Supply
Cooler Master UCP 1100W
Heatsink
Intel DBX-B Thermal Solution
System Software And Drivers
Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
DirectX
DirectX 11
Platform Driver
Intel INF Chipset Update Utility 9.1.1.1015
Graphics DriverCatalyst 10.2

Benchmarks and Settings

Audio Encoding

iTunes

Version: 9.0.2.25 (64-bit), Audio CD ("Terminator II" SE), 53 min., Default format AAC

Video Encoding

TMPGEnc 4.7

Version: 4.7.3.292, Import File: "Terminator II" SE DVD (5 Minutes), Resolution: 720x576 (PAL) 16:9

DivX 6.8.5

Encoding mode: Insane Quality, Enhanced Multi-Threading, Enabled using SSE4, Quarter-pixel search

Xvid 1.2.2

Display encoding status=off

MainConcept Reference 1.6.1

MPEG2 to MPEG2 (H.264), MainConcept H.264/AVC Codec, 28 sec HDTV 1920x1080 (MPEG2), Audio: MPEG2 (44.1 KHz, 2 Channel, 16-Bit, 224 Kb/s), Mode: PAL (25 FPS), Profile: Tom’s Hardware Settings for Qct-Core

HandBrake 0.9.4
Version 0.9.4, convert first .vob file from The Last Samurai to .mp4, High Profile

Applications

Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 (64-bit)

Version: 2009 Service Pack 1, Rendering Dragon Image at 1920x1080 (HDTV)

WinRAR 3.90

Version 3.90 (64-bit), Benchmark: THG-Workload (334 MB)

7-Zip

Version 4.65, Built-in Benchmark

Adobe Photoshop CS4
Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Median, Polar Coordinates filters
AVG Anti-Virus 9
Virus scan of 334MB of compressed files

Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings

3DMark Vantage

Version: 1.02, GPU and CPU scores

PCMark Vantage

Version: 1.00, System, Memories, TV and Movies, and Productivity benchmarks, Windows Media Player 10.00.00.3646

SiSoftware Sandra 2010

CPU Test=CPU Arithmetic/Multimedia, Memory Test=Bandwidth Benchmark, Cryptography

Games
Crysis
High Quality Settings, No AA / No AF, 4xAA / No AF, vsync off, 1280x1024 / 1680x1050 / 1900x1200, DirectX 10, Patch 1.2.1, 64-bit executable
Left 4 Dead 2
High Quality Settings, No AA / No AF, 8xAA / 16xAF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 1920x1200 / 2560x1600, Tomshardware Demo, Steam Version
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Ultra High Settings, No AA / No AF, 4xAA / No AF, 1680x1050 / 1920x1200 / 2560x1600, The Gulag, 60 second sequence, Fraps
DiRT 2
Ultra High Settings, No AA / No AF, 4xAA / No AF, 1680x1050 / 1920x1200 / 2560x1600, In-Game Benchmark, Steam Version
5. Benchmark Results: Synthetics

PCMark Vantage employs applications built into Windows Vista and 7. As a synthetic metric, its job is to tax the latest trends in programming for parallelism. However, it’s also real-world in that these metrics are based on operating systems already being used today.

It’s interesting to see just how much of an impact two additional cores has on Vantage. The overall suite score jumps far above the Bloomfield-class CPUs, which themselves are little affected by differences in clock rate. The Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition matches pace fairly easily to the pricier Core i7-920 here.

The Memories suite is less influenced by cores, seeming to favor the higher clocks of the Core i7-980X and Core i7-975 versus more affordable models.

On the other hand, TV and Movies and the Productivity test are both bolstered via Intel’s six-core offering. Notable in both metrics is that the Phenom II maintains its near-parity with the entry-level Core i7 and lone Lynnfield-based Core i5 processors.

The overall 3DMark Vantage chart shows a gradual progression up Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 family, culminating with the new i7-980X. Meanwhile, the Phenom II X4 hands out at the bottom of the pack, next to Intel’s Core i5-750.

Why is this? After all, the GPU score clearly shows four of the five testing platforms performing almost identically. The CPU test tells the tale, as Intel’s hexa-core model cuts through the physics and AI being thrown at it significantly faster than its competition. We can also see that Hyper-Threading has an appreciable effect, as the i7-920 and i5-750, both running at 2.66 GHz, are fairly well-differentiated. The  Phenom II X4 brings up the tail end of the pack here.

SiSoftware’s synthetic suite demonstrates the potential gains attributable to a six-core, 12-thread-capable processor by blowing the doors off of Intel’s previous flagship in the Arithmetic and Multi-media tests.

Memory bandwidth actually drops a bit on the Gulftown-based processor, despite using the same motherboard, triple-channel memory kit, and BIOS configuration. Core i7-980X nevertheless maintains a strong lead over Intel’s dual-channel Lynnfield setup and AMD’s dual-channel Phenom II X4. In discussing with Intel, this is more of an artifact of the application itself, which only takes advantage of four cores, yet still ties up resources on the two cores that remain unutilized.

Perhaps the craziest chart is our Cryptography benchmark, demonstrating the theoretical AES bandwidth gain in MB/s attributable to AES-NI support in Gulftown. This hardware-accelerated boost doesn’t manifest itself so dramatically in the real-world tests coming up, but it’s interesting to see anyway.

6. Benchmark Results: Media And Transcoding Apps

Because Apple’s popular iTunes application isn’t threaded, two extra cores do nothing for Core i7-980X here. For the most part, clock rate is going to be the principal determinant of performance—highlighted by the fact that our Core i5-750 gets Turbo Boosted ahead of the more expensive Core i7-920, which doesn’t have as aggressive of a Turbo implementation. The Core i7-980X is still fast, but not at all worth its price premium in titles that can’t take advantage of its six cores.

In contrast to iTunes, MainConcept most definitely is able to put Gulftown’s six cores to use. Even at the same clock rate, Core i7-980X sees as much gain from two additional cores as the 3.33 GHz i7-975 gets over the 2.66 GHz i7-920. In turn, the i7-920, running at 2.66 GHz, demonstrates a similar boost over the 2.66 GHz i5-750, which lacks Hyper-Threading. Now that’s what I call ideal scaling.

The Phenom II X4 965 bests Intel’s slightly more expensive Core i5-750, but it’s certainly a close match-up. The Core i7s simply outclass AMD’s best effort here.

As with MainConcept, the freely-available HandBrake heavily favors multi-core architectures. The Core i7-980X is a great way to go if you’re crunching on a lot of video work. In fact, it’s the best way to outperform Intel’s previous flagship. And given the same price point, you might as well be comparing performance to the Core i7-920 when judging value—the decision to buy an i7-980X over the i7-975 is really a no-brainer in cases like these.

We again see the Phenom II X4 and Core i5-750 neck-in-neck, which is good news for AMD, given a slightly lower price point and slightly better transcode times.

Our DivX encode sees Intel’s Core i7-980X again rising to the top, besting the company’s previous flagship by more than 30 seconds. However, the Xvid workload was never able to finish correctly on the Gulftown setup, hanging up just before the test was supposed to come to a close. According to Intel, this is due to a bug in the Xvid codec related to the way it detects cores. Remember back to the issues AMD experienced when it launched Phenom II X3? This is a remnant of that, and should be patched quickly. None of the other titles in our test suite experienced problems due to a non-power-of-two thread count.

We wouldn’t have expected much out of the i7-980X anyway, since this metric is clearly limited by clock frequency (indicated by the Phenom II’s first-place finish, followed by the 3.33 GHz Core i7-975).

7. Benchmark Results: Productivity

Our scripted Photoshop CS4 benchmark employs a number of threaded filters, so it’s certainly no surprise to see Gulftown rise to the top. Interestingly, though, there seems to be little benefit attributable to Hyper-Threading, suggested by the Core i7-920 and Core i5-750 performing similarly.

AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 simply doesn’t perform up to par in this one, bested by the i5-750 it had previously beaten in our video encoding tests.

This is perhaps the last time you’ll see AVG in one of our processor reviews. With the move to AVG 9, performance of our quad-core contenders normalized, and it looks like a six-core Core i7-980X doesn’t help things move any faster. We’ve started some testing with Kaspersky’s security suite and are seeing better preliminary scaling, so that’ll likely be our go-to in the future.

Also well-optimized for threading, 3ds Max 2010 favors Gulftown at the same 3.33 GHz clock rate as Core i7-975 Extreme. In turn, the Core i7-975’s lofty frequency gives it a significant advantage over the Core i7-920. Hyper-Threading helps the i7 outperform Intel’s Core i5-750, which also runs at 2.66 GHz. Meanwhile, the 3.4 GHz Phenom II X4 965 trails the i5-750 by one second.

Within the Core i5 and i7 families, there isn’t a ton of variability in WinRAR. Gulftown is a bit faster than Core i7-975. But the once-flagship is most certainly not worth its price premium given the advantage over Core i7-920. The only real stand-out here is AMD’s Phenom II X4, which trails the pack by a more substantial margin.

We recently ditched WinZip after the move to version 14 saw the app still limited to single-threaded compression/decompression. Not only is 7-Zip compatible with the .zip extension, but it’s also freely available, threaded, and optimized to take advantage of Intel’s AES-NI acceleration.

Our 334MB workload, compressed using the .zip format using 256-bit encryption, most definitely goes in favor of Core i7-980X—the only processor with AES-NI support here. The other Intel CPUs fall into place behind Gulftown, scaling predictably based on clock rate and Hyper-Threading support. When it comes right down to it, the Phenom II X4 performs more like the Core i7-920 here than the more similarly-priced Core i5-750.

The speed and rating test helps explain why, exactly, Gulftown is so much faster than its competition within Intel’s own product lineup. It’s simply a stronger CPU in workloads able to exploit its on-chip execution resources.

8. Benchmark Results: Crysis

Ah, but can it play Crysis? Sure, of course it can. More importantly, the Radeon HD 5850 we’re using to test with can play Crysis. The processors here are merely able to keep up.

There is a hint of performance advantage in favor of Gulftown at 1280x1024. However, by the time you’re looking at 1920x1080—where you’d actually want to play a game like this—AMD’s sub-$200 Phenom II has the slight advantage when anti-aliasing is enabled. I think it’s fair enough to call performance here a wash, despite the more than $800 dollar difference between the top and bottom of our price range.

9. Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead 2

More so than any other test, Left 4 Dead 2 helps demonstrate why a processor like Core i7-980X might be well-suited to a gaming environment. It’s so damn fast that any game that doesn’t bring a graphics subsystem to its knees will, in fact, realize a speed-up.

At both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, the six-core CPU earns slim victories over the Core i7-975 Extreme. This isn’t because Valve’s Source engine is taking advantage of six cores. Rather, the threads it is employing are getting access to the larger shared L3 cache.

Of course, because it isn’t incredibly graphically-intensive, a solid card like our Radeon HD 5850 lets you turn on more eye candy without knee-capping performance. Enabling 8xAA and 16xAF is more than playable, even at 2560x1600. And at that point, you’re again looking at comparable performance between the six-core Core i7-980X and sub-$200 Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition.

10. Benchmark Results: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is massively popular. And massive popularity is achieved by supporting the largest number of systems as possible—something Infinity Ward does by not implementing debilitatingly-complex graphics.

From 1680x1050 to 2560x1600, we see similar results across the board with all five of our test beds. Make sure you’re running a decent graphics card and this game will both look and run well-enough.

11. Benchmark Results: DiRT 2

For the most part, our five contenders once again perform similarly. Intel’s Core i5-750 does seem to take a hit with or without anti-aliasing, but it’s doubtful this would be related to Hyper-Threading or its two channels of memory. This one really seems to boil down to graphics performance, once again.

12. Power Consumption

AMD arguably has the better reputation (lately, at least) for maintaining a given socket interface and carrying it over as far as possible to support its latest processors. But Clarkdale was a win for Intel in that it employed the LGA 1156 interface introduced alongside Lynnfield (even if existing P55-based motherboards couldn’t take advantage of Clarkdale’s on-package graphics core).

Gulftown is made even more compelling by virtue of the fact that it drops into the same LGA 1366-based platforms introduced next to Bloomfield. This means coming in under the same 130W TDP.

At idle, the Core i7-980X actually uses a bit more power than Core i7-975 Extreme (likely a result of the slightly higher idle voltage reported by CPU-Z). But under load, the 32nm Gulftown chip goes lighter on power consumption. We wouldn’t advocate the Core i7-980X as a power-saving play, but it is amazing to see how 32nm manufacturing allows such a complex hexa-core processor to pull less juice from the wall than last-generation’s 45nm quad-core.

That observation aside, AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 scales back to 800 MHz at idle, hitting a low 94W system idle. But it’s not the lowest consumer under load—that honor (at least in the context of these five CPUs) goes to the Core i5-750, which is rated for up to 95W itself, but also benefits from a more efficient two-chip platform consisting of processor and PCH. The other contenders all lean on a processor, northbridge, and southbridge.

13. Conclusion

Even before benchmarking Intel’s new Core i7-980X I had a sense for how the processor would perform. Add cores and cache, but leave the rest of the architecture alone, and don’t be surprised to see scaling wholly dependent on software’s ability to utilize those additional compute resources.

Fortunately, for Intel, most of the apps in our benchmark suite are able to make the best of Gulftown’s six cores, reflecting a software environment that has come a long way since the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 debuted back in 2005. Now, we’re making benchmark decisions based on whether titles are threaded or not.

It’s a bit of a bummer, then, that the only six-core CPU for the desktop is Intel’s Core i7-980X. The processor is certainly impressive. It takes the performance of Core i7-975 and accelerates it even further, especially in MainConcept, HandBrake, Photoshop, and TMPGEnc’s DivX encoding workload. At the same $999 price point, picking the 980X over the 975 is a no-brainer. Time is money. If the time Core i7-980X will shave off your renders, encode jobs, or CAD projects is worth the processor’s asking price, this is the fastest desktop processor money can buy. Update: Intel clarifies that Gulftown will be available within the next few weeks; it's simply taking the wraps off of the processor a bit early. So, Core i7-980X will be the fastest desktop processor just as soon as it's available.

But again, we’re talking about a thousand bucks here. If you’re primarily gaming, we see the Core i7-920, Core i5-750, and Phenom II X4 965 serving up just as much muscle at the resolutions and quality settings at which you’re going to want to play.

What’d really be cool for the enthusiast crowd would be a line of quad-core CPUs manufactured at 32nm. Almost certainly scalable to even higher clock rates and armed with AES-NI, these would be high-performance, lower-power options that’d go really well with today’s less-expensive X58-based motherboards.

The potential for such a design is supported by Intel’s plans to launch quad-core 32nm Xeon processors based on its Westmere-EP design. But the most we could get out of Intel regarding its desktop plans was “we’re considering all options.” Ah well, we tried. At least for the near future, it looks like Intel will get to bask in the even-larger performance advantage its Core i7-980X opens up over the competition’s fastest offering. Just be ready to open your wallet wide for the privilege of owning one.