


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.
- Introduction
- Welcome To Gulftown
- Platform And Overclocking
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Benchmark Results: Media And Transcoding Apps
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Crysis
- Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead 2
- Benchmark Results: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 2
- Power Consumption
- Conclusion
I'm guessing you didn't read this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/toms-hardware-reviews-news-comments,9855.html
I'm guessing you didn't read this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/toms-hardware-reviews-news-comments,9855.html
Nope, Haven't bothered looking at that. The 980x doesn't really make any difference in gaming but I wasn't expecting anything earth shattering. Does look good against the 965 x4 for mutlimedia applications.
It is a good reminder how to act on toms you should read it when you get the chance.
Wholly agreed.
Obviously this Intel won't be forcing down any reasonable prices, but I am hoping that AMD's six core will bring down the price of either the i5-750 or the i7-930.
I guess one can always hope...
Great article!
This is exact same thing I've been dreaming of, a high clocked 32nm quad at a reasonable price, maybe even with an unlocked multiplier
Hopefully we don't have to wait until Q1 2011 to be able to buy one.
Great article though I really enjoyed flipping through all the pages of benchies... sort of wish you could have used dual 5970's for the gaming test though since the 5850 seems to have been your bottleneck with all the game tests.
Without seeing numbers, I'd guess AMD will counter with 2/3 of the performance, (possibly more depending on how aggressive they take thier speed boost), but it will be at 1/3 of the price. We may find out as early as April.