Hardware: MSI X58 Pro-E And Zalman CNPS 10X
Board: MSI X58 Pro-E
Revision 3.1 of MSI's X58 Pro-E has already undergone a number of changes and improvements in order to optimize it. It's an upper-mainstream product, but won’t satisfy the requirements of hardcore enthusiasts going for the most extreme cooling techniques in an effort to hunt down clock speed records.
The five-phase voltage regulator was powerful enough to support our Core i7 analysis, and it supports the clock speeds you will be able to reach on air cooling. Three PCI Express slots can host a trio of graphics cards. One of these slots, though, will have to run on only four PCIe lanes as opposed to the other two running 16 lanes each.
MSI also decided to add a third-party controller to support eSATA and a seventh internal SATA port. However, only the six internal ICH10R SATA ports support AHCI and RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5.
Cooler: Zalman CPNS 10X
We’ve already reviewed the new Zalman cooler against Intel’s reference cooler as a high-end aftermarket option. You'll see that in an upcoming story on upgrading your factory cooler.
The new CNPS 10X can significantly reduce CPU core temperatures almost regardless of fan speed. Other high-end aftermarket coolers would also have been an option, but the test system proved to be reliable and sufficiently powerful, which is why we stayed with the setup.
The CNPS10X is based on a copper core and supports automatic fan speed or three different manual speeds. The speed controller can be removed from the cooler and routed outside of the PC case.
uhhh... whats the point again of comparing 2 slightly different processors with different stepping... didn't we know already 975 was better then 965?
So in the conclusion, newer steppings = better product
Not surprised
So in the conclusion, newer steppings = better productNot surprised
Yeap.
Hoping my 920 coming is a D0 though...
hmmm did i miss something, or is there temputer specs on hyere? would be great to see what the temps are both at 3.33 and overclocked at 4ghz please, please, please
so the 975 was stable at slightly less voltage and reached less than 200mhz higher STABLE clock. seems like that could very easily be due to variances in manufacturing and not the stepping itself. there have been many 965s to reach 4.2 or 4.25 stable on air which would have been higher than the 975. then again toms could have got a bum D0... I woudn't say from this article that the D0 is clearly superior to C0, but that's just me and my stat classes talking
On page 5 (Overclocking Core i7-965 (C0): 4.0 GHz) in the last image the cpu-z vt is 1.8V, for 3.743 - 4.009 GHz identical with the CPU PLL. I don't think that is correct.
I've purchased recently i7 920 and found out, that overclocked to 3.33GHz works absolutely stable on 1.024V under full load (Seti@Home). Consumption vent down by nearly 100W and temperature by 15 degrees centigrade. Marvelous, isn't it?
Addition:
At 3.5% performance improvement per year we'll see a gain of 10% in about 3 years. If you think about it that way its utter crap. I can appreciate improved steppings but as we can see, its nothing to get excited over.
I think underclocking should be a standard test - I like power efficiency and I do wonder how that would affect performance/stability
Would have been nice to see benchmarks at all speeds.
Thanks for another half-assed piece, THG.
Throw the PII 965 BE (overclocked to 4.0GHz) into the ring. I am tired of people saying how good the PII is compares with i7.
I've read that steppings fix known bugs in processors but I never asked a question on it.
If there's a bug in the processor, wouldn't it cause the CPU to give bad data or execute improperly? Possibly crash? How can a bug not be a bug?
This is a really interesting article. Probably the people saying the differences are insignificant have the C0 i7, and are feeling queasy about it. They need to rationalize it.
I think it's really significant when you can get so many small improvements that add up to a big one.
I do have one complaint though. I'd have liked to see the power at 4.0 GHz for each. That would have really helped people see difference between the processors, since the power difference would have been far greater than at 3.33 GHz.
For anyone reading this saying it's not significant, would you even want a C0 now, or would you make sure you were getting a D0? Yes, I thought so.
I went to the ark link but I'm still confused. How can you tell if you are getting a C0 or a D0?
to oakland, to get a DO stepping. you must cross your fingers and look to the sky
really you can't order a DO stepping so it's the luck of the draw. there are a few places that will gaurantee your stepping version but iv never personaly ordered from the off sites. only newegg where i buy stuff at.
Nice review. I thought the 975 have much higher performance value over 965. I still think the difference in performance will show when you overclock to 5GHz on both chips...i'd really like to see those numbers.
also power at 4ghz and temps please
Does the i7 920 behaves equally?
the 920 is far more popular. Almost any benchmark is done with it.