Six-Core Analysis, Part 2: Intel Core i7-980X Scaling

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Intel's Turbo Boost technology provides a mechanism for improving system performance most significantly in lightly-threaded apps, even at peak loads. But what is the feature's impact on a Gulftown-based Core i7-980X processor with different core counts?

Test Setup And Benchmarks

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System Hardware
Hardware Details
Performance Benchmarks
Motherboard (LGA 1156) Gigabyte EX58-UD4P (Rev. 1.0), Chipset: Intel X58, BIOS: F12 (02/11/2009)
CPU Intel Intel Core i7-980X (32 nm, 3.33 GHz, 6 x 256KB L2 and 12MB L3 Cache, TDP 130W)
RAM DDR3 (Dual) 3 x 2GB DDR3-1600 (Corsair TR3X6G-1600C8D 8-8-8-24)
Graphics Sapphire Radeon HD 5850GPU: Cypress (725 MHz), Graphics RAM: 1024 MB GDDR5 (2000 MHz), Stream Processors: 1440
Hard Drive Western Digital VelociRaptor, 300GB (WD3000HLFS), 10,000 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 16MB Cache
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling, Silencer 750EPS12V 750W
System Software And Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Updated on 2010-03-03
Drivers And Settings
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility Ver. 9.1.1.1025
Intel Storage Drivers Matrix Storage Drivers Ver. 8.​9.​0.​1023