The Core i7 980X Review: Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 11, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
I have to say that Intel's Core i7 980X is the first Extreme Edition CPU that I've ever gotten excited about. In the past you used to have to choose between more cores or high clock speeds. Thanks to power gating and Gulftown's PMU, those days are over. The 980X gives you its best regardless of what you throw at it. Lightly threaded apps benefit from the larger L3 cache and heavily threaded apps take advantage of the extra cores. The performance advantage you get at the low end ranges from 0 - 7%, and on the high end with well threaded code you're looking at an extra 20 - 50% over the Core i7 975. Even more if you compare to a pedestrian processor. There are a few cases where the 980X does lose out to the Core i7 975 thanks to its higher latency L3 cache, but for the most part it's smooth sailling for the 6-core beast.
The performance advantage comes at no extra power cost either. Enabling 6 cores on a 32nm process means that the die actually got smaller and power consumption remained mostly unchanged. It really is the best of both worlds, at least for a 130W chip. It's almost Conroe-like in its ability to dominate the charts without any technical limitations. If money were no object, the Core i7 980X is clearly the best you can get.
The only problem is price, as is always the case with these Extreme Edition processors. While I don't expect 6-core CPUs to trickle down to the mainstream, if we had a version priced at ~$500 it would be an amazingly easy sell. I wonder where Intel will price the Core i7 970, allegedly also a 6-core Gulftown derivative. We'll have to wait another quarter to find out.
Even taking into account price, if you do any significant amount of compute intensive 3D work, video encoding or Excel modeling, the Core i7 980X is worth it. If you're the type of user who always buys the Extreme Edition knowing that you can get better bang for your buck further down the lineup, this time you're actually getting your money's worth. On the desktop, the next 12 months are fairly stagnant in terms of CPU performance improvements. We'll see a clock bump to the 980X at the beginning of 2011, but it'll be even longer before we get a replacement.
There is of course the higher powered alternative. You could pick up a dual-socket Xeon board and a pair of quad-core Nehalem Xeons for a bit more than a X58 + 980X. You'd end up with more cores, albeit with a higher power budget and higher price tag. The Core i7 980X is such a difficult processor to recommend. It's something I'd personally never spend the money on. But if I needed more compute in a single chip, it's really the only thing that could scratch that itch.
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Meghan54 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
[QUOTE]where are you getting your xeon pricing info from?all i can find from any solid source is the current xeon quad core processors which are running about $2000 on newegg at the moment. [/QUOTE]
Well, I question your search skills at Newegg, then, if that's all you can find there.
Just an FYI, Newegg has MANY, MANY sub-$700 Xeon processors for socket 1366, like the W3520, a Bloomfield, for $310, or the W3550 for $600--both Bloomfield quad-core cpus.
Learn to use search, (ps....main page, cpu/processors, processors-servers, power search, check box socket 1366, look at results. I'm hoping you do understand that there are mouse clicks between step.)
formulav8 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
grow up...softdrinkviking - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
no, i saw all of that stuff. i was looking at the six core chips and i typed quad instead.but thanks for getting all nasty and sarcastic anyway.
i'll try to remember about those mouse clicks next time.
the point i was trying to make is that the xeon line is going to be more expensive than the comparable home desktop CPUs and that it won't be a simple matter of non-server customers just buying xeons that will outclass the current i7 line-up. (specifically to compete against the 6 core model that this review is about)
Drag0nFire - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I think the point was that you could get 2x cheap quad core Xeons, and run with 8 cores (16 threads) at a small price premium over the $1000 Gulftown.vol7ron - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I will keep my eyes open for the Xeon, but for some reason, those typically are quite pricey. This $1k price will fall, hopefully sooner, rather than later.I am looking forward to both.
Thanks for the read, Anand,
vol7ron
DrMrLordX - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Here's a list of Gulftown quads for LGA1366:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_Intel_...">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fu...rocessor...
The information isn't complete, but you should be able to do searches on the part that interests you most and get the information that you want.
iamezza - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
it won't be dropping in price any time soon. Check the chart on Pg 3 - this is the top intel CPU until 2011 and I can't see AMD releasing a CPU that will compete performance wise with it before then.DarkUltra - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
I also miss memory and cache performance tests, and memory overclock results.Kn0xx - Monday, May 17, 2010 - link
well, this new 6 core comer, will be ( probably ) the entry design for 128 -bit processors that Intel are already working on it.128 bit need new multi-core structures. so ..980X is an example of how can a 128-bit core would be =)
unmaskedtruth - Sunday, May 23, 2010 - link
does anyone know if protools le 8.0 is multi-threaded? for recording pro music, is it going to be able to take advantage of "6cores" if i was to go i7-980x route? or is quad-core more than sufficient? cause there is i7-930 which is cost like 80% less than the 980x. what do you guys suggest?