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Intel's Core i7-980X Six-Core Benchmarked
Ninjakicks writes "Although they won't hit store shelves for a few more weeks, today Intel has officially unveiled the new Core i7-980X Extreme processor. The Core i7-980X Extreme is based on Intel's 32nm Gulftown core, derived from their Nehalem architecture and sports six execution cores. The chip runs at a 3.33GHz clock frequency, that can jump up to 3.6GHz in Intel's Turbo Boost mode. This processor has a max TDP of 130W, which amazingly is the same as previous generation Core i7 quad-core CPUs. Of course, it's crazy fast too. Some may say that the majority of applications can't truly take advantage of the resources afforded by a six-core chip capable of processing up to 12 threads. However, the fact remains there are plenty of multi-threaded usage models and applications where the power of a CPU like this can be put to very good use."
I know there are SOME people out there who have $1000 to spend on just a CPU, but until these come down a long way in terms of price, it is WAY out of my price range.
Companies? Rendering farms? At this price, I'd imagine they're not really for the average consumer but more so for companies that can consider such a purchase an asset.
That said, you do realize that the i7-975 quad core that they compared it to is also nigh $1000, right? I think showing that the same price will buy you an entirely different beast signals that quad cores are complete. The current quad cores price will come down but why would you make a more expensive quad core at Intel? The specs here show it cannot stand up to the new six core platform.
All these prices will come down, of course. So it's fun to look forward to what I'll be using in two years (I just bought a low range quad core for $140 a week ago, almost right in time for this).
And also, who strayed from the duo- quad- naming methodology?! Are you insane!? Do you have any idea the marketing power that a sexa core chip could have?
My work here is dung.
Thats not how it works. What it actually does is shuts power off to cores that aren't in use, and then overclocks the remaining ones. It won't/can't run different cores at different clock speeds. So if you have a 4 core processor, it might shut off 2 of the cores and then boost the clock speed by up to like 50% depending on what CPU it is, up to the thermal limits of the processor. The "breakthrough" in engineering is the part of the circuit that shuts off power to the unused cores better than anything else has in the past. This essentially gets you the best of both worlds in a single CPU - a lower clocked quad and a higher clocked single/dual core.