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Intel's New Core I7-990X Extreme Edition Tested
MojoKid writes "Intel recently launched a speed bump of their flagship Extreme Edition
Core i7 processor,
known as the Core i7-990X. Its multiplier is unlocked and it's clocked at 3.45GHz stock speed with a Turbo Boost top-end speed of 3.73GHz. Intel claims its the fastest desktop chip on the planet; like geek
tiger blood for your PC. The new Core i7-990X is also based on the 32nm Gulftown core and the
performance metrics show it's easily the fastest 6-core chip for the desktop currently but of course it'll cost you as well."
This CPU will let you stand over noobs' exploded corpses.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What's a good website where you can find out what my next CPU should be, while keeping in mind:
-power consumption
-ease of virtualization (I've heard some chips have that disabled)
Sorry for sounding like a noob, but it's been a while since I've been in the market for a CPU.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
No mention of the i7 2600K that is 1/3d price for pretty much the same performance minus a few very thread oriented tests.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20486
Very good (and funny) review:
"Well, I told you I was the finest PC processor on the planet, and now I've backed it up through 16 pages and some ridiculous number of benchmarks. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I am probably the zenith of human technological achievement to date. Can't really think of anything that compares, off the top of my head.
True, I'm not cheap compared to the glorious Miss Sandy B. and her overmatched competition at a third of my price or less. In the grand scheme of things, though, pretty much all desktop computer hardware is affordable. The question is: do you value your time? I'm gonna save you five minutes every time you encode a video versus some cut-rate dual core, and eventually that's gonna add up to hours of time saved over my lifetime. Even an eco-weenie on a government grant pulls in a pretty good hourly wage. In the right context, my price tag shouldn't be too hard to justify. I've given you numbers that will let you justify it in terms of power savings, too, if you're into that kind of thing."
Call me a hater - but the idea of spending $7-800 on a CPU that will never ever make a difference in your gameplay, video editing, internet surfing, facebooking, etc... Where is the value proposition?
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
It took me a while to realize a speed bump was a good thing for a CPU...
Could he have filled the first page with more pointless meta-referencing knob-slobbery?
Survey SAYS!
Don't get me wrong. The rest of the article is useful. It's just personal irritation with that sort of writing style.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-990x-extreme-edition-gulftown,2874.html
I've yet to build a rig or deal with the wondrous thermal goo, but isn't it a *terrible* idea to put magic marker on one of these chips? Looking at a Sharpie MSDS, the ink boils at 207F. O_o;
While marking 990x on his chip may look cute for a picture, I'm picturing in a my mind a comedic gas build up and separation from the heat sink the first time he loads it.
he's a 'soldier', he has his 'orders'. even if he gave them to himself, it'll take a great hero/talknician/social worker to vocalize this guy down. fortunately, soon.....???
The first page of the review makes this TIGER BLOOD seem entirely HIPSTER
captcha: worthy
That processor looks fantastic. Al I need to do now is work out how many of my kids I have to sell to buy a machine worthy of it.
I'm not a total bastard. I had considered selling a kidney instead, but I'm more attached to them than to my offspring.
Personally, I don't understand why the video has gotten as much attention as it has. I also don't understand why people feel the need to keep talking about it.
I'll admit there are uses, but they're niche. Some of the examples you just gave are places where this chip probably is not the best tool for the job. If it costs $800 more than a processor that is nearly as fast, you can just buy another computer and distribute your job over the network, and end up getting more performance for less money.
I'm not even saying this as an AMD fanboy; it's not just Phenom II; two Core i5s also usually beat a Core i7 EE.
You might even be able to fit 3 or 4(?) computers into the Core i7 EE price.
So to find the magical scenario where Core i7 EE makes sense, you pretty much need a particularly crippled application. It needs to be parallelizable so that it can use the i7s multiple cores and hyperthreading, but it has to be broken enough that it can't spread over a network. Or it needs to not be parallelizable, where you're just taking advantage of the Core i7s admitted awesome scalar performance, but letting most of the chip be idle while you're doing that, so even if it does the job well, you can't help but feel ripped off. Either way, it's a very unusual situation.
Are we being set up here? I never heard of Tiger Blood before, and the Wikipedia article was created three days ago. Sounds like someone's trying to play games here...
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
/me gave a chopsaw to Intel.... here have my arm and my leg!
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women!
If you want to buy the fastest futureproof PC and you don't own one yet, hold on!
Later this year Intel will introduce a new 2011 pins socket and 6-8 cores Sandy Bridge CPUs for it. These beasts will be much faster, much more power efficient and they will come with native DDR3-1600MHz RAM support.
Even now under many workloads almost four times cheaper 4 cores Sandy Bridge 2600(K) CPU beats six cores Intel Extreme i7 990X, because SB has much improved IPC (instruction per clock) ratio.
Intel Core i7 990X CPU is largely justified only for the current socket 1366 owners who encode/transcode video, render CGI or compile huge software projects.
For $300, at Microcenter, I picked up both a 2500K i5 (quad core) and a good ASUS motherboard. Then I used the windows based overclocking software for easy 4.4GHz overclocks on demand. Most of the time the computer idles at 2.somethng GHz at reduced voltage to save on electricity.
Well, the i7-990x is certainly a fast processor but I don't see the point comparing it against a 965 without turbo-boost. They are effectively comparing a 3.8 GHz i7 (when it isn't running all its cpus.. that's how turbo boost works for both vendors) against a 3.4 GHz phenom II. Well Duh! The phenom ii x6 1100T black is 1/4 the price and runs 3.7 GHz out of the box in turbo boost mode, and it can be trivially and reliably overclocked to 3.8 GHz on all 6 cpus with turbo boost turned off (and to 4.0 GHz with moderately good cooling).
Intel still has faster cpus clock for clock, but not by a whole lot and the price/performance ratio for the i7 is horrible. Expensive cpu, expensive ram... come on.
-Matt
Core Frequency: 3.45GHz (Up To 3.73GHz w/ Turbo) .28 GHz with a turbocharger attached to it?
What, I get an extra
"Turbo" should be used exclusively in the context of mechanical engineering, not a catchall adjective for something that goes faster. Maybe if I overclock my car it'll pump out more torque..
How much slower is paravirtualization vs. hardware virtualization?
If you're renting a virtual private server, I'd assume it's always better to go for hardware Xen virtualization?
Any opinion on OpenVZ?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
FUCK! Now I don't have the fastest chip anymore. :(
While I'm certainly not going to drop another grand ($999.99 on newegg) on a new CPU that's slightly faster, I'll have to read the article more closely and see if they fixed the cache latency issue. The 980x has 12 megs of cache (50% more than the the quadcore i7's) but the cache was somewhat slower. This caused the the 980x to be a little slower than the 45nm i7 quad core extreme edition (975x I think) in some situations.
A consumer need for virtualization generally indicates an incorrect choice of OS.
Not so, my friend. I use VirtualBox on my Windows machine at home, and usually run Windows in the VM.
I have one VM that does nothing but email. That way if/when I wipe the machine my email stays the same. Another VM holds the browser. If my browser gets pwnt, a simple reset and it's back to snuff. I also have a VM that I use as a scratchpad to see if a given install will crash or bone up Win7 64 bit, so I don't bunk my actual install. I'm new to 64 bit windows, so this seems like a good precaution.
VMs are a tool. It's not really up to one person to say how the tool is used. More tools in the toolbox is a good thing.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I think that intel instruction set needs a major revamp. It's old, and tends to not match the current software trends. They keep adding stuff but are afraid of a major redesign of their architecture because it would break current existing software.
And remind me again, how many unlocked hexacore AMD chips could I own for the price of one of these? Is it still 4?
now, if only CPUs really mattered today.
^__^
I'm sure these are fastest at some metric but in clock speed they haven't caught up to a 2007 POWER6 yet