Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
Try Maximum PC's Best of the Best list. Sometimes it's a little out of date, but it's my first stop when I'm overhauling my gaming PC.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Any chip with Extreme in the name should do.
I know it came from the marketing department but calling it "Extreme Edition" is just obnoxious, especially knowing they will come out with something more "extreme" in 6 months.
Developers: We can use your help.
No.
You need HW virt for Xen. Otherwise it's just QEMU which is slower.
Hard to say though, when you didn't tell us what those requirements are.
Maybe because he didn't ask for what CPU to buy, he asked for a good site to go to for comparisons of various models. Newegg would NOT be that site, tomshardware and anandtech would be decent places to start.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-990x-extreme-edition-gulftown,2874.html
if your cpu is running at 207'F, you have other things to worry about before magic marker becomes a concern. Last I checked, thermal shutdown for intel cpus was between 65'c (149'F) and 75'c (167'F) depending on model.
You need HW virt for Xen. Otherwise it's just QEMU which is slower.
Wrong. You can also use Xen paravirtualization, which does not require HW assistance.
I'm a home user. I use virtualization (or I did. windows 7 is too good to bother with other OSes except for fun anymore).
so, I just went and checked desktop cpus. Every i7 (and extreme) cpu supports VT-x, every i5 does, every i3 does. That's all current non-budget cpus. I checked out the available celeron models, and only the very cheapest (As I said earler, sub $50) lacks VT-x. I went back further, and every core 2 extreme does, almost all the core 2 quads (Except the q8200 and q8300) do. I wasn't able to find a core 2 duo on newegg that didn't have VT-x, and at that point I quit looking. Basically, long story short, you'd have to go out of your way to buy an intel cpu that doesn't have hardware virtualization now.
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.
dislike of Tom's hardware ... dating back over a decade (I can't even remember why anymore)
Probably because there were roumors that they developed a payed bias syndrome.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
windows 7 is too good to bother with other OSes
True. All other OSs should be retired immediately. Microsoft has finally perfected the OS and there is simply no valid or rational reason to even have more than that... OS and Windows 7 should now be synonymous. I think after SP3 we won't even need applications or the internet any more... its that good. And I know what I'm talking about because I've been using Windows exclusively since 98, and this, my friends, is it. So go on, put it on, Windows 7 is the last operating system you'll ever use, if you have any clue whatsoever.
The Admin and the Engineer
Charlie who?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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
Agreed HJF. Our company dove into virtualization head first to save on hardware maintenance costs. Each blade server in a cluster running VMWare can at least run 5 or 6 Virtual Servers (probably more if we wanted to push it). VMs are great for testing new apps. Don't have to waste a physical box. If the testing doesn't work out, you can just delete the VM and try something else. Only thing lost is time. Hardware maintenance contracts aren't cheap, especially when your server count runs into the hundreds of boxes....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....