Intel Core i7-980X Review - PAGE 12

While there isn't anything technically new to the Core i7-980X, we had high expectations for this processor and, for the most part, it met them. It is based on same architecture we saw back in January, Westmere, only this time it comes with six cores instead of a measly two and the price tag has gone up substantially. Speaking of price, let's get done with it already: at a suggested retail price of $999, this isn't for everyone. However, if you can afford it, you just bought yourself the fastest desktop processor ever made. Not too shabby.

What's interesting though is that the 980X carries the same MSRP as Intel's now deprecated flagship part - the Core i7-975. In that sense, Gulftown is sort of a bargain. It has two more cores, each being faster, they're clocked at the same 3.33 GHz and the whole thing draws just as much power. More performance, same price. What's not to like? It's also the first time since the Pentium IV era that an Extreme processor is more than just a multiplier unlocked core.

As far as performance goes, the 980X mostly wipes the floor clean. No other processor on the market right now can come close to its brute processing power. Its weakness comes in the form of memory bandwidth. Even with its similar three channel memory interface, the little Core i7-920 manages to beat today's star in terms of memory bandwidth. Fortunately, at over 20 GB/s, it's not an issue in most applications. The only benchmark where it clearly makes a difference is HandBrake, where the 6-core monster is actually a bit slower. Of course, slow is relative, it still finishes faster than every other processor.

A wafer with more Core i7-980X' than you could ever wish for

As a gamer, there isn't much to be gained with the Core i7-980X. Besides a few select games, most of them simply do not scale with more cores. If gaming is your cup of tea, you're better off spending more on a monster graphics card such as the HD5970. Every year sine 2007 has the the year of heavily multi-threaded applications, but we're obviously not quite there yet. Some things such a creating, editing and converting multimedia files are, by nature, easily parallelizable. Other than that, applications that scale really well with extra cores are far and few.

Since this is an Extreme Edition processor, the clock multiplier is unlocked, leading the way to moderately high and painless overclocks. I was able to hit 4 GHz without touching anything other than the multiplier. Fair enough, but there are some of us out there that want to get even performance for our money and the Core i7-980X does decently in this regard. I say decently, because 4.16 GHz with a meager 1.35V is nothing to sneeze at, but also not impressive by any means. We will follow up with some more serious overclocking in the next few days, stay tuned!

Just in case you were looking for an apples-to-apples comparison, it's not going to happen. At least, not today. It's hardly a secret that AMD has its own hexacore processors under way, in fact, they have been available in the server space for a while, but we should see desktop parts popup anytime now. However, if you have a thousand bucks to drop on a processor, look no further -- the Core i7-980X is the fastest desktop processor money can buy and, realistically, that's not going to change until next generation processors land.