The Dark Knight: Intel's Core i7
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on November 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
| CPU: | AMD Phenom 9950 (2.6GHz) Intel Core i7-965 (3.2GHz) Intel Core i7-940 (2.93GHz) Intel Core i7-920 (2.66GHz) Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.2GHz/1600MHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3.00GHz/1333MHz) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (2.66GHz/1333MHz) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) Gigabyte GA-MA790FX (AMD 790FX) |
| Chipset: | Intel X48 Intel X58 AMD 790FX |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.9 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12) Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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Jingato - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
If the 920 can easily be overclocked to 3.8Ghz on air, what intensive is there to purchase the 965 for more that triple the price?TantrumusMaximus - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
I don't understand why the tests were on such low resolutions... most gamers are running higher res than 1280x1024 etc etc....What gives?
daniyarm - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Because if they ran gaming benchmarks at higher res, the difference in FPS would be hardly visible and you wouldn't go out and buy a new CPU.If they are going to show differences between Intel and AMD CPUs, show Nehalem at 3.2 GHz vs 9950 OC to 3.2 GHz so we can see clock for clock differences in performance and power.
npp - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
9950 consumes about 30W more at idle than the 965XE, and 30W less under load. I guess that OC'ing it to 3,2Ghz will need more than 30W... Given that the 965 can process 4 more threads, I think the result should be more or less clear.tim851 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Higher resolutions stress the GPU more and it will become a bottleneck. Since the article was focussing on CPU power and not GPU power they were lowering the resolution enough to effectively take the GPU out of the picture.Caveman - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
It would be nice to see these CPU reviews use relevant "gaming" benchmarks. It would be good to see the results with something like MS flight simulator FSX or DCS Black Shark, etc... The flight simulators these days are BOTH graphically and calculation intensive, but really stress the CPU.AssBall - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
No, they don't, actually.philosofool - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
It would have been nice to see a proper comparison of power consumption. Given all of Intel's boast about being able to shut off cores to save power, I'd like to see some figures about exact savings.nowayout99 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Ditto, I was wondering about power too.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Soon, soon my friend :)-A