Intel's Core i7: Blazing Fast, But Crippled O/C

[Guest]

Core i7--previously referred to as Nehalem--requires new motherboards, coolers and memory. Its performance is compelling and means AMD is falling behind even further, but Intel is putting in some speed bumps that will impact overclocking enthusiasts.

Intel's Core i7: Blazing Fast, But Crippled O/C : Read more

 

[joseph85]

Good article, and may I say Keep up the good work.

 

[pullmyfoot]

AMD’s HyperTransport protocol can transmit up to 25.6 GB/s at 3.20 GHz.

You mean Intel don't you? Other than that little mistake, good article

 

[wh3resmycar]

hmm, question. once this nehalems come out. will we ever see a dieshrunk c2q again after the penryns? im expecting the price of this procs along with the mobo and ram to be too far off from my budget. or

 

[skywalker9952]

One of the first side effects of Intel's domination of the CPU market is beginning to show. Since they don't have to compete with AMD in any market segment the i7 occupies, they have limited (significant) overclocking to only extreme models.

RIP AMD.
May Abu Dhabi restore you to life soon so we don't have to suffer through more Intel ripoffs.

 

[sonar610]

"The fastest Core i7, the 965 Extreme, is more than 2.6 times as fast as AMD’s current flagship CPU, the Phenom X4 9550 BE."
This seems like an editing mistake maybe it should be 9950BE.

 

[cryogenic]

Core i7 is a great CPU, the article is not. I can't believe after all this time you still stack overclocked CPUs with unoverclocked ones. It's great to find out the overclocking potential of Nehalem but, at least include some overclocked Penryns in there too, to see how overclocked Nehalem stacks agains OTHER overclocked CPUs, because it's fairly evident that and overclocked new gen CPU will stack well with older non overclocked ones.

 

[joseph85]

[citation][nom]Cryogenic[/nom]Core i7 is a great CPU, the article is not. I can't believe after all this time you still stack overclocked CPUs with unoverclocked ones. It's great to find out the overclocking potential of Nehalem but, at least include some overclocked Penryns in there too, to see how overclocked Nehalem stacks agains OTHER overclocked CPUs, because it's fairly evident that and overclocked new gen CPU will stack well with older non overclocked ones.[/citation]
If it's evident then who cares?

 

[fender22]

[citation][nom]skywalker9952[/nom]One of the first side effects of Intel's domination of the CPU market is beginning to show. Since they don't have to compete with AMD in any market segment the i7 occupies, they have limited (significant) overclocking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking to only extreme models.RIP AMD. May Abu Dhabi restore you to life soon so we don't have to suffer through more Intel ripoffs. [/citation]

My thoughts exactly... I wonder if there will be some sort of resistance to this sort of thing... It's like buying a car, you can do whatever you want to it (within the limits of the law) to make it as fast as you want. Sure, you may void your factory warranty, but it's your deal. You don't see car companies making it impossible for you to do what you want to their cars so you have to buy their expensive high end just to get your kicks... (not a perfect comparison, but it works)

I dunno, it's just pretty weak. And they are just taking advantage of the situation...

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]sonar610[/nom]"The fastest Core i7, the 965 Extreme, is more than 2.6 times as fast as AMD’s current flagship CPU, the Phenom X4 9550 BE." This seems like an editing mistake maybe it should be 9950BE.[/citation]

Fixed, thanks!

 

[onearmedscissorb]

Aside from the all too prevalent and potentially misleading typos, which someone needed to get a handle on as of months ago, I must say that the overall quality of this article is MUCH better than pretty much anything I can remember of the last few months. It's actually informative and thought out, rather than being a mess of assumptions that many people reading already know better than.

Keep it up, and maybe I'll pay attention to this site like I used to.

But just for the record, I don't believe that it's particularly appropriate to use the overall average performance percentages as a basis for comparison between the "speed" of Core 2 vs. Core i7. Obviously, most people are going to be interested in the difference with games, where it's likely to be pretty minimal. But here and there, you have something like the 55% WinRAR difference pretty much skewing what otherwise would have been an accurate depiction of average expectations across the board.

 

[V3NOM]

[citation][nom]fender22[/nom][/citation]
lol well nissan did with the new GTR/skyline..

nice case for that high performance rig as well TG keep it up rofl

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]onearmedscissorb[/nom]Aside from the all too prevalent and potentially misleading typos, which someone needed to get a handle on as of months ago, I must say that the overall quality of this article is MUCH better than pretty much anything I can remember of the last few months. It's actually informative and thought out, rather than being a mess of assumptions that many people reading already know better than.Keep it up, and maybe I'll pay attention to this site like I used to.But just for the record, I don't believe that it's particularly appropriate to use the overall average performance percentages as a basis for comparison between the "speed" of Core 2 vs. Core i7. Obviously, most people are going to be interested in the difference with games, where it's likely to be pretty minimal. But here and there, you have something like the 55% WinRAR difference pretty much skewing what otherwise would have been an accurate depiction of average expectations across the board.[/citation]

If you see something wrong, please feel free to point it out. We put a lot of effort into translation, copy editing, and tech editing. For a 6,000+ word piece, perfection is most definitely difficult. That doesn't stop us from striving for it, though.

Thanks for your feedback!
Chris

 

[macer1]

Chris don't feed us with excuses, it might be difficult but it is "someones" job.

these excuses are a main reason i don't read articles from www.tomshardware.com with any intent of a purposeful read. Its more like the national inquirer, no wait they have real editors.

We put a lot of effort into translation, copy editing, and tech editing. For a 6,000+ word piece, perfection is most definitely difficult.

 

[FrancoisPiednoel]

well, Fugger at xtremesystem got the new Core i7 running at 5.247Ghz, no problem for overclocking. http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=206571
other point, all core i7 have the Turbo mode enable, in your article, you said that it is only the Extreme edition. The extreme edition is the only one with Unlock turbo ratio, but the 920 and 940 can turbo too!

cheers!
Francois Piednoel
Intel Corp

 

[Guest]

QPI operates at 6.4GT/s * 20bit (2 byte+ecc) = 12.8GB/s in each direction.
Therefore bidirectional throughput is 25.6GB/s @ 6.4GT/s or 19.2GB/s @ 4.8GT/s.

 

[lopopo]

In the days of Athlon vs P4 I was rooting for AMD. Intel had become Jabba the Hut and AMD was beating them with efficiency, gaming performance and new technologies. I saw Intel as a boardroom of Donald Rumsfeld's who were astounded that people did not turn over their hard earned money for their crap product. This image changed with the release of the core architecture....I changed my mind about Intel and not only do to the performance of their products.
For many of us OC'ing *is* the thrill of putting together a computer. By placing stringent OC restrictions Intel has stifled a growing hobby, left themselves vulnerable to a cheep OC alternative from AMD and ultimately hurt their image and bottom line. I figure the low end cpu's that will eventually carry the i7 moniker will sell very well, fine, profit by volume... then there's the middle to high end 350-600$ ( you, me, people who read these articles)..higher then that Intel is trying to create a market where one does not exist. In a recessionist world economy I just do not see their reasoning. Id rather sell volumes of 500-700$ extreme editions rather than a couple of 1000$+'s. My philosophy is sell good products at acceptable prices and people will reward you with their absolute loyalty. That being said the tech is new prices will drop...eventually.

 

[luciiacob]

"Together with the internal chip base clock of 133 MHz, that gives us memory speeds of DDR3-800 and DDR3-1066. The Core i7 965 will support the multipliers 10 and 12, giving user the option of installing faster DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600 RAM."

The 800 MHz memory is DDR2, right? I'm confused about the 1066 MHz, though since I founded it labeled both DDR2 and DDR3. Even in this article (see the Synthetic Bandwidth Measurements tabel).

 

[Mathos]

You might wanna check the comparison graph on page 12 about the 2.66ghz part. Any reason for the older Asus m3a32 board instead of m3a79-t? Or the Foxconn A79A-S that I know ya'll got on hand? I know if you're running Vantage that means Vista. I'd like to know what MS has done in Vista thats messing with the Phenom numbers. It's not something new I'm pointing out. But, for example where I get over 2000kb/s in xpsp3 on my 9850 at stock, if I were to run Vista that would drop down to just above 1000kb/s at the most.

Yeah I figured the numbers would be like this. Wonder what kind of effect DDR3 will have with Deneb.

 

[luciiacob]

[citation][nom]mathos[/nom]You might wanna check the comparison graph on page 12 about the 2.66ghz part.[/citation]
I agree. It says that the Core i7 940 is slower by 38% than the Core i7 920.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]FrancoisPiednoel[/nom]well, Fugger at xtremesystem got the new Core i7 running at 5.247Ghz, no problem for overclocking. http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forum [...] p?t=206571 other point, all core i7 have the Turbo mode enable, in your article, you said that it is only the Extreme edition. The extreme edition is the only one with Unlock turbo ratio, but the 920 and 940 can turbo too!cheers!Francois PiednoelIntel Corp[/citation]

Francois,

I'll forward this information to Bert. Thank you,
Chris

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]macer1[/nom]Chris don't feed us with excuses, it might be difficult but it is "someones" job. these excuses are a main reason i don't read articles from www.tomshardware.com with any intent of a purposeful read. Its more like the national inquirer, no wait they have real editors.[/citation]

No excuses here. Still waiting for a solid example of what's meant by this. Thanks for the feedback, though.

 

[Guest]

Nero 8 Recode -129.0%

Impressive!! So, the Nehalem must finish Nero already before it is even started. That is really impressive, but puts some doubts about the validity on all you bench markings!!

 

[Guest]

Uhh... The 4870 is faster? Esp the x2..

"To ensure that the processor will be the deciding factor in our gaming benchmarks, we use MSI’s powerful N280GTX-T2D1G-OC card, which is equipped with Nvidia’s G200 chip."

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]shivman[/nom]Uhh... The 4870 is faster? Esp the x2.. "To ensure that the processor will be the deciding factor in our gaming benchmarks, we use MSI’s powerful N280GTX-T2D1G-OC card, which is equipped with Nvidia’s G200 chip."[/citation]

Wait until tomorrow--we'll have a follow-up story focusing on the graphics side of this equation. And no, an HD 4870 is not faster ;-)