What makes an i7 so "special"?

[vitoscalleta_111]

hello there this is becuase core i 7 has hyperthreading . sse4.1 , faster clocks , QPI , X58 chipset , support for sli and crossfire , L3 cache is there about 8 mb i know in the extreme one , 45nm archtecture more transistors.

 

[jay2tall]

@jay2tall: I hear the i5 is mainstream, and i7 is performance. Just an FYI. I mean if you want you can have either high performance now, or mainstream later.

I've made my choice. haha

 

[Helloworld_98]

I wonder what will be cheaper build when i5 comes out? i5 or i7?

since the bottom-end model which still has HT is $324 which is more than the i7 920 now, and speculation that the i7's price will go down when i5 comes out just makes me wonder, because unless the i5 motherboards are ridiculously cheap I see little reason in buying i5. Since you lose the QPI, CF and SLI capability in one chipset, triple channel memory. Only thing you gain is possibly better OC'ing because the IMC doesn't handle as much (2x1333mhz instead of 3x1333mhz) and a slightly higher clock of 2.8ghz.

 

[cybot_x1024]

I5 will have HT. Love the idea of a dual core with 4 HT's

mee too 😀

 

[cybot_x1024]

I5 will have HT. Love the idea of a dual core with 4 HT's

me too 😀

 

[Fullmetal99012]

No offense mate, but methinks you've got a whole heap of stuff wrong. I'll explain.

1) There is no such thing as a 980 xTreme. There is, however, a 965 Extreme.

2) The performance gap between the 920 and 965 is significant but nothing you really want to be spending the extra money for unless you are an extreme overclocker, and you like the sound of the unlocked multipier (which helps control the speed of the CPU).

3) The ONLY situation I see an i7 falling over to its older counterparts is in gaming, where, really, there isn't that much difference. Hell, a Phenom II performs much the same as an i7 while gaming; but that's primarily due to the fact that most modern games aren't properly multi-threaded yet. In everything else, an i7 will trounce everything, Core2Quad or Phenom II.

Hope that clears some things up.

The i7-980x is intels new gulftown hexa-core.