Intel's Core i7 purchased, overclocked, benchmarked

Looking for the latest in CPU spice to keep your gaming rig flowing? You'd better go find your wallet/purse and head to your local computer shop for a fresh Core i7 (née Nehalem), because they are apparently available for sale right now -- before most of the major sites have even received theirs. User gooddog over at the Overclock.net forums has flaunted posted this picture of his recently purchased 3.2GHz Core i7 Extreme 965 CPU. Paired with an Asus P6T motherboard and running at the stock clock rate it scored a 5,606 in 3DMark06, in-line with what earlier testers found. O/C'ed up to 3.8GHz it delivered a tidy 6,608, a mark that surely gives it control of all benchmarks and, thus, the PC universe.

[Thanks, Adam]

[Brendan @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:38PM]

Change of pants.

I need them.

[chris @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:01PM]

I need a little more than a change of pants.

[PuBeLeSs @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:04PM]

me too, the money to afford these kinds of toys

[EdMercer @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:16PM]

My poor AMD just ran to the hills. Guess I'll need to replace it with a Core i7 *sigh*

...and a fresh pair of pants please.

[Ian @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:24PM]

But can it run Cr.......oh, it can? Heh.

[vampritt @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:39PM]

1000 bucks for a processor ? whew.. there goes my kidney and my liver price combined to the highest bidder in ebay to afford one of those..heheheh

[Jonathan-DBOSS @ Nov 2nd 2008 10:22PM]

So yeah, I posted one of my kidneys on ebay. Starting bid $1000.

(100% of the proceeds will go directly to the "My Purchase of the Core i7 Foundation")

[El Taco @ Nov 2nd 2008 10:57PM]

My auction is under "ARM + LEG!!! FREE PRIORITY SHIPPING!!!" starting bid $1000.95

[Ryan @ Nov 3rd 2008 12:23AM]

Here's a full review of the Core i7 processors, chipset, overclocking, features, etc:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=634

[vampritt @ Nov 3rd 2008 12:45AM]

So its fast. Thats it!! The importance of blazing fast processor has been downplayed by current GPU.

Video encoding, ok.. GPU is faster by the faster Quadcore extreme by 15-20 times.
WEP2 signal cracking, ok.. GPU is almost 15x faster than intel quadcore.

Where else can the importance of 15%-20% faster processor have better impact other than old softwares (win 7 and Mac OS will harness GPU acceleration soon). --> taking into consideration that i7 is abit slower than core2duo processor in some games.

And the arrival of Larrabee (cough) will make "my CPU is faster than your CPU" thing in the past.

Soon after, faster processor will get your word start faster by 0.001s.

Sorry for this rude awakening :)

[BananaBoat @ Nov 3rd 2008 1:12AM]

CPU's are still the limiting factor for games at lower resolutions, so they do serve their purpose there. That said, my 4.2ghz OC'd E8500 would probably out perform the first batch of Core i7's at 99% of the games on the market. This is purely a benchmark wankfest, but then again, it is a "tick" and not a "tock" so it's to be expected. If your time horizon between upgrades is 2 years or less, there is no reason why you shouldn't spend less and get one of the 45nm C2D's or C2Q's today. You'll save on ram, you'll save on the cost of the mobo, and the cost of the processor, and the performance will be pretty much identical.

Then again, if it means another 100 points in futuremark, there is no convincing some people

[Miker @ Nov 3rd 2008 1:22AM]

@ El Taco "My auction is under "ARM + LEG!!! FREE PRIORITY SHIPPING!!!" starting bid $1000.95"

(in a fake Mexican accent) Intel Core i7 she play Crysis, El Taco he not play Crysis, he only got one arm - ei carumba!

[Daza @ Nov 3rd 2008 2:55AM]

BananaBoat, I somehow highly doubt that your E8500 even at 4.2GHz could outperform an i7 920 at 2.66GHz. Look at http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/634/sisoft-mulitcore.jpg . Even at 100% overclock and over 6GHz (assuming performance scales) you would be getting about 18GB/s which is on par with the QX9770. But the i7 at 2.66GHz is achieving 32GB/s.

I may be completely wrong, but if you look at any of the benchmarks the Core i7 comprehensively beats every other previous generation CPU. That's why it's not a Core 2 Duo E9500. It's a new generation altogether. Don't forget about the integrated memory controller which is probably helping performance the most.

[BananaBoat @ Nov 3rd 2008 7:23AM]

I meant for games specifically. In the rare application that takes advantage of four cores, it would absolutely destroy my E8500, even at 4ghz+. Then again, so would a Q6600, so that isn't saying much. In a dual threaded (or, have mercy, a legacy app that doesn't even take advantage of two cores) you'd be much better off with 2 cores at 4ghz than 4 at 2.5 (8 as opposed to 5 for dual). It may be a more advanced architecture, but it's not going to make up for that difference in speed. There is no doubt in my mind that by the "tock" cycle of development, the Core i7's will be killing the Core 2 Duo's, but for now, price/performance wise, people would be foolish to go for the expensive solution. That's just my two cents though.


I'm still of the opinion that 4 cores is a gigantic waste of time. Then again, besides using microsoft office and a few 3D modelling programs, all I do is play games (well, and watch videos).

[Daza @ Nov 3rd 2008 7:28AM]

Actually I did jump to conclusions a bit and didn't consider what you said specifically about gaming. You're right, with regards to gaming there would be zilch difference between the E8500 OC and a Core i7. Even though we're years into multi-core CPUs in the mainstream there are very few common applications that can really take advantage of more than 2 cores. Even 2 cores is a stretch. The only gaming bottleneck is the GPU, and has been for some years now.

I personally have an E4400 @ 3GHz, and it's still more than enough for a lot of applications. I'd have to upgrade my 8800GT to see any significant gains with gaming. Even 1080p decoding can be done on an integrated chipset with a low end dual-core.

[BananaBoat @ Nov 3rd 2008 12:27PM]

I'm sure Intel has noticed that most people wouldn't see any difference between their older 65nm Core 2 Duo's and their new 45nm C2D's, C2Q's, and Core i7's. If it weren't for the tendencies of people to buy whatever vendors tell them they need, moores law would probably be done for by now. Then again, I'm sure one day we'll have 2560x1200 *or whatever* video that needs decoding, or games that won't run without the latest and greatest quad core processor, and this entire argument will be moot. That day just hasn't come yet.

[Chris @ Nov 5th 2008 8:22AM]

unless you had two 4870 X2's in quad fire running COD4 at 1024*768 with a monitor capable of 300 frames per second, then it would totally be worth it.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/8

sorry for late post, exams

[2Shea @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:40PM]

Wow yeah, do want.

[Chuckles McGee @ Nov 2nd 2008 10:12PM]

"a mark that surely gives it control of all benchmarks and, thus, the PC universe."

I feel like that should be followed with a "mwhahahahahaha!"

[Sudo @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:40PM]

Giggity

[Shinigami @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:35PM]

Does run crysis...same as C2Q. The difference is calculation-mistake-sized. So yeah, no need to change to Nehalem-Bloomfield if all you want from a PC is running games. Its expensive and doesn't give much (if any) performance boost.

[Silverfoxx903 @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:42PM]

But can it run crysis 2?

[LC @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:43PM]

There is no Crysis 2.....

[codenamepenryn @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:48PM]

i think you missed the joke...

[Peste @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:48PM]

O_o...

With 3,8ghz I think it will run Crysis 3 :P

Great Processor :O

[Harry Wagstaff @ Nov 3rd 2008 4:00AM]

A joke? From the way people were getting low-ranked, I thought it was some sort of ritual social suicide.

[Taylor @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:46PM]

What's this thing cost? WANT.

[LC @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:47PM]

You can see the price on the box. $1075 for the CPU.

[Atropos @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:51PM]

$1000 for a fuckin' processor?

DO NOT WANT.

[LC @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:53PM]

Well Atropos, if you take into account that this is the highest end desktop CPU you can get (Or can't, since it isn't released yet.) it's a pretty good deal. It's like having the fastest street legal car. Except a car would cost a LOT more.

[catter12 @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:54PM]

$1,000 bucks for a proc? I would totally hit that if I had the funds.

[Hawk Pidgeon @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:04PM]

Don't forget that extra 95 cents. :P

[Atropos @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:10PM]

"I would totally hit that if I had the funds."

Anybody would hit anything cool if they had the funds to dispose on it.

[iofthestorm @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:15PM]

It's been Intel's standard operating procedure to price its highest end procs at around $1000, this is just a little more than that. AMD used to do it too, until they ran out of processors good enough to sell for a grand. Sad to say, but it is the truth. It's also true that any processor over say, $300 is overkill and you could probably find a much cheaper version that can overclock to the equivalent speed of this one, although maybe not the overclocked speed of this one. Again, it's also true that in 6 months this will be obsolete so spending over a grand on a CPU is a waste of money unless you simply must have the very fastest CPU available.

[Reader @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:44PM]

OCing to the same speed doesn't always get the same performance. Architecture and cache play an enormous role.

[nickz @ Nov 26th 2008 2:08AM]

Core i7 motherboards and triple channel memory will also jack the price of a Nehalem system build relative to a Core build quite a bit.

[BobTurbo @ Nov 3rd 2008 2:29AM]

I can't pick up chicks with my CPU though.

[TheNewmanDynasty @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:47PM]

So when will the major companies have these in laptops?

[LC @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:49PM]

Not for a while. This is a desktop CPU.

And chances are, if you needed this much power you'd just go for a desktop, considering how insanely priced high end, and even mid range laptops cost.

[TheNewmanDynasty @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:56PM]

Thanks for responding...I prefer laptops...but w/e I'll just wait and see what happens.

[TheNewmanDynasty @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:57PM]

Thanks for responding...I prefer laptops...but w/e I'll just wait and see what happens.

[Bender Bending Rodriguez @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:06PM]

The timeline for notebook-grade Nehalem processors is next summer/fall, so you are looking at nearly a year from now. Even this processor is a server/workstation-grade processor. The actual desktop-grade chips won't be out until next year.

[atbnet @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:29PM]

You are awaiting Calpella which is supposed to be out Q3 2009. So, you've got a while to save your pennies.

[Peste @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:49PM]

even the price is EXTREME... HEHE ^_^

[RoboDan @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:50PM]

When will the price for the i7 drop so I too can afford a giant e-peen?

[LC @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:51PM]

Not for a long time.

However, the lowest end Core i7 will be $300. Of course, lower end Core i7s will come out after that for even cheaper.

[Christian Martin @ Nov 2nd 2008 8:57PM]

...I'll be in my bunk.

[T5BRICK @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:55PM]

LOL @ Firefly.

[Abuzar Baloach @ Nov 2nd 2008 10:58PM]

Way to screw up the comments man. the next one followed perfectly and you just HAD to reply to this one.

[Dillon @ Nov 2nd 2008 9:00PM]

Fapping at quantum speed.