INTEL

Core i7-980X Extreme Edition

About £881 inc VAT (GBP) - About $1,400 (USD)

Intel has sells this processor under the label of its “Extreme Edition” as it does for some other of its fastest processors, and it has done this since 2003.

However, in the past the so called Extreme Edition moniker has been disappointing with often only small speed gains and yet there have often been enormous price increases for any CPU in the Extreme Edition range.

This lead to some cynical comments from time to time, but we take it all back!

Intel has now produced something truly worthy of the description of “extreme” with the dazzling Intel Core i7-980X.

To be as fast as this CPU is there has to be something special under the bonnet, and there is.

Never mind dual, or quad-core chips. Those will never impress you again!

That’s because the i7-980X is the first processor with six separate processing cores.

Each processing core is also Hyper-Threaded, so your operating system can see and execute 12 instructions simultaneously.

When the Computer Shopper magazine reviews this CPU they said:

“We're not benchmark fetishists here at Shopper, but an overall score of 183 in our benchmarks make this a truly astounding feat”.

“With six cores to feed with data and instructions, Intel hasn't scrimped on the cache. Each processor has its own 256K L2 cache, plus a huge 12MB shared cache. It certainly does the trick, with an impressive score of 157 in our tough multitasking test, and an incredible 209 when all six cores were unleashed in our video-encoding test. That makes this processor more than twice as fast as our reference PC.”

That amazing 183 benchmark speed score is about DOUBLE what you would see from a really fast desktop PC bought from normal online sellers and high street stores.

However this processor at release date is extremely expensive, and not strictly value for users, unless you do have an application which is so intensive that it cannot be run and still allow the PC user to complete other necessary tasks that are needed to be completed on the same machine.

Technical Talk

The leap in speed achieved by the i7-980X is possible thanks to a marriage between Intel’s new scrim manufacturing process as used in its latest LGA1156 Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. This is paired with its larger LGA1366 socket, used in the original Core i7 range.

This combination provides the best features of both architectures all rolled into one package.

Like the LGA1156 Clarkdale processors, the small 32nm process helps keep heat generated to a minimum. Intel has taken advantage of this by adding its own overclocking technology, called Turbo Boost. This dynamically overclocks the processor cores based on workload and heat produced, letting the clock speed rise from 3.33GHzto 3.6GHz when required.

Thanks to the LGA1336 architecture, there's access to triple-channel DDR3, via the fast QPI bus, for a maximum memory bandwidth of 25.6GB/s.

TheTDP of the i7-980X is a very reasonable 130W, which is a lot compared to most desktop processors, but no more than any of the current quad-core LGA1336 range.

When you buy it in the boxed version we would expect to arrive with a large heatsink.

The heatsink Intel bundles with this processor may of course vary, but reports suggest that a tower-style cooler, with six heat pipes running through it has been the norm so far.

The large fan seen in early versions on the front has two settings. If this is similar to others these will be for quiet running when doing normal work, and switchable to a power/ higher performance setting for CPU intensive tasks. In the performance setting there is some serious cooling neded, so some have commented that it is like having a hairdryer in your PC.

Fortunately, you'll need the latter only if you will be overclocking the i7-980X further still.

Processor Specification

Six cores running at 3.33CHZ, LGA1366,133MHz (3.2CHZ QuickPath Interconnect), 6x 256KB L2 cache, 12MB L3 cache, 130WTDP PART CODE BX80613I7980X www.intel.com