Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition Review Manufacturer: Intel UK price (as reviewed): £793.40 (inc VAT) US price (as reviewed): $999.99 (ex VAT) There has been so much fuss about Intel's new.

It’s rare that anything we review has the longevity that Intel’s Core i7 Bloomfield platform has enjoyed. If you were one of the fortunate few to buy a Core i7 920, 940 or 965, you’d still have one of the fastest desktop CPUs today in March 2010.Lynnfield was introduced in 2009, but still couldn't dethrone Bloomfield.In fact, other than a few minor speed bumps, Intel hasn’t done much with its LGA-1366 platform in the past 15 months. Last year Intel introduced with its LGA-1156 socket and in January we got the first.Now it’s finally time to take care of the folks who invested in Nehalem and Core i7 early on. In the coming weeks Intel will be shipping its first 6-core desktop processor, built using the same 32nm process used in the Clarkdale Core i3/i5 CPUs. It’s codenamed Gulftown but today we can call it the Core i7 980X. Did I mention that with a BIOS update it’s fully compatible with all X58 motherboards? That’s right, even if you bought a board in November 2008 - you can upgrade directly to Gulftown.

Download xbmc hub wizard for mac. The Entire 2010 Nehalem/Westmere lineupIn fact, that’s exactly what I did for today’s review. This is Intel’s DX58SO motherboard I used in my in November 2008:It’s the same exact board, but updated to the that’s currently available on Intel’s site. Intel was sneaky and actually enabled Gulftown support in its motherboards a few weeks ago.And here we have the result:Intel’s Core i7 980X, running at 3.33GHz with 6 cores, 12 threads and a massive 12MB L3 cache all running on a motherboard that shipped a year and a half ago.The old board works mostly fine with the 980X but with some odd bugs and quirks that I ran into. I found that my older DDR3-1066 memory wouldn't overclock to 1333MHz with Gulftown, although it did just fine with Bloomfield for some reason.It’s not just Intel enabling support either.

All motherboard manufacturers either have or are expected to have BIOSes with Gulftown support by the time this chip ships in the coming weeks. ASRock sent over its X58 Extreme, which worked perfectly with the new chip:It’s ExtremeThe coolest part of Gulftown is that by building it on Intel’s 32nm process it’s actually smaller than both Bloomfield and Lynnfield, despite having 50% more cores and L3 cache: CPUCodenameManufacturing ProcessCoresTransistor CountDie SizeWestmere 6CGulftown32nm61.17B240mm 2Nehalem 4CBloomfield45nm4731M263mm 2Nehalem 4CLynnfield45nm4774M296mm 2Westmere 2CClarkdale32nm2384M81mm 2AMD Phenom II X4Deneb45nm4758M258mm 2At 1.17 billion transistors, it’s a beefy chip but the monolithic die only measures 240mm^2. It’s even smaller than an AMD Phenom II X4. Not only does it have a smaller die than all quad-core Nehalem processors, but it also has the same TDP.The 130W chip runs at 3.33GHz, but because of the high TDP it can only turbo up to 3.46GHz with more than two cores active. If only one or two cores are active, the chip can turbo up to 3.60GHz.

With up to 6 cores running at 3.46GHz, Gulftown is not only the fastest CPU in Intel’s lineup, it’s also the fastest quad-core Intel makes. Only the Core i5 670 can run at a higher frequency with a single core active (3.73GHz vs 3.60GHz).The downside to all of this is the price tag.

The Core i7 980X is an Extreme Edition processor, meaning it’s introduced at the $999 price point. And currently it’s the only way to get 6-cores in a Core i7. Currently Intel doesn't have any plans to introduce 4-core versions of Gulftown on the desktop, although we will see some 32nm quad-core Xeons later this year.Bloomfield (left) vs.

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Gulftown (right)This isn’t the first time that the $999 price tag comes with some exclusive features. The first Pentium 4 Extreme Edition was the very first to wear the EE brand. While all regular Pentium 4s at the time had a 512KB L2, the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition added a 2MB L3 cache - a feature that never trickled down to the mainstream P4s.Since then, most Extreme Edition parts have just been higher clocked CPUs.

Despite that, they do sell well enough for Intel to continue the practice. Given that this time around, the Core i7 980X will not only give you clock speed but more cores and cache, Intel will probably end up selling more of these than they ever have. Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - I understand your point.I do video editing myself as well as some animation, but thanks to Furry Ball (Maya) and Elemental plugins for AE and Premiere, I've come to love GPU power more than ever.I've seen what's comming for CS5 and I do not see CPU playing an important role there.I see very few people, like yourself, actually finding bennefit from these product launches - same goes to PII X6, although I believe this one will be FAR better priced and far more atractive.Best.

OverclockingIntel’s Core i7-990X, -980X, and -2600K are all fairly unique in the company’s lineup for their unlocked multipliers. The feature’s a boon to overclocking the two Gulftown-based chips, since you don’t have to screw around with the 133 MHz BCLK. However, it’s an absolute necessity on the Sandy Bridge-based processors because you can’t screw around with its 100 MHz BCLK.On the left: what you get with Core i5-2500K; on the right: what you get with Core i7-990XHere’s the thing, though. Intel bundles its Extreme Edition parts with a big, beefy DBX-B thermal solution for enhanced overclocking.

But it includes a much dinkier heatsink/fan combo with the K-series SKUs.Using Intel’s retail DBX-B, I was able to push the Core i7-990X to 4.4 GHz at stock voltage.Using the same cooler, I pushed the Core i7-980X to 4.26 GHz at its stock voltage.Armed with the cooler bundled with Intel’s Core i7-2600K, I was barely able to push 4 GHz at the chip’s stock voltage before bouncing off 80 degrees Celsius (I don’t like operating in excess of 80 degrees for extended periods of time). Swapping out for a Thermalright MUX-120, I was able to sit comfortably at 4.3 GHz at stock voltage. Any faster than that and the Core i7-2600K would crash, needing more voltage, which you could comfortably give it, since the hottest core was only hovering around 60 degrees.

In essence, if you want to overclock a K-series chip with any real seriousness, add $50 or $60 to your budget for more capable aftermarket cooling.We of course know that all three processors could go faster—but their relative performance won’t change much. The real purpose of overclocking at all was simply to show that both Gulftown processors and the Sandy Bridge CPU have headroom in them, and the conclusions drawn at stock frequencies apply here, too. In the applications where the -990X was faster, it remains faster. Anything that prefers the -2600K’s more efficient architecture continues to.