X58A-UD9 vs. Rampage III Extreme, powered by i7 980X - whose crown?
Technology: Summary of manufacturing, features and processes, and a new chiller
So we talked a few words about motherboards. What we haven’t talked about yet is the Intel processor. True, we’ve already shown him on HOC TV, but in a written test, it’s his first debut, so it’s appropriate to dedicate a page to the topic.
The six-core Intel Core i7 980X EE (Gulftown) is a gem of the latest 32nm manufacturing technology, a member of the Westmere family. Perhaps it is already well known among our readers these days that the company has come to an unquestionable dominance with the Nehalem architecture. From now on, we can also carve in stone - if we had not already done so - that we are dealing with an extremely timeless and robust construction.
Intel's new flagship consists of 1,17 billion transistors and has a core size of just 248 mm2. The six-core Gulftown is thus significantly smaller than a quad-core Lynnfield (296 mm2) and virtually the size of an AMD Deneb core (243 mm2). After the “usual” pricing of around $ 1000 for the top models of the American processor manufacturer, and in addition to the previous knowledge, it can already be guessed that Intel's record revenue this year was not accidental.
Processor | Baseline of seeds | Seeds / Fibers | L3 cache | Max. Turbo mode clock | TDP | Price |
Intel Core i7-980X | 3,33 GHz | 6 / 12 | 12 MB | 3,60 GHz | 130 W | $ 999 * |
Intel Core i7-970 | 3,20 GHz | 6 / 12 | 12 MB | 3,46 GHz | 130 W | $ 885 * |
Intel Core i7-975 | 3,33 GHz | 4 / 8 | 8 MB | 3,60 GHz | 130 W | $ 999 * |
Intel Core i7-965 | 3,20 GHz | 4 / 8 | 8 MB | 3,46 GHz | 130 W | $ 999 * |
Intel Core i7-950 | 3,06 GHz | 4 / 8 | 8 MB | 3,33 GHz | 130 W | $ 562 * |
Intel Core i7-940 | 2,93 GHz | 4 / 8 | 8 MB | 3,20 GHz | 130 W | $ 562 * |
Intel Core i7-930 | 2,80 GHz | 4 / 8 | 8 MB | 3,06 GHz | 130 W | $ 294 * |
Intel Core i7-920 | 2,66 GHz | 4 / 8 | 8 MB | 2,93 GHz | 130 W | $ 284 * |
* Source: Intel.com
In addition to the power show, Gulftown is actually an expanded Bloomfield, further reinforced by the fact that the processor is based on the LGA1366 socket, which is already common in high-end platforms. Unlike AMD's Thuban solution, the cache size has also increased in proportion to the number of cores, so the CPU can manage 6 × 256 Kbyte second-level and 12 Mbyte shared third-level cache. The six-core rookie is ticking at 3,33 GHz, which in itself would be impressive data, but even the QPI-link and un-core components are clocked at 3,2 GHz, the current highest speed in Intel’s product range. The Core i7-980X is, of course, multiplier-free, which users who are prone to tuning are likely to enjoy. We found a tiny patch of beauty on the memory controller: officially only three-channel DDR3 1066 MHz memories are supported.
Intel Gulftown Structure:
Summary of Core i7-980X supported instruction sets, features, and procedures:
- Hyper-Threading creates a total of twelve virtual threads for six processor cores. According to Intel, with a five percent higher number of transistors, a performance increase of up to 30 percent can be achieved.
- The Turbo Boost method uses a clock increase of up to 266 MHz, depending on the processor load. The small difference is mainly seen in synthetic test programs.
- AES-NI (AES-New Instructions) includes support for AESENC, AESENCLAST, AESDEC, AESDECLAST, AESKEYGENASSIST, AESIMC, and PCLMULQDQ instructions. Measurement of SiSoft Sandra - AES encryption showed 200 percent acceleration.
- Intel VT allows the same hardware platform to operate as multiple “virtual” platforms while separating computing operations into separate partitions. This technology has received a lot of attention due to Windows 7 “XP Mode”.
- Gulftown supports all SSE instruction sets up to SSE4.2. The new extension brought a total of 7 new instructions, so it can be considered a smaller step.
The Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition also got a brand new boxed cooler. Called the DBX-B, the “little thing” has four heat pipes and a huge cooling surface. Its fan is idling at 800 rpm, no louder than 20 dB. Under load, when the temperature rises significantly, the speed rises up to 1800 RPM, where noise emissions of 35 decibels can already exceed the tolerance threshold of many. It is commendable that the user can also manually control the fan using a small two-position switch. DBX-B is not a bad solution, but anyone who can spend on such an expensive processor is unlikely to have a problem getting an even more efficient design.
The mere sight of the factory refrigerator allows us to associate it with the fact that we are facing serious consumption here. The position expressed earlier - “who can spend on such an expensive processor…” - strikes his head here as well, yet we have no cause for serious concern. Although the Intel Core i7 980X has a 130-watt TDP frame, it has become extremely energy efficient, which is reflected in the fact that the performance / consumption ratio is quite favorable.
