Intel’s Core i7-975 & 950: Preparing for Lynnfield
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 3, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Fastest Processor for Single Threaded Tasks
In the past we’ve had to make concessions for single-threaded application performance on modern day quad-core processors. For example, $266 will buy you two 3.33GHz cores or four 2.83GHz cores from Intel. I generally recommend going the quad-core option but there’s no getting around the fact that you do give up some performance when an application can’t take advantage of more than two threads.
With the Core i7 Extreme 975 the CPU can run at up to 3.60GHz when only one core is active (3.46GHz if more than one core is active). In my testing I found that the CPU almost always ran at its maximum turbo frequencies.
The graph below shows single-threaded performance in Cinebench R10. Note that while the Core 2 Duo E8600 (3.33GHz) was the top performer in this test for quite some time, the Core i7’s Turbo Mode has ensured that it’s no longer true.
The fastest single-threaded processors are now Intel's quad-core, eight-thread Core i7s
The biggest issue I see with the i7’s Turbo Mode today is that you only get one speed bin improvement (+133MHz) if 2 or more cores are active. The biggest boost (+266MHz) only comes when only a single core is active. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for Lynnfield for that.
The Test
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) Intel DX48BT2 (Intel X48) MSI DKA790GX Platinum (AMD 790GX) Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H (AMD 790GX) Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-UD5P (AMD 790FX) |
| Chipset: | Intel X48 Intel X58 AMD 790GX AMD 790FX |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1010 (Intel) AMD Catalyst 8.12 |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB (4-4-4-12) G.Skill DDR2-1066 2 x 2GB (5-5-5-15) Qimonda DDR3-1066 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) Corsair DDR3-1333 4 x 1GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Card: | eVGA GeForce GTX 280 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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BSMonitor - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
Are you on crack? Lynnfield is a Nehalem without the tri-channel memory controller... Lynnfield is cheaper by $100 at the same speed bin and runs cooler. Some benchmarks on ES put the Lynnfield faster than Nehalem counterparts where the single/dual threaded apps make use of the more generous turbo mode...Put the reefer down and actually read the article. Lynnfield is 2 months away and already crushing any Phenom II or Penryn and as fast as its Nehalem counterparts at $100 cheaper.
iamezza - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link
As weird as it seems TA152H is actually an i7 platform Fanboy!philosofool - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
Yeah: he's on crack.nitromullet - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
I was asking because I want the flexibility of Crossfire and SLI on the same motherboard, which is something the Lynnfield/P55 platform will not provide. I'm worried that Intel will phase out the 920's, and I'll be left having to a $600ish cpu to get into the X58 platform.