The Core i7 980X Review: Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 11, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
Our 3dsmax test shows an improvement, but it also shows that we're not totally CPU core bound - the performance advantage over the 975 is only 11%.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Single threaded performance of the Core i7 980X is among the best Intel has to offer today, you no longer have to choose between more cores or more frequency thanks to turbo.
Spawn enough threads and the Core i7 980X can't be touched. Performance here is 32.5% better than the Core i7 975, which itself is significantly faster than anything else on the chart.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
Oh that? That's just a 47% peformance boost over the Core i7 975. This is nearly perfect scaling with core count, showing us that we're not limited by memory bandwidth or anything else. The 980X is a beast.
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Meghan54 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
[QUOTE]where are you getting your xeon pricing info from?all i can find from any solid source is the current xeon quad core processors which are running about $2000 on newegg at the moment. [/QUOTE]
Well, I question your search skills at Newegg, then, if that's all you can find there.
Just an FYI, Newegg has MANY, MANY sub-$700 Xeon processors for socket 1366, like the W3520, a Bloomfield, for $310, or the W3550 for $600--both Bloomfield quad-core cpus.
Learn to use search, (ps....main page, cpu/processors, processors-servers, power search, check box socket 1366, look at results. I'm hoping you do understand that there are mouse clicks between step.)
formulav8 - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
grow up...softdrinkviking - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
no, i saw all of that stuff. i was looking at the six core chips and i typed quad instead.but thanks for getting all nasty and sarcastic anyway.
i'll try to remember about those mouse clicks next time.
the point i was trying to make is that the xeon line is going to be more expensive than the comparable home desktop CPUs and that it won't be a simple matter of non-server customers just buying xeons that will outclass the current i7 line-up. (specifically to compete against the 6 core model that this review is about)
Drag0nFire - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I think the point was that you could get 2x cheap quad core Xeons, and run with 8 cores (16 threads) at a small price premium over the $1000 Gulftown.vol7ron - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I will keep my eyes open for the Xeon, but for some reason, those typically are quite pricey. This $1k price will fall, hopefully sooner, rather than later.I am looking forward to both.
Thanks for the read, Anand,
vol7ron
DrMrLordX - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Here's a list of Gulftown quads for LGA1366:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_Intel_...">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fu...rocessor...
The information isn't complete, but you should be able to do searches on the part that interests you most and get the information that you want.
iamezza - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
it won't be dropping in price any time soon. Check the chart on Pg 3 - this is the top intel CPU until 2011 and I can't see AMD releasing a CPU that will compete performance wise with it before then.DarkUltra - Monday, May 3, 2010 - link
I also miss memory and cache performance tests, and memory overclock results.Kn0xx - Monday, May 17, 2010 - link
well, this new 6 core comer, will be ( probably ) the entry design for 128 -bit processors that Intel are already working on it.128 bit need new multi-core structures. so ..980X is an example of how can a 128-bit core would be =)
unmaskedtruth - Sunday, May 23, 2010 - link
does anyone know if protools le 8.0 is multi-threaded? for recording pro music, is it going to be able to take advantage of "6cores" if i was to go i7-980x route? or is quad-core more than sufficient? cause there is i7-930 which is cost like 80% less than the 980x. what do you guys suggest?