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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- Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
how are you getting your productivity numbers/percentages ???Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Also note that I limited my voltage to a ~15% increase. I believe with more voltage it's possible to go higher, but you really start driving power consumption up at that point.Take care,
Anand
zartok - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I saw on tweakers.net they were able to run it 3.45GHz on 1V and on 4.26GHz on 1.38V (or 1.33V can't tell that well due to the image size), without even trying hard. So are sure that it's the CPU that's limiting the OC and not something else eg the motherboard?Bolas - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
How does this cpu compare to the 6-core 32nm Xeon server chips that are launching around the same time? Any cost information on those yet? I mention this because I'm seriously considering EVGA's new dual socket W555 motherboard, which requires the dual QPI cpu's.goinginstyle - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
Is Intel offering 18 months no interest no payment plans for this? I really want one but I also want to eat and live in something besides a box for the next six months. Good article and nice to know the X58 boards we already have should work with nothing more than a BIOS upgrade.JonnyDough - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
This processor isn't for you then.It's for people who have nothing better to blow money on AND have money.
DrMrLordX - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
This is mostly a paper launch since few people will pay $1k for a CPU. As has been said so many times in the CPU/OC forums, keep your eyes out for the 32nm Xeon quads that will be appearing for LGA1366. They won't be 920 d0 cheap but they will be cheaper than the 980 and probably OC pretty well.erwos - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
If it's in the channel, it's not a paper launch. Period, end of story. Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean others can't.DrMrLordX - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
It's not that it's unaffordable . . . it's just that I'm not that crazy. Close, but not quite.JumpingJack - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Maybe a career change that pays more :) ... j/k.