Hardware Overclocking Intel's Core i7 920

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...-core-i7-920/1

We've seen the raw numbers but what about the overclocking potential? How much value does this add to an expensive platform? Equipped with the latest performance motherboards we strapped in an i7 920 under a huge Thermalright heatsink to find out.

[UncertainGod]

Now that is a nice chip, but the cost of the platform is going to keep me away from it for a while at least.

[Xir]

...you compare it to the Q6600 a lot in the text, but no comparison with an overclocked Q6600 is made in the benches...
If you have figures of an overclocked Q6600, could you add them?

[Nictron]

Yes take a Q6600 to its max and compare the two in a performance roundup.

[1ad7]

I second the above, I want to see like oced results of a Q6600 and a E8400 or even a E8500 in games only maybe?
Great review, I just hope everyone hops on the i7 bandwagon so I can pick up some c2d's and Q6600's on the cheap

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Xir

...you compare it to the Q6600 a lot in the text, but no comparison with an overclocked Q6600 is made in the benches...
If you have figures of an overclocked Q6600, could you add them?

We've got a value article coming very soon... our only Q6600 has been running a battery of graphics benchmarks nonstop for the last week, so we haven't been able to spare a day to get some Q6600 OC numbers yet, but they will be in the value article (which will cover performance per $/£)

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by Xir

...you compare it to the Q6600 a lot in the text, but no comparison with an overclocked Q6600 is made in the benches...
If you have figures of an overclocked Q6600, could you add them?

I've got Q6700 @ 3.33GHz It's slower than QX9770 mostly.

[The boy 4rm oz]

A pretty impressive chip. I am interested to see how a Q6600 fairs against it. I have a Q6600 "GO", haven't OCed it yet but I am looking to have a shot.

[kenco_uk]

Definitely with you on the price to performance ratio. It is a very expensive upgrade atm. If the process adds another third on the typical motherboard price and atm the typical price is about £80 for a half decent board, surely we should see some boards going for around £120? That would be a more sensible price point to go from.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by kenco_uk

Definitely with you on the price to performance ratio. It is a very expensive upgrade atm. If the process adds another third on the typical motherboard price and atm the typical price is about £80 for a half decent board, surely we should see some boards going for around £120? That would be a more sensible price point to go from.

I just talked to a product manager of X58 to understand the cost structure - the Eclipse is actually 6-layers PCB, but the D-LED 2, Creative X-Fi card, Dr.MOS + GreenPower, quite expensive chipset, expensive new LGA1366 parts and new manufacturing techniques - all add to the cost. That can be cost downed to some degree, but you'll not see a £120 board - best price for a no frills I guess will be ~£180-200

[crompers]

worth it if you're building a render farm, but for games probably not yet seems to me

and by the time games require anywhere near this level of performance it'll be affordable so i'll watch from the sideline for a while

[phuzz]

Plus on top of the board you've got got that power consumption too...
Still, at least you wouldn't need any heaters in your house

It's going to be a long time before Core i7 is affordable isn't it? I'm always a fan of £35 motherboards when I'm building for my folks or who ever, but even the budget ones are going to be over £50 at this rate, which I guess is good news for AMD. Even if us enthusiasts aren't buying them for our uber-epeen-gaming rigs if they've got the cheap end of the market sewn up they'll do ok.

[Denis_iii]

when i can get 3x2gb ddr 1600 for 100quid and a descent x58 m/b for 100quid and the i7 920 is around 200quid i'm in

[naokaji]

Originally Posted by phuzz

It's going to be a long time before Core i7 is affordable isn't it?

It's not supposed to be affordable, it is only intended for the highend destop and server market with s775 covering the rest. The budget I7 that are going to replace the Current C2D and C2Q lineup is due next year.

[SuperNova]

So you cant change the memory divider (memory-speed) without overclocking? No positive dividers od so on right? How does the P6T-Deluxe compare to Rampage II Extreme? Is there any special feat, dividers and so on in the bios or simply one extra phase for QPI/Memory, TweakIT, ProbeIT and 3 way SLI cert that differs the boards?

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by SuperNova

So you cant change the memory divider (memory-speed) without overclocking? No positive dividers od so on right? How does the P6T-Deluxe compare to Rampage II Extreme? Is there any special feat, dividers and so on in the bios or simply one extra phase for QPI/Memory, TweakIT, ProbeIT and 3 way SLI cert that differs the boards?

All the memory dividers are handled exclusively by the CPU, there are no positive dividers. You don't need memory bandwidth - it has it in spades anyway.

All the Rampage II offers is the extra % at the extreme end because it has higher quality parts, it doesn't "unlock" unique features (afaik).

[SuperNova]

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

All the memory dividers are handled exclusively by the CPU, there are no positive dividers. You don't need memory bandwidth - it has it in spades anyway.

All the Rampage II offers is the extra % at the extreme end because it has higher quality parts, it doesn't "unlock" unique features (afaik).

I had my hunch that memorydividers would be limited. When reading on, i found out that basically all multipliers are locked on the non "XE" cpus. On the XE cpus you can change CPU, Memory, QPI and Uncore multipliers. On non XE these are very limited, QPI is locked to 18 and Uncore is locked to 16. memorydividers are locked to 6 and 8. This could explain why the Asus-board didn't have the same options as the smackover. Perhaps the smackover board was tested wit the 965XE?


About the quality on the board i would say that there are not likely to be any difference in component quality between the Rampage II Extreme and the P6T-Deluxe. They might have reworked the layout a bit to improve signal quality and so on though. I would like to see how this expresses it self in "real world"-testing though.

[plageclochard]

Is there any real performance gain for DDR3 1600, as opposed to 1333 or even 1066? While DDR3 is still expensive compared to DDR2, there's also significant price jumps within the DDR3 speed ranges, so I was wondering if this is an area where you could perhaps save a little bit of money, and not notice too much of a performance hit.

[teamtd11]

Love the power usage on these I think it would help a lot to get some water cooling slaped on. Should help with the higher volts.

[djDEATH]

Originally Posted by Denis_iii

when i can get 3x2gb ddr 1600 for 100quid and a descent x58 m/b for 100quid and the i7 920 is around 200quid i'm in

good luck!!!

this "platform" although hugely impressive on paper, is way out of the reach of most of us and will continue to be for a long time.

What it does though, is show where we will all be in a couple of years time. If AMD can release somethign comparable within that timeframe, and offer up some competition in the high end, then prices will come down a fair bit, and we'll all be running triple channel DDR3 at 2000Mhz and 1.7Volts