Hardware Intel's Core i7 920, 940 & 965 processors

Some of those figures are unreal. I wants me a 4Ghz 920!

 

Nice article, although the gaming benchmarks weren't as impressive as i thought they would be. Intel's main problem will be selling another upgrade to those already happy with their current dual/quad core systems.

 

That was exactly my point - how many of us find our current CPUs limiting? I find it hard to justify the price.

If I was video rendering, video encoding, serious business image or file compression or workstation/server stuff, it would be a no brainer upgrade, but for power users and enthusiasts who have a tighter budget, it's not so clean cut.

I fear that Havendale won't be any better than Penryn, unless it overclocks a LOT and the CPUs are cheap. The good news is that dual channel is close to triple in quite a few tests, and clocked up to 1,600-2,000MHz should make up the difference.

 

It's looking good, I've been waiting ages to up-grade my pc, and when I do I want it to be fairly future proof, so the 920 is looking very promising.

 

well from what I can see, if your a gamer then right now its not worth wasting your money on an I7 rig for as little gains as you get but if your into everything else then ya go for it.

 

But, at the same time, buying old hardware is a no-no. Thus I see that if I'm building from scratch the i7s would be top choice. However, upgrading from the Core 2 generation seems a bit of a waste. Hopefully Intel won't botch the release of the rest of the line.

 

I dont know about that when the I7 do come out the C2D stuff will probably see a nice price cut so you could get probably one of the highest end c2d for less then an i7 and actually see better performance at least on the gaming side of things.

 

I have to say I'm impressed but then again, is there anything my C2D E6600 @ 3.6 GHz can't do fast enough for me? Don't think so. I'd be nice to get one of those but I honestly think my next upgrade will be a new graphics card (4870 most likely).

Another interesting review though. Nice work guys!

 

3dguru actually has a nice article about it. He's using the i7 on 3-way SLI and quad CF rigs, and they benchmark off the charts.

So actually there are now viable rigs that can power that matrox triplehead with 2x 22" screens that will not get brutally CPU-limited after adding that third GTX280. Ofcourse you need a nuclear powerplant to keep it all going, but who cares?

 

If you're a gamer you go for graphics.

If you're an encoder, you go for CPU (unless you can GPGPU it)

RDST - If I was on a budget though, I'd get a Q66 or E8600 and spend more on a graphics card and memory, then wait to see the prices of Havendale next year. Current Penryn's certainly are not slow!

 

4.27 now on air

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605127/core-i7-breaks-all-cpc-benchmark-records-on-air.html

 

So to confirm: All this socket 1366 business, will the new i7's coming in late 2009 still use the same motherboard socket 1366? I may get a 920 or the one above it in a few months, and then late 2009/early 2010 just upgrade the processor if the new high end ones are compatible woth 1366 still and get cheap enough.

I'm still running an AMD Athlon 2500+, overclocked to a 3200+. LOL. Good old nforce2 NF7-S. Fed up now 'cause it's so slow, my buddys athlon fx 5600 or whatever is even a lot faster

I just want this upgrade to be lasting as my 2500+ was for me, if all I need to upgrade is the CPU later that year then great.

 

Edit:whoops. Any way to delete this accident post?

 

I do a lot of 3d rendering and x.264 encoding. But I'm not too impressed in the improvement over my Q6600 running at 3.4ghz.
As it stands I don't think It's worth the upgrade. When things get cheaper it may look more worthwhile.

But then again, maybe a heavily overclocked one might be enough to put me other the edge.

 

Encoding Numbers for a Q6700 @ 3.33GHz: x264 - 562 seconds (versus 448 i7 965), DivX 6.8 - 1038 versus 882, WMV9 - 338 versus 253

 

Um, the socket will remain the same but whether Intel changes its VRM specification and makes the current batch of X58s invalid I don't know - this happened all the way through socket 775 days: 925-955X - no 925X couldn't run dual cores CPUs, 955-975X - 1066FSB CPUs only on 975X - Core 2 launch, only some 975X boards worked with the new CPUs.

 

Very in-depth review **thumbs up**, I'm patiently waiting to see what AMD's response is come end of this or next month... Hopefully if AMD bring out some good solid 45nm quads they may contend with the QX series and drive the prices down of Intels last and maybe latest offering

 

That's what I mean. Is 562s -> 448s worth the price of a new motherboard, ddr3 memory, and the CPU? So if something took 12h to encode, it might take 9 and half hours on that cpu. I like the kind of improvements that give you double for investing that much money in an upgrade. For example when i went from a X2 4800+ to my Q6600.

 

Wonder if the Source engie score will change when vavle actually implement multi-core properly.

 

i am very VERY greatful for all of the x264 benchmarks. glad to see Hyperthreading has the potential to not suck in many situations this go-around!