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Intel Core i7 920, Core i7 965 EE and Intel DX58SO |
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Written by Vladimir Dimitrijevic
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Monday, 15 December 2008 |
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Page 2 of 7
Core i7 Performances
We kept the best for last. One of our test CPUs is representative of mainstream series and its full name is: Intel Core i7 920. Other CPU belongs to Extreme series and its current flagship of Intel CPU lineup and its Intel i7 965 Extreme Edition. Main difference between these two models is multiplier. In case of EE model it is 24 and in combination with default QPI set on 133 MHz results in final frequency of 3.2 GHz. Core i7 920 has multiplier 20 and its final frequency is 2.66 GHz. We already mentioned some of the options that were unlocked in BIOS with Intel i7 965 CPU but only time will tell if multiplier will be unlocked too or it will remain under CPU jurisdiction. There is also third CPU in Intel i7 product lineup: Intel Core i7 940 that works on 2.93 MHz and has multiplier set on 22.
Since Core i7 CPUs have two threads per core Task Manager in Windows will “see” 8 cores (4 physical and 4 logical). We tested Core i7 920 with enabled and disabled HT. Some applications had increased performance levels with HT enabled and others didn’t. What’s more, those applications that didn’t have increased performance with HT enabled, suffered from performance drop. This brings us to the earlier mentioned problems with “unpolished” BIOS and presence of option to enable/disable HT option.
There were a lot of speculations about overclock potentials of Nehalem (Core i7) CPUs. At the end it proved that overclock of Core i7 CPUs are not that bad. Times when we were trying to get stable FSB at 600+ MHz are behind us because multipliers on Core i7 CPUs have higher values and with QPI set at “only” 200 MHz we can achieve 4 GHz with Core i7 920.
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Processors 
