Intel 980x Gulftown
Conclusion
Published: 12th March 2010 | Source: Intel | Price: £850 - estimated |
Conclusion
The performance of the i7 980x leaves us breathless. It doesn't matter what we threw in its direction, it just gobbled it up begged for more.
We often need to tie our testing results up into a handy bundle and try and give a clear overall impression of the product and the areas in which it is good and bad. Here that is entirely unnecessary.
If you want incredible overclocking performance, we have that.
Incredible stock performance? In spades.
A CPU that doesn't require water-cooling to achieve it's performance threshold? Check.
An upgrade that will slot into your current motherboard? Yes, yes and yes again. Although BIOS upgrades are needed.
To be perfectly honest we can ramble on for pages about how stunning this is. Yes, it's hideously expensive. But it goes like an Essex girl on a Free WKD night.
Without question the best CPU on the planet and an easy winner of our prestigious, very rarely awarded, OC3D Best In Class.
We would like to thank Intel for the review sample, you can discuss our findings in the forums.
Most Recent Comments
Performs like a champ. It looks as though Intel will once again throw AMD under the bus with this one.
Fantastic review Tom. Really enjoyable read.
Blimey that's a bit of kit. Dear Santa
Blimey that's a bit of kit. Dear Santa
looks like its lived up 2 the hype and its like u said its only the price thats the bad point
Dude I bloody love your analogies, "...it goes like an Essex girl on a Free WKD night." Man that cracked up
So wish I could afford to splurge on one of these, I wouldn't have to upgrade for tiiiiime.
So wish I could afford to splurge on one of these, I wouldn't have to upgrade for tiiiiime.
Its back!
ooh u got it back for more playin about 
God I want one of those 0.o Simply amazing!
OT: Love the avatar Tom.
Spectacular processor
Maybe with some ATI 5870's in crossfire, or Nvidia equivalents we could see 80 frames + from crysis
Maybe with some ATI 5870's in crossfire, or Nvidia equivalents we could see 80 frames + from crysis
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Originally Posted by name='BloomerzUK'
OT: Love the avatar Tom.
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Yeah the OC3D Range Rover is in the sign shop as we speak! whooooopah
£850 est. come on guyes thats raly taking the piss.
No way will it be worth it buying it. and there is no way on earth any one here is going to need that much power except for good scores on test benches and braging rights wich means naff all in real world.
Thats like getting a car to compenswte for the fact you cannot be good in another department.
still good good review though but way out of my budget range and some thing ill never own unless OC3d are gving it away as a ""PRIZE"" hint hint ....lol
No way will it be worth it buying it. and there is no way on earth any one here is going to need that much power except for good scores on test benches and braging rights wich means naff all in real world.
Thats like getting a car to compenswte for the fact you cannot be good in another department.
still good good review though but way out of my budget range and some thing ill never own unless OC3d are gving it away as a ""PRIZE"" hint hint ....lol
OMG, that looks like a BEAST, didn't think there would be such an improvement in gaming. The minimum FPS for crysis warhead are 216% better!! WOW.
Great review btw.
Great review btw.
Scan.co.uk have them on preorder for £882.74. Looks like I won't be getting one then as that takes up almost all my budget for my entire pc build xD
Looks hawt Tomster
Out of interest, did you manage to get a Super PI 1m at all? I just want to see some pwnage
Out of interest, did you manage to get a Super PI 1m at all? I just want to see some pwnage
Super Pi doesnt utilise all the cores dude so that was one of the tests that we missed out as it wasnt a proper representation of the power the CPU had to offer.
6 Cores is just insane. All on the same size chip.
well in memory of my grandad if i get enuff ill have gulftown and 58xx/fermi folding rockin
Looks awesome, performance is just incredible! Well done Intel, pity about the price though this thing costs about $1700 AUD. AMDs gonna need to pull a rabbit out of the hat with bulldozer.
thanks for the check tom. i like your style of writing mate.
Some serious power, I enjoyed the review tom. Cost is the problem here though, but this is always the case with bleeding edge hardware. Most of us have to wait for it to trickle down into our price range, which doesn't usually take long.
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Originally Posted by name='alexhull24'
Some serious power, I enjoyed the review tom. Cost is the problem here though, but this is always the case with bleeding edge hardware. Most of us have to wait for it to trickle down into our price range, which doesn't usually take long.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='mayhem'
£850 est. come on guyes thats raly taking the piss.
No way will it be worth it buying it. and there is no way on earth any one here is going to need that much power except for good scores on test benches and braging rights wich means naff all in real world. Thats like getting a car to compenswte for the fact you cannot be good in another department. still good good review though but way out of my budget range and some thing ill never own unless OC3d are gving it away as a ""PRIZE"" hint hint ....lol |
6x cpus are allowing those at the top end of benchmarking to exploit their donations at this point. We've already seen this week Shamino cream the 3dMark Vantage record by some 5000 points with a single 'retail' GTX480 in one run, but my argument would be that with a 4x cpu, or his 6x with a 5870, would it only be a few thousand.
It's going to take a long time, imo, for these Intel offerings to calm down on the pricing stake. Maybe it'll take a really good AMD 8x to do it, but as far as extreme top-end cpus go for pricing, I can remember my QX9650 being priced at less than half of this.
The QX9770 at launch was £900, its a given the top end CPU will cost a grand tbh.
Until the release of the 980x the i7 975 was $999 at my local shop, now its $799. I agree with Tom that almost all top ones seem to be 1K.
The QX9650 was the top cpu in it's time, and it wasn't £1k. The QX9770 has the unique privilege of being unofficially the top of it's socket forever and can still be retailed for £1k2.
If ur thinking 980x will remain the top cpu for these sockets forever, then u can appreciate it being £1k - but I somehow doubt that with Intel sticking with this socket set for a good few years to come, that the 980x will be the top end for it's duration.
If ur thinking 980x will remain the top cpu for these sockets forever, then u can appreciate it being £1k - but I somehow doubt that with Intel sticking with this socket set for a good few years to come, that the 980x will be the top end for it's duration.
Alot of cash for a cpu but truly stunning performance for your money. Euro Millions will be getting played this weekend!
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