Overclocking - Updated!

With six cores and 12MB of L3 cache on a relatively new 32nm process, it's not surprising that we weren't able to push our Core i7 980X too far. At stock voltage I was only able to reach 3.5GHz with turbo mode disabled using the stock cooler. I could get the system into Windows at ~3.7GHz, but not stable without additional voltage.


3.5GHz - Max overclock with stock cooling and stock voltage

Giving the chip extra voltage let me go up to 4.13GHz without sacrificing stability.


4.13GHz - Max overclock with stock cooling at 1.359V

Power Consumption Final Words
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  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    That depends on the board I believe. Intel's DX58SO may not post without the BIOS update.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Jammrock - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    One small title error. Intel's Xeon X7000-series CPUs are the first hex-core processors from Intel. Those are server only, but they are out there.

    http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36947&cod...">http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36...16M+Cach...

    Gulftown is the first desktop hex-core though.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    Corrected :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • artifex - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    3x cores and threads for less than 2x the TDP of their dual cores? sexy!
  • Isaac the k - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    I must say, I do find this rather exciting.
    But since I'm running a poorly threaded data-simulation app with extremely high throughput, I'm debating whether the extra latency vs. the larger shared cache could potentially harm performance.

    If it wouldn't, I might actually request one for what my office is doing right now...
  • mikeblas - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    Aren't the Xeon E7450, Xeon L7455, and Xeon X7460 all six-core Intel processors that were released before this processor?
  • semo - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    If I understand this right Nahalem is the name of the micro architecture and not any CPU in particular. On page 2, the first die shot is captioned Nehalem. Shouldn't it be Bloomfield?

    BTW Anand, you are doing a good job demystifying desktop products but the mobile space is even worse

    arandale http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa...">http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa... vs clarkdale http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa...">http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeNa...

    vPro is even more confusing. E.g. AMT KVM is supposed to work on AMT 6.0 + on chip GPU yet the i3 don't apply... or the i5-661 http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/...">http://communities.intel.com/community/...ote-cont...

    it would be useful if we could get some articles on mobile chips and/or vPro
  • iwodo - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    Waiting for Sandy Bridge- which will hopefully be the true successor of Core 2 Duo.
    PCI - Express 3.0, SATA 3.0, USB 3.0 ( Light Peak will be even better ), Bluetooth 4.0.
  • AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, March 13, 2010 - link

    Light Peak is kinda dumb...I think that's just multi-lane USB3/PCIe, and using light instead of wires is pointless since no one needs really long point-to-point cables. Apple just wants it since they're all about marketing new flashy things. USB3 could just as easily use as many lanes as you want, but it'd be unnecessarily expensive since 1 lane at 5Gbps is much faster than anything.
  • Pessimism - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link

    This is not intel's first 6 core CPU. The 6 core Xeon 7400 was announced in 2008.

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