Intel's Core i7 970 Reviewed, (Slightly) More Affordable 6-core
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 29, 2010 3:23 AM ESTPower Consumption
Power consumption is about the same as the i7 980X. You get better idle power than any other LGA-1366 CPU thanks to the 32nm transistors, and load power consumption equivalent to the original Nehalem. The Core i7 970 is still a 130W chip, it's by no means cool, but compared to other 130W parts it's quite efficient.
Overclocking
Despite a 50% increase in cores and L3 cache, the 32nm Gulftown parts have proven to be excellent overclockers. I had no problems pushing 4.13GHz on my Core i7 980X a few months ago. The Core i7 970 didn't do quite as well unfortunately. With a 1.40V core voltage I was able to hit 3.96GHz but I couldn't get Windows 7 stable at anything higher.
A 24% overclock isn't bad, but it's just not as good as what we're used to. You may have better luck than I did, however it's also possible that the 970 exists to make use of the Gulftowns that couldn't yield at 3.33GHz. In other words, these parts may just not be as overclockable as the 980X.
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spunlex - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
don't forget cruncherskuwan - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
If you're a photographer doing image editing then Bibble 5 Pro will fully utilize 6 cores +HT. Bibble actually scales all the way up to 32 cores.Cheers
Golgatha - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I was all ready to read up until I realized I can't afford it.AstroGuardian - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
How come the 920 scores lower than the 750? Considering they are the same chip but the 920 has HT.ViRGE - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
They're not the same chip. 750 is Lynnfield (1156) while 920 is Bloomfield (1366). They do happen to have the same core and uncore clock speeds, but the 750 can turbo boost to higher clockspeeds than the 920 can. So that's most likely the reason the 750 is winning some tests.jfelano - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Intel and affordable don't belong in the same sentence.afkrotch - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Don't see how they can't be in the same sentence. Who had the cheapest dual cores, when they first hit the market? I'll give you 1 hint. It wasn't AMD. Hell, I went with an Intel dual core, simply cause it was $200 dollars cheaper than anything AMD had to offer during the time.But hey, if all you're looking for is crappy $100 or less processor, then yes. Intel is not meant for you.
medi01 - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
Yep. Intel had "cheapest" (and crapiest) dual cores, which was an EXCEPTION from Intel's practices. How come it supports your argument?tech6 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I was really hoping this CPU would fall in the $500-$600 range but the price sort of makes sense as there really is no competition at this performance level from AMD so Intel can pretty much charge whatever it wants.Etern205 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Even AMD's 12 core Operteron is cheaper than Intel's "slightly affordable" hex.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
8-core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...