Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU: i7 980X

[V3]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3763

I was hoping someone else to make the thread but Annandtech released their (pre?)review of this extreme CPU. I am suprised that this CPU isn't smaller on 32nm. It's quite a large chip at 240 mm^2. It has slower L3 cache so some performance is mixed bag, for such expensive CPU I expected a little more.

Do AMD have any high-endish desktop CPU for this year ? The Phenom II 965 really took a beating.

 

[thop]

I wouldn't worry if I were AMD as the Phenom X6 will be significantly less expensive.

 

[swaaye]

I wouldn't worry if I were AMD as the Phenom X6 will be significantly less expensive.

If I were AMD, I'd be concerned about having to fire sale price my products instead of being able to price gouge for them.

AMD was starting to gouge with their CPUs during the Athlon 64's dominance over P4. The day that Core 2 came out, they cut prices in ~half. And that was that.

 

[CNCAddict]

This seems like the biggest leap in CPU performance in years. One review had it at 4.7Ghz on water Round 2 of the Ghz wars?!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3763

I was hoping someone else to make the thread but Annandtech released their (pre?)review of this extreme CPU. I am suprised that this CPU isn't smaller on 32nm. It's quite a large chip at 240 mm^2.

Yes, but it's still smaller than both Bloomfield and Lynnfield (although Lynnfield is handicapped in the size department due to moving more things onto the CPU die). The nice thing is that it's a drop in replacement for anyone with a socket 1366 MB with a bios flash.

If I were AMD, I'd be concerned about having to fire sale price my products instead of being able to price gouge for them.

AMD was starting to gouge with their CPUs during the Athlon 64's dominance over P4. The day that Core 2 came out, they cut prices in ~half. And that was that.

Well, AMD hasn't had a competing CPU in this segment in a long time. And Intel does just as much gouging both before and after the A64 and A64 x2 were the dominant chips.

Fortunately for AMD, Intel is content to let them have the better price/performance parts in the <100 USD segment. Intel could easily run them out of this segment also if they wanted to.

So no fire sale on the horizon for AMD, just business as usual. The 6 core chip will be exclusive sold as the EE brand at 999 USD MSRP. No other consumer variants of 6 cores are planned for this year according to that roadmap.

And apparently only a few updates to existing lineups. i7 880 is the only new quad core on that roadmap for later this year. i3 550 for dual core. And I'm not seeing any other new iX chips.

So both of those will slot in above existing chips at higher prices. In other words, no price adjustments to any chips this year unless AMD does something to force Intel to lower prices.

Regards,
SB

 

[Kurt]

This seems like the biggest leap in CPU performance in years. One review had it at 4.7Ghz on water Round 2 of the Ghz wars?!

Haha, wouldn't that be nice. I still remember holding off on buying during that P4 craze, thinking they would surely hit 5 GHz six months down the road (must have been 2002 or so) Of course this never materialized und I ended up with a nice AthlonXP 3200+ instead

If only power consumption these days wouldn't be so exorbitant. My first box had a 100W PSU damnit.

 

[CNCAddict]

Yeah, I hear you. I don't mind super high power usage as long as its not 100% of the time. I only play games a few hours a week and if my computer is pulling 2kw for a few hours...that's only a few dimes out of my pocket in power. Thank god ATI has their idle power down to very low levels getting to a 10:1 reduction over peak power. Kinda sucks needing such big heatsinks though...I'm sure all that weight can't be good for the motherboard.