Intel Core i7-990X Extreme: Crazy Fast Got Faster

Next up, we ran our various test systems through Futuremark’s latest system performance metric, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including High Definition TV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity.  Most of the tests are multi-threaded, so this benchmark can exploit the additional resources offered by a six-core CPU with Intel HyperThreading.

There's not a lot of rocket science involved in deciphering the numbers here. The Core i7-990X punched up performance slightly beyond that of the Core i7-980X and some of the fastest numbers we've seen yet in this benchmark.  That said, we are talking about only a 3.5% increased in overall clock speed with Intel's new chip, so we need to level-set expectations accordingly.  Sometimes, scores we recorded were within the margin of variance for a given test, as can be seen in the "Music" scores here.