Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition Processor Review

Test System Configuration Notes: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOS menus and set the motherboard to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for either DDR2-1066 (AMD) with 5,5,5,15 timings, DDR3-1333 with 7,7,7,20 timings (Intel Core 2), or DDR3-1066 with 7,7,7,20 timings (Intel Core i7). The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, performed a disk clean-up, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems  Intel and AMD - Head To Head

 
Gigabyte's GA-EX58-Extreme Motherboard and OCZ's 6GB Blade PC3 17000 DDR3 Memory
Tools of the Overclocking Trade...

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2009 SP2  Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA 2009 SP1, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2009 SP1 suite with Intel's new Core i7 975 Extreme processor (CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cache and Memory).  All of the scores reported below were taken with the processor running at its default clock speeds of 3.33GHz with 3GB of DDR3-1066 RAM running in triple-channel mode on the Intel DX58SO motherboard.

In all of the SANDRA tests we ran, the new Core i7 platform significantly outperformed all of the other systems in SiSoft's reference database.  In the CPU Arithmetic and Multi-Media benchmarks the Core i7 a little bit ahead of the Core i7 975 reference system within the SANDRA database.

The Core i7 also shined in all of the various memory-related benchmarks.  In its stock form using a DDR3-1066 triple-channel configuration, the Core i7 Extreme 975 put up an impressive 68.81GB/s of cache and memory bandwidth.  As you can see, having a smaller pool of L2 cache, along with a large shared 8MB L3 cache, offers plenty of available bandwidth for Intel's current Core i7 architecture. All three Core i7 scores in the database, including our Core i7 975 test system, out-paced legacy Core 2 Quad and current Phenom II bandwidth numbers by a wide margin.