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With faster, intelligent, multi-core technology that applies processing power where it's needed most, new Intel® Core™ i7 processors deliver an incredible breakthrough in PC performance. They are the best desktop processors on the planet.¹
You'll multitask applications faster and unleash incredible digital media creation. And you'll experience maximum performance for everything you do, thanks to the combination of Intel® Turbo Boost technology² and Intel® Hyper-Threading technology (Intel® HT technology)³, which maximizes performance to match your workload.
- Intel Core i7 Extreme 965 ("Bloomfield"), 3.2Ghz
- X58 Chipset
- Western Digital Raptor 10k rpm 300GB
- NVIDIA graphics card (no graphics tests involved)
Synthetic benchmarks have leaked a long time ago and they establish that the Nehalem architecture is significantly superior to its predecessors. But here is some interesting information not always covered by benchmarking sites:
Core i7 is adjusting its clock all the time. Using CPU-Z we can see that the core clock goes from 1.6Ghz (underclock) up to 3.33Ghz (overclock) depending on the workload. In theory, it switches pretty often and by often we mean that in between key strokes, the CPU powers down. It would be interesting to compile an average clock frequency in a typical day of use.
Temperature
We set the CPU cooler so that it stays nearly silent. The fan on the cooler was spinning at 1300rpm, which is relatively low. The idle CPU temperature was about 35c, but during stress tests, it could reach: 68c (core0), 65c (Core1), 64c (Core2) and 61c (Core 3). It's hot, but not unreasonnable. With a more aggressive cooling, the CPU should be able to reach 4.0Ghz in my opinion (try at your own risk!).
Pricing- $999 Core i7-965 (3.2Ghz)
- $562 Core i7-940 (2.93Ghz)
- $284 Core i7-920 (2.66Ghz)
If you are building/buying a new system, it would be foolish not to wait for the Core i7, especially the 920. It will outpace current processors by a good margin, within the same price range (Core 2 Extreme, Core Quad 9400), especially in compute or memory-bandwidth intensive applications (3D rendering, compression...). If you're seeking for absolute CPU performance, it has always been easy: just get the most expensive one ;)
But if you have a decent processor today, should you upgrade? Not so fast. Take a good look at what you're doing and try to figure out how much the CPU would actually help. Don't forget that this new platform requires a new motherboard and new memory (expensive DDR3). You might even have to get a new cooling system and a good power supply with the latest power connectors. If you want to refresh an existing computer, adding up to 3GB of memory (6GB or 8GB if you have a 64-bit OS) and a very fast hard drive will go a long way.
