Dream Processor for the Graphics Industry – Intel Core i7 Extreme
The previous article was an introduction to Speed King Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition flagship processor. As only an introduction is not enough to completely describe the processor, we conducted several tests with the processor and prepared a review that targets the Graphics and the Animation industry. If you need a one line conclusion to the results we obtained, it is – This processor is just awesome.
Graphics and Animation Industry specifically are always hungry for more processing power and memory. The applications they use are extremely processor and memory intensive and are always multi-threaded. So a processor like Intel’s i7 Core series, that can support the SMT Technology are the only choice these professionals have.
Intel i7 Core 975 Extreme Edition has every feature that a Graphics Designer or an Animator can dream of. i7 Core 975 has four physical cores all on the same die, so bandwidth is massive and latency is extremely low. As it supports Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) it can handle 8 Threads at any given time. To further increase the performance of the processor, Intel has introduced 8 MB of L3 cache into the processor which is shared among all the four cores. Intel has done away with old generation FSB technology and QPI (QuickPath Interconnect) has taken its place. With QPI Technology, bandwidth available has increased from 800 MB/s to 32 GB/s. Intel has also introduced 7 new SSE4 Instructions. And the most important advantage i7 Core processor has is that it is fabricated using the 45 nm silicon wafer technology. The Extreme Edition of i7 Core 975 has 35 unlocked multipliers. This means that you can increase the processor speed from 3.33 GHz to a sizzling 5.29 GHz without making the system unstable. With that amount of processing power, nothing would look time consuming a task.
Intel Core i7 Extreme Benchmark Test
Getting to the Benchmark tests, we could record results untouched by the predecessors and speed impossible with other processors available today in the market.
DhryStone CPU test is basically used measure the processor speed and optimizing capabilities. As mentioned above, we will be specifically targeting the multi-threading capabilities of the processor. Intel i7 Core 975 scored 88041 points while it’s ‘younger’ brother Intel i7 Core 965 could only make up to 81388. These are as much as twice faster than the Phenom II X4 955BE. When over-clocked to 4.0 GHz, the processor could easily cross the 10000 points barrier which creates a record.
Kribi bench, a benchmark developed by Adept Development, is a SSE aware benchmark used for measuring the 3D Rendering capabilities of a processor. This means that it will bypass the GPU and all you have is a result obtained in direct relation to CPu and the memory. The benchmark records the average frame rate on the host CPU and our i7 core 975 @ 3.33 GHz produced 12.8 frames per second on average. This rate went upto 13.4 when processor was over-clocked to 4.0 GHz.
3DMark 06 CPU test, which is regarded as the most accurate test in the graphics industry, allows to measure the CPU performance to extent that is impossible with other benchmark utilities. Intel i7 Core 975 scored 5949 points in the normal mode and 6752 in the over-clocked state. This shows a performance boost of 43 % when compared with the then fasted Intel Quad Core QX9770 processor.
These tests simply show that investment of $999 USD into such a processor is worth the price. The performance that you can get with this processor is impossible with any of the processors available today. No processor can withstand the competition. We are just amazed with the processing power it delivers, now it’s your turn.
