Intel® Core™ i7-980X Processor Extreme Edition

System Set-up and Software Used

Our array of "in house" test systems has now been fully completed as over the forth coming months, many exciting things will be happening here that will have you aghast with awe.  Intel certainly pulled out the stops with these excellent parts which in turn means we can now demonstrate with the newer peripherals coming online the best possible results.  This in turn will demonstrate to you the end user just what to fully expect when you purchase systems of the like we have here in situ.

With the supplied parts on show today these main parts now form part of our “in house” test systems supplied courteously by Intel, Supermicro, Crucial Memory, OCZ, ATI, NVIDIA and Akasa; which could be found in most high-end studios and enthusiast workstation scenarios.   This is a very reliable and sound workstation platform which has plenty of scope for upgrading, which we have voiced on many occasion.  Therefore today on its first outing we see on the board Intel's new 6GB/s Intel RS2BL080 PCI Express Raid  card.  Subsequently, as drives are not readily available yet we decided to pop on 2 X 32GB Intel X25 Extreme SSD's and built a Raid 0 array.   So we have  an extreme system we decided to take the extreme to the limits.    This configuration would most certainly push the complete limits of the mainboard and cooling.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the 3.33GHz Intel® Core™ i7-980X Processor, DX58SO Mainboard and the RS2BL080 Raid Controller shown within the Test System.  
 
Crucial Memory  for the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered Non - ECC Memory.
 
AMD for the supply of the FirePro V8750 professional graphics card.  

OCZ for the supply of the new "Z" series PSU and Vertex SSD.
  
Akasa for the supply of the Omega Chassis, and Freedom HSF

With the support and help of all the companies involved.   It gives you the reader a new choice on upgrade paths that many of you look for here with the performance ratio’s each system has to provide.  One main e-tailer that can supply the EU reader readily all the parts listed you should pop over to SCAN and see what  todays best bottom dollar deal is on the parts listed.

Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components.   Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly

Benchmarks and Software 64-bit Mode

To maintain our target audience within the professional market place, though we are now seeing many old readers coming
 back who like the style we produce; we opted for this outing a complete set of professional applications benchmarks.  
This in turn means all walks of life have a very good idea what they are about to buy and just how fast it really is from this
factual article.  The test system's shown within are all readily found within many arena's, therefore those just wishing the
simple upgrade of either the Intel 3.33GHz Xeons or the  ATI FirePro V8750 they can see readily how much
performance gain has been achieved. 

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
Sandra 2010
PCMark 2005 Advanced (Latest build and fixes)
Bentley MicroStation Benchmark
POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Cinebench 10 64-Bit
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit (New)
3DMark Vantage
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit.   Tests ran at 1280 X 1024 Resolution.

Each set of tests has been applied on the clean system hard drives shown above to ensure that no residue drivers were left installed with all updates/patches applied.   A test/render has been completed many times over different periods of the
system uptime.   Maintaining the fair play rules of SPEC® we did not manipulate any of these mainboards functionality and
left them all at their default settings in which it was supplied.   Tests have been conducted at 1280 X 1024 @ 60Hz in 32 bit colour.   Results that have been shown within this article are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with
the SPECviewperf® and SPECapc fair play rules.  Not an average of 3 runs as some places seem to think is right. 

The results within speak very clearly for themselves as a picture paints a thousand words; so there is absolutely no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each of the systems. 

Page 1 - Intel® Core™ i7-980X Introduction
Page 2 - System Builds and new Intel Stock Cooler
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 4 - Sandra 2010
Page 5 - PCMark 2005 Advanced
Page 6 - Bentley MicroStation Benchmark and POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Page 7 - Cinebench 10 64-Bit and Cinebench 11.5 64-bit
Page 8 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 9 - Intel's new 6GB/s Intel RS2BL080 PCI Express Raid  card
Page 10 - SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 11 - Conclusions and Award