Welcome To Gulftown
Of course, Gulftown is enabled by Intel’s 32nm manufacturing process—the same node we saw debut back in January with the Clarkdale and Arrandale processor families. This time, however, enthusiasts don’t have to be bamboozled by a second, on-package 45nm die handling graphics, memory control, and PCI Express connectivity. The Core i7-980X gets us performance-freaks back to where we want to be—on-die memory controller, PCI Express handled by the well-endowed X58 chipset, and discrete graphics only, please.
With Gulftown, Intel uses its 32nm process to add cores and cache, rather than push integration. As a result, we have a six-core processor with 12MB of shared L3 cache. Architecturally, Gulftown is otherwise the same as Bloomfield. Each core gets 32KB of L1 instruction cache, 32KB of L1 data cache, and a dedicated 256KB L2 cache.
The 12MB shared L3 actually is a potential performance-booster. Because the cache can be dynamically allocated, an application that only utilizes one core can conceptually monopolize the entire cache. According to Intel, there are some gains to be had in gaming, for example, but it’ll be difficult to gauge just how much of the speed-up we see comes from increased core count versus cache, particularly since we’re using very few single-threaded benchmarks any more.
Despite the addition of two cores and 4MB of L3, Gulftown employs a smaller die than its predecessor (248 square millimeters versus Bloomfield’s 263). Transistor count increases from 731 million to 1.17 billion. That’s fairly incredible, considering the Core i7-980X fits within the same 130W thermal envelope as existing Core i7-900-series processors.
Gulftown’s memory controller remains unchanged, still rated for three channels of DDR3-1066 memory. This is actually somewhat interesting, since the 130W Westmere-EP processors that Intel plans to launch alongside Gulftown support DDR3-1333 (and with up to two modules per channel, no less). Nevertheless, we should see similar memory performance, as Bloomfield’s four cores clearly weren’t starved for data anyway.
The other addition worth noting is AES-NI, Intel’s hardware-based instructions for accelerating the cryptography standard. Previously seen only in the company’s Clarkdale-based Core i5s (and unfortunately left out of the other Clarkdales), AES-NI isn’t yet having a massive effect on performance. But as we’ll see in the benchmarks, there’s a ton of potential there.
| 2010 Intel Core i7 Processor Family | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base Clock | Max. Turbo Clock | Cores / Threads | L3 Cache | Memory | TDP | Price | |
| Core i7-980X | 3.33 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 6/12 | 12MB | 3 x DDR3-1066 | 130W | $999 |
| Core i7-975 | 3.33 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 4/8 | 8MB | 3 x DDR3-1066 | 130W | $999 |
| Core i7-960 | 3.2 GHz | 3.46 GHz | 4/8 | 8MB | 3 x DDR3-1066 | 130W | $562 |
| Core i7-920 | 2.66 GHz | 2.93 GHz | 4/8 | 8MB | 3 x DDR3-1066 | 130W | $284 |
| Core i7-870 | 2.93 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 4/8 | 8MB | 2 x DDR3-1333 | 95W | $562 |
| Core i7-860 | 2.8 GHz | 3.46 GHz | 4/8 | 8MB | 2 x DDR3-1333 | 95W | $284 |
Hyper-Threading And Turbo Boost Persist
Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost were both interesting new additions to Bloomfield. They naturally are a part of the Gulftown story, too.
We hadn’t seen Hyper-Threading in years prior to Bloomfield. Because the software community has become better about threading since then, though, the feature was more of a boon to Nehalem than it was to Pentium 4. Thus, the same technology that allowed four cores to address eight threads now enables six cores to juggle 12. At the very least, this makes for a cool screen shot, especially from a single-socket desktop.
Turbo Boost carries over as well. We were really starting to get excited about Turbo when the Lynnfield-based quad-core chips emerged with four and five speed bins (133 MHz increments), giving us up to 533 MHz with a single core active. Unfortunately, Gulftown drops us back to Bloomfield’s more conservative binning structure. When one core is active, you’ll see two bins (or 266 MHz) of speed-up, yielding 3.6 GHz. With two or more cores active, you get a one-bin boost to 3.46 GHz.
Impressive chip. I believe we have a new King.
Two things:
I find these graphs cluttered. In my opinion, a graph should give you one piece of information. Including AA results in with every gaming benchmark makes it hard to see what the graph is trying to illustrate. From the looks of things, enabling AA just brings things to a GPU limited situation anyway so why have them in a CPU review in the first place? I think that Tom's graphs need to be simplified. These graphs show a progression or trend across a number of products. One should be able to get this information at a glance and not have to spend 2 minutes rereading the graph heading to see what the data are actually telling us.
Just FYI, thinner oxide thickness will increase leakage current. However, using thinner gate oxides will allow for lower gate voltages to be used which will decrease the amount of leakage current.
Pretty much exactly the performance we expected, impressed by the lower peak power though!
Yes we have a king in terms of productivity but on gamming field woops...
it's not worth that money at all we are back with this old conclusion that most of games are rather gpu heavy and cpus are far from being bootleneck here.If you want to pay 5 times more to get 5-10% boost in games it's your call.
One could ask why tom's hardware isn't using at least pair of 5850 ?
thanks to that we see only gpu bootleneck and graphs without quality information.
I must say Chris Angelini that your articles are a pleasure to read. Knowledgeable, well-written and well aware of the realistic needs of most readers.
I have a Phenom II X4 and its fine for gaming. I7s are way more than I need or can afford. Still an interesting read; its always nice to see how far tech is being pushed these days.
I agree with Fox Montage here, why on earth are TH benchmarking the procs with games at settings that can only give scores that can be accredited to the gpu's capabilities.
I know it is to give some "REAL" world situations, but it is a test of the cpu's capabilities and limitations, not how easy it is held back by a graphics card.
to a certain extent it is fine, because the game graphs are supposed to show just that, that this CPU IS NOT FOR GAMERS
a decent dual core or low cost quad core is more than enough for games, and that's exactly what the game graphs show
All us FSX 'gamers' are dying to know how this performs
this new Intel cpu is awesome but its too much of power that we don't need it in our day life (maybe you need it if u wana make nuke rocket in your home
) ,and to much expensive ...that amd 965 black has almost same results but Intel is better so intel problem is to cost of cpu compared to amd .....(o.O by the way im intel fan boy O.o so don't u intel-guys mad of me .|.)
Interesting read.
Hmm, nice chip..but for games? Like some of the other comments I don't see much point in getting this CPU beyond bragging rights. What also strikes me is just how well that AMD chip keeps up - and at a much lower cost.
So that leaves all the other things you'd want to do with six cores. In the case of video transcoding, is it actually practical to spend this amount of money on a CPU, or is it better to go the GPU route? Perhaps THG could provide a follow-article..
Also looking forward to seeing AMD's new CPU's in the near future
$1000 for speed gains of 8-30 seconds in most areas? No thanks.
Buy yourself an AMD 965, and if gaming is your thing, spend the extra cash you have left on your GPU[s].
Well we all know that for most games out there its the graphics card that makes it and yet we keep seeing these tests repeated on Crysis etc.
Please bring back the fsx tests. The game may be 4 years old but I've yet to see a proceesor that can run it yet.
Today Aria are claiming to have them in stock (though the link to the product page says they're on pre-order), but at £881 I don't think I'll be buying one anytime soon (it more than twice what I'd want to pay for a complete system given I have no heavy processing needs).
Today Aria are claiming to have them in stock (though the link to the product page says they're on pre-order), but at £881 I don't think I'll be buying one anytime soon (it more than twice what I'd want to pay for a complete system given I have no heavy processing needs).
I don't think most of us here would buy it - it's simply not needed and the gains it gives are not worth the price.
To be honest I think AMD are playing it smart here - they're letting Intel do all the legwork, advertising things like this 6-core.
I have been an Intel user since I started using PCs, but I'm switching to AMD on my new build. Their 965 does everything I need and is half the price of the i7.
Intel is far too overpriced right now. Yes they have the newest releases, but is it worth the price?