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(More customer reviews)If you are looking at building a system from scratch - this eval of the various i7 cores is for you. I will cover the performance aspects, best bang for the buck, pitfalls, power suppplies, and OEM options. If you are looking at the i7-990 then for some reason known only to you - you have a need for performance. All I intend to show is where money buys the most performance.
The i7 975 and the i7 990 are meant for a powerhouse application. Depending on what you plan to do with the system you are building, consider the best value for your money. The fastest processor won't always build the fastest system - consider this example:
Right now (3/2011) the I7 975 is about 400 bucks less than the I7990, which happens to sum to be the price of an NVIDIA GTX480 graphics card from evga or several other vendors (approximately) - so you could buy an I7 975 and equip the system with a GTX480 graphics card (with 480 graphics processors in parallel + 4 system cores) , 1.5 gb of video ram on card - basically 2 earlier cards SLI'ed together into JUST ONE double wide slot in terms of performance) -- or on the other hand, if you want to max out your computational performance, and not your well balanced system performance, the i7990 is the only way to go as it has 150% of the 4 cores (6 cores in the 990) which gives you roughly 1.5 times the computational processor performance, so long as your motherboard and chipset can get the data into and out of the processor fast enough! So the i975 is 4 processor cores and 480 graphics cores, the i990 is 6 processor cores and 1 graphics core. For 400 dollars more you only added 2 cores to the system if its primary job is graphics (of course it could be a database machine in which case RAM is where its at, but that's a different fruit of a cpu)
So looking at this chip for a fixed price (1K) in a system, you could get a slower 4core chip and a gtx480 card with 480 graphics cores designed to work with adobe cs5 (photoshop/premiere pro/ anything in the cs5 ultra package) and nearly every game, - or just get the high performing 990 core with 1.5 times the compute power of the 975 and no graphics system for almost exactly the same price (3/2011). Put simply 1K buys 480 graphics cores + 4 system cores, or could buy (today's pricing) 6 system cores and on board graphics (which nobody would do!)
Before you make the decision - first think of your use - is the machine going to be an all out video proceessing blu ray presser - then the GTX480 makes a very nice setup with the 975. If you want a killer game machine it's on the edge- sure you need the power of the 990 chip, but the graphics rendering of the 975+GTX480 can run circles around a 990 w/ onboard graphics (of course you would never use an onboard graphics card, but I'm trying to get the prices equal - realistically if you want an all out gaming system, the 990+ gtx480 card would be a killer machine at 1400 bucks in cpu+graphics spending, but you can do an awful lot with the gtx480 by itself due to the cuda core parallel processing capability of your graphics card running cuda-aware software.Example - I bought a system with a 975 chip and standard "gtx class" (probably a 260 - but it was OEMed) to render 1 hour of avchd into a blu ray disc came back at 24 hours of runtime. Ouch. Hope the lights stay on- beter invest in a good ups. (out of curiousity without the gtx260 that same oem system with a stock 9800 graphics quoted 2.5 weeks of processing to do the same job - double ouch) - then putting in the gtx 480, yanking the OEM 250 watt power supply and using a corsair 1KW (NEVER skimp on power no matter what you are building - 1KW would be the minimum if you have any kind of graphics installed) then the numbers came in - that same job - 1 hr of avchd at 24mbps down to blu ray took 27 minutes with the GTX480, down from a full day on a GTX260 oem board. Speed improvement for 400 bucks (when I bought the gtx480 that was the price - i'm sure it is cheaper now) was 48 times faster on the same system processor.
Just a minor note, the corsair supply gave me 4 sli power connectors, the GTX480 used 3 of them to run it (most sli capable graphics cards only need 1 sli connector to the power supply), so don't plan to SLI 2 GTX480s (which *is* possible upwards of 1500w/240VAC) unless you get 1500W of dc power and 6 sli cords to run just 2 GTX480s, which you really don't need, 27 minutes to do an hour production is more than twice as fast as realtime, so I'm already getting it done in less time than the final output with just one GTX480.
If you are budget driven and want a well balanced system consider for a minute the i7 975 3.33 ghz chip combined with the GTX 480's *combined* performance alongside the GTX990 chip and some run of the mill graphics system. You'll see that 1K dollars buys you more performance using a slower processsor and a faster graphics subsystem (which weighs in heavier than the motherboard, so some good strapping to the cage is mandatory) in any graphics intensive application (e.g. non database - there you want 24GB of ram)
Of course, if money is absolutely no object, get the 990 and the GTX480 and you'll be more than thrilled with the system performance, but don't be surprised when the windows 7 benchmark is still 5.9. It's a balancing act to make a machine that has a fast disk (yor first limiter in the system benchmark) and a fast proc, fast memory, and fast graphics - it just works out that way when allocating the funds to build a system (and I've built several dozen since intel announced the 8086). When you concentrate on disk speed, system cache files on ramdiscs for improved performance, and high end graphics your total system score won't disappoint you with a 5.9 limited by the disk drive after spending 2400 bucks in hardware, when 1500 bucks will get a 6.9 system performance score. Even then - if its a gaming system, a 6.9 means nothing because that benchmark is for general office use - high performance gaming systems MUST have the top of the line graphics, as much processor as you can afford, yet you don't need as much main memory as you might think since so much is done on the graphics processor card. You do however need FAST main memory, usually overclocked. Game systems are a tad unbalanced when you allocate your money to get the best frame rate in a particular game.
To summaraize, yes, today this is the latest fastest biggest thing from intel - but in 9 months it won't be - somthing will be faster, more cores, etc. Assuming you are building a system from scratch today, then this is the best you can squeeze out, but intel has something around the corner (who knows - the i9-999Z chip? maybe) that will obsolete your processor. My point is simply don't dump cash down the processor hole unless you have a limitless supply - think balacned system and see where nvidia is heading - the gtx480 came out a while back and they may have a 490 out by now - for me I'm happy with the 480, but I also considered the 460 - the selling point on the 480 was the video workstation performance. And while Intel is preparing the I9-999Z 16 core chip, don't forget that Nvidia will be right behind them with their own motherboard that takes the TZG-999 graphics subsystem with 1000 cores. You can't stop the progess of technology - just buy what makes sense for your application.
Before buying the fastest anything in a computer system, consider what will be the first limiter to the system's overall performance - disk cache? a fan? a power supply? Sometimes spending just 89 bucks will push you into the next performance bracket by fixing the limiting element to the machine. Most people use 2TB 7200RPM drives - and they max out at 5.9 - people who use 10Krpm drives get better disk performance and slightly better system performance. Is it worth it? Depends on your disk cache file - ram is cheap today with the 4G sticks of ddr3 comming down in price, which allows 24G systems - setup the machine to allocate 10G of ram to disk cache and suddenly that 10Krpm disk isn't working as hard if you have 10G of a 24G system cacheing disk requests. There are alternatives you must pick through in designing a system for your purpose. I've barely scratched the surface talking about cpu, graphics, and ram.
Lastly, never believe any benchmark - build the system for your intended purpose - mine happened to be video editing - yours may be gaming - the two share similar goals, but if you want a database machine, you don't need a 480 core graphics card. Plan the system build and never forget the chipset you choose and the motherboard - they will come into the equation next with usb 3.0 comming out, e-sata, etc. If the chipset can't deliver data from main memory into the 4 or 6 core processor, then they will yield performance numbers so close you'll wonder why the extra 2 cores aren't working. It's an overloaded motherboard chipset.
Building your computer from scratch can be fun and exciting. You will, however, end up spending more to build it from scratch than buying a GOOD oem system and adding practical enhancers to it. Never plan to steal the o/s off the OEM system and transfer it to your homebuit machine because windows 7 won't let you do that with their security safegurards and anti-piracy (i.e. they sell win 7 ultimate to HP for say $75 but sell it to the computer store for $175, but HP commits to buy 100,000 coppies per year, while the store commits to buy 10. The coppy installed in your OEM HP system is branded to only run on HP systems, while the 175 buck version in the store will run on any cpu, however once you brand it to a motherboard, you are stuck with that combination - change mobo's because you want a new chipset and suddenly your screen goes black and your system naggs you that it's non-genuine and you need to pay 175 to microsoft. That prevents you from getting the good deals OEM makers do on motherboards, processors, and most importantly - the o/s. I guarantee you HP does not pay what amazon does for the I7 990, which is a great 6 core chip.
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Intel Core i7 990X Processor Extreme Edition, 3.46 GHz with 12 MB Cache, Socket LGA1366 Desktop Processor BX80613i7990X in Retail BoxThe competition doesn't stand a chance when your PC is powered by the Intel Core i7 990X processor Extreme Edition. With the widest array of performance-enhancing features in Intel's family of Core processors, you can reach unprecedented speeds. You'll get maximum PC power for whatever you do, thanks to the combination of smart features like Intel Turbo Boost Technology and Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, which together activate full processing power exactly where and when you need it. It's no surprise the Intel Core i7 990X processor Extreme Edition is Intel's smartest PC processor. The Intel Core i7 990X processor Extreme Edition is built on Intel's 32nm process with 12 computing threads to deliver cutting edge PC performance. This processor combines the power of six processing cores running at 3.46 GHz into a single processor, guaranteeing the utmost performance and power for the most demanding applications. With 12 MB of smart cache, the Intel Core i7 990X processor Extreme Edition ensures that you get maximum responsiveness from your system. Compatible with motherboards based on the Intel X58 Express chipset with socket 1366.
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