| ||
| by 3oh6 | June 9, 2009 | ||
| Last Minute Bathroom Break  Before we head out to our first stop on the long road trip ahead we better take a last minute bathroom break as we don't have any empty bottles in the car yet, and like we said earlier, there will be no stops on this drive. Unlike other reviews you find here at Hardware Canucks, this review isn't the least bit concerned with benchmarks in the traditional sense. Comparing one setup to another or one video card performance to another isn't what this article is about. Instead, this article is simply a look at how well the new Core i7 975 EE overclocks using various cooling mediums. Our focus won't be primarily on 24/7 cooling either, although we will take a brief look at the fully stable overclocking ability of this processor at Air Cooling Canyon. Instead, our primary focus is outright bench frequencies with the goal being how fast we can run each benchmark at our three stops.  For our brief look at fully stable 24/7 overclocking, we use our standard stability testing methodology with one addition. We have also included a twenty pass run of Linpack using the LinX interface and will continue to add this stability test to our future stability methodology since it is quickly becoming the most popular stability test in enthusiast forums. For those un-familiar, here is a breakdown of the complete stability testing we will run through in the first portion of our stop in Air Cooling Canyon.
There will be a onetime occurrence of this stability testing at Air Cooling Canyon and won't be repeated at any other stops. Obviously not everyone is going to be interested in just the benchmarking stability so this will give a brief indication of the stable overclocks this processor is potentially capable of. Keep in mind that this is just like the rest of the overclocks we will see today, they are from a single processor in a single setup and may or may not be a proper representative of what the average retail processor is going to be capable of. Let's now go over the list of benchmarks we will be putting this processor through at each stop in our journey.  The ultimate in bleeding edge overclocking, CPU-Z stability is nothing more than that, the ability to get a CPU-Z validation before the system freezes or locks up. CPU-Z is the standard in validating overclocks in the benchmarking community and is required to help validate pretty much every screen shot taken.  An oldie but a goodie, Hexus PiFast is a single threaded calculation of Pi run in a DOS window. At one time the Hexus version of PiFast was the preferred way of comparing an overclock. The benchmark is still used on HWBot.org for global and hardware points.  The personal favorite benchmark of this reviewer, SPi is another single threaded benchmark that is well on its way to being an obsolete form of benchmark in gauging performance. That said, it is still THE standard amongst overclockers and we have chosen the two standard 1M and 32M calculations for the benchmarks today.  wPrime is a relative new comer to the benchmarking scene but has already become one of the favorites amongst benchmarkers making its way onto the pages of HWBot.org as a recognized benchmark. wPrime is a multi-threaded application that obviously caters to more cores. Comparing a dual core to a quad core is not a fair comparison at all. Some consider wPrime to be a very valid form of measuring CPU power as it utilizes the entire capabilities of a processor and does not rely on the memory subsystem at all.  Ahh the days of Aquamark 3 as a recognized 3D benchmark. Those days are long gone and AM3 is nothing more than a system benchmark that benefits more from CPU power and the memory sub-system than it does GPU at times. The key to a good AM3 score with a modern video card is with plenty of system horsepower.  Not the start of the 3DMark series, but the start of the Futuremark 3DMark series, 3DMark 01 is the sentimental favorite amongst 3D benchers and the first screenshot to hit the forums after a new GPU is released. The one time inconceivable 100K mark in 01 is easily obtained these days but still a goal worth noting when obtained, especially with a single GPU.  The first 3DMark to rely almost entirely on the graphics card, 3DMark 03 really lets quad video card setups really shine but still requires solid CPU power to really stretch a video cards legs. The 4 x HD4890 setup should really excel in 3DMark 03 and it will be interesting to see what we can come up with today.  Again, the Futuremark series turned back into a benchmark heavily influenced by the system, but still influenced substantially by the GPU. Recent 05 scores have been going through the roof with the introduction of higher end video cards and high clocks on the Intel i7 processors. C2D has owned this benchmark for the last couple years but the i7 processors are reaching clocks now that surpass even what a C2D can achieve in 05.  Up until this point, the entire 3DMark series has been single threaded but in 06, Futuremark has changed the entire game. Now, in order to compete in 06 a quad core processor is a must have as 06s multi-threaded processor testing eats dual core processors for lunch. With that said, the i7 processor with Hyper-Threading and a theoretical 8 cores is a lethal weapon in 06.  Continuing in forward progress, 3DMark Vantage is also multi-threaded and also supports PhysX. For our benchmark we will have PhysX disabled as that has been the decided standard amongst benchmarkers due to the in-equality between ATI and NVIDIA cards with it enabled. The CPU power does effect Vantage scores a good bit but not near as much as the GPU. | ||
| |
| Latest Reviews in Processors | |||||||||
|
