Intel's New Core I7-990X Extreme Edition Tested 149
MojoKid writes "Intel recently launched a speed bump of their flagship Extreme Edition
Core i7 processor,
known as the Core i7-990X. Its multiplier is unlocked and it's clocked at 3.45GHz stock speed with a Turbo Boost top-end speed of 3.73GHz. Intel claims its the fastest desktop chip on the planet; like geek
tiger blood for your PC. The new Core i7-990X is also based on the 32nm Gulftown core and the
performance metrics show it's easily the fastest 6-core chip for the desktop currently but of course it'll cost you as well."
This is Slashdot; we have LANs (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll admit there are uses, but they're niche. Some of the examples you just gave are places where this chip probably is not the best tool for the job. If it costs $800 more than a processor that is nearly as fast, you can just buy another computer and distribute your job over the network, and end up getting more performance for less money.
I'm not even saying this as an AMD fanboy; it's not just Phenom II; two Core i5s also usually beat a Core i7 EE.
You might even be able to fit 3 or 4(?) computers into the Core i7 EE price.
So to find the magical scenario where Core i7 EE makes sense, you pretty much need a particularly crippled application. It needs to be parallelizable so that it can use the i7s multiple cores and hyperthreading, but it has to be broken enough that it can't spread over a network. Or it needs to not be parallelizable, where you're just taking advantage of the Core i7s admitted awesome scalar performance, but letting most of the chip be idle while you're doing that, so even if it does the job well, you can't help but feel ripped off. Either way, it's a very unusual situation.