EvaluationAn evaluation before we have even seen the performance results of this product? Before we have seen the comparison with the previous generation of hardware? Are ... you ... mad?!
As per definition, yes, we are mad. Also, we did run our performance comparison benchmarks as well as check out the other
43 reviews of the Gulftown and they all lead to the same conclusion: any performance comparison is pointless. In fact, writing the evaluation hasn't been this easy since a long time: if you have no problem spending €1000 to get the best performance, then you need no comparison charts to know that the Gulftown will be delivering the highest performance. If you take price into account, then no, you will be better of with a different product (be it Bloomfield or Phenom).
For all those readers who are waiting to find a "discuss this article"-hyperlink and rant on how expensive this product is and how Intel should make this cheaper to sell more: no, they shouldn't. Yes, it's justified to ask this much money for a product. No, it's not unfair. Yes, in the future we'll see the same technology but at a lower price. As I have said on some enthusiast forums: the point of this product is not to sell en mass, but to showcase the upcoming technology. The point is not to make a huge sale, but to make people who want to have the best and are willing to pay for it, be able to get it. Any price-argument is non-valid, in my humble opinion. We know it's expensive, so deal with it.
Intel Core i7 980X recommended For
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As we have been testing the Gigabyte X58A-UD7 quite intensively over the last couple of weeks, we can say that the board definitely allows the end-user to get the most out of his processor, especially on LN2 cooling. Although there were a couple of problems with the Gulftown, we have to admit that with our two Bloomfield samples the board served us perfectly and has lead us to a couple of nice overclocking scores (
Top-20 HWBOT). Allowing upto 240MHz BCLK with phase-change is definitly enough to max out most of the Core i7 Bloomfield series. Having had my share of X58 mainboards on the test bench (~
14 different models), I do have to admit that this board has given me the most pleasure already, so top notch. Do note that it comes at quite a price as well.
Gigabyte X58A-UD7 recommended For
Conclusive thoughtsHas the Gulftown impressed me? Yes. Will I be happy to continue to use this product in my future benchmark sessions? Firm yes. Will I buy one to put in my 24/7 desktop system? No way. I think this pretty much sums it up: the Intel Gulftown architecture is so powerful, there's so much performance coming from it that I just can't deny that at the moment it's the only product I want to use in extreme overclocking sessions. Realistically speaking, however, I have to admit that because the price not a lot of people will be eager to buy this product, but for those people there will be a Core i7 970 coming soon which should retail at a much lower price (est. €450/500). When that product comes to our lab, we will have a more extensive 'normal' benchmark procedure as then price-arguments will become valid again. And, with Thuban (AMD's 6-core) coming next month, we might actually see an interesting price-war between the two or three 6-core products. Interesting for sure!
We will try to continue our extreme overclocking testing in the next couple of weeks and try to find out if there's a better mainboard or CPU stepping out there for the overclockers under us. After, if you are intended to buy this product for extreme overclocking, you want the first sample you buy to be of the best available stepping!
To end with, I'd like to thank the following people for providing the hardware and support. Without these people Madshrimps (and I) would never be able to provide you this content.
INTEL Belgium (Kristof and Jan): for providing the Intel Core i7 980X, as well as the previous Intel samples
Gigabyte Benelux (Bernice): for providing the Gigabyte X58A-UD7 sample
OCZ Technology (Tobias): for providing the batch of OCZ Freeze cooling paste
TONES (Manu): for always ready to provide hardware where necessary
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For more overclocking results of the Core i7 980X and many other hardware, please visit
HWBOT.org, the worlds largest OC database.
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On the next two pages you can find performance results of the Core i7 980X compared to the Core i7 960, both clocked at 4.8GHz to see the difference in performance between both architectures. Since this is a Gulftown article, we have not included an AMD Phenom in the testing procedure for the simple reason that we don't want to compare apples to pears. When the Thuban arrives, it will make for a nice shoot-out.