Intel Core i7 970 CPU review: six cores for £680

Benchmarks I

HEXUS.PiFast is all about frequency. Running on just one core even a £150 Intel Core i5 750 is competitive.

The first multi-threaded test, 7zip's compression and decompression benchmark, purrs along with 12 threads doing the heavy lifting. Indeed, it's only a fraction behind the Core i7 980X EE.

Media encoding loves threads: the more the better. 980X is just over three per cent faster than 970, while the third-fastest chip, AMD's Phenom II X6 1090T, is practically one-third slower.