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Intel Core i7 930 CPU review - busting through 4GHz

by Tarinder Sandhu on 1 March 2010, 08:16 4.0

Tags: Core i7 930 OC (25/02/10), SCAN, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qawc6

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System setup and notes

CPU Intel Core i7 930 Intel Core i7 920 ES AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
Frequency 2.80GHz (21x 133MHz) 2.67GHz (20x 133MHz) 3.40GHz (17x 200MHz)
Cache 1MB L2, 8MB L3 1MB L2, 8MB L3 2MB L2, 6MB L3
Form factor LGA1366 LGA1366 AM3
Price £215 (estimated) £215 £137
Motherboard ASUS P6T SE (X58)
 ASUS M4A89GTD (890GX)
BIOS revision 0704 (11/01/2010)
 0402 (09/02/10)
Mainboard software Intel Inf 9.1.1.1025  AHCI 1.2.0.164
NEC USB3 1.0.18.0
Memory 6GB (3 x 2GB) Crucial DDR3-1,067 CL7 4GB (2 x 2GB) Kingston DDR3-1,600 CL9
Memory timings and speed 7-7-7-20 1T @ DDR3 1,067 9-9-9-24-2T @ DDR3-1,600
Graphics card Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB
Discrete graphics driver Catalyst 10.2
Disk drive Kingston SSDNow V+ 128GB
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
PSU Corsair HX1000W

Tests

Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), aggregate bandwidth and memory latency
HEXUS.PiFast to 10m places
CINEBENCH R10 multi-CPU render, 64-bit
CINEBENCH R11.5 multi-CPU and single-CPU render, 64-bit
POV-ray 3.7.0 beta 35a
wPrime v2.02
x264 HD v3.0 media-encoding benchmark - both passes noted
7zip v4.65 built-in file-compression benchmark

Far Cry 2 v1.03 - 1,024x768 medium quality, DX9, and 1,680x1,050 HQ, DX10
H.A.W.X v1.02 - 1,024x768 medium/low quality

Power-consumption tests - idle and 2D load
Overclocking tests - Core i7 930 only

Testing notes

We're using a new CPU benchmarking suite that has updated versions of many of the apps. Due to time constraints, we've benchmarked the retail Core i7 930 chip against a Core i7 920 Engineering Sample on the same ASUS P6T SE platform. As a comparison, AMD's Phenom II X4 965 BE has been run on the brand-new 890GX chipset.

If you want to see how the Core i7 920 and AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE stack up against a myriad of other chips from both companies, please head on over to here.

The ASUS P6T SE motherboard doesn't provide a two-multiplier jump when using Turbo Boost with single-threaded applications. Rather, it's limited to one, which is consistent no matter which application is run.


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