Intel Core i7 980X

The Core i7 980X is Intel's first six-core processor available to the general public.

In technical terms, it's similar to its younger brother, the Core i7 975, and has the same clock speed of 3.33 GHz, along with a Turbo mode which can push that speed up to 3.49 GHz when not all of the cores are used at once.  Both chips also have Hyper-threading, which means that the CPU reports to the OS that it has twice as many cores.

The main difference between the two models comes from the number of cores, which moves from four to six.  Let's take a look and see if that will allow it to take over its predecessor.

Energy Consumption

But before we get stuck in, let's take a moment to see how much power the Core i7 980X uses.  With six cores, it would be reasonable to expect some pretty extreme readings here, but in practice, the chip is at the same level as the i7 975.

In absolute terms, the figures are pretty high, with consumption of no less than 141 W when idle and 255 W during moments of intense activity; hence the low score in this section.  But we can only salute the efficiency of this processor, which has been manufactured at 32 nm instead of the 45 nm technology used on the i7 975.

Performance: Applications

Our test results are hardly surprising: this new six-core processor easily beats its quad-core predecessor.  But its lead is only obvious when you use applications that are highly optimised for working with multiple cores.

3D rendering in Cinema 4D is a good example of this.  The Core i7 980X performs our standard test of rendering a motorbike in 3D in 1 minute 34 seconds, compared to the 2 m 7 s taken by the Core i7 975.  An equally visible discrepancy is noticeable when encoding HD video, where it took the i7 980X 2 m 57 s to do a job that the 975 took 3 m 29 s over.


On the other hand, not all software can get the most out of the extra cores, and in that case, the results are pretty comparable.  Compressing files with WinRAR and encoding audio with iTunes are just two examples of our tests that produced near-identical results.

Performance: Games

It's only recently that games have begun to take advantage of multiple core processors, and so having six cores isn't that much use at the moment.  Of our three test games, only World in Conflict really benefited from the i7 980X's extra power.  The others had results largely similar to the Core i7 975 and 870.  In short, this is a CPU that's perfect for gaming--but no more so than its quad-core cousins.

View Performance Index Table