Testbed and Methods

I am sure no one doubts that Core i7-980X is one of the fastest CPUs out there. Therefore, in our performance tests we are going to compare it against two of the fastest quad-core Intel CPUs from the Core i7 series and the top Phenom II X4 processor. As a result, we used the following hardware to build our testbeds:

• CPUs:
  • AMD Phenom II X4 965 (Deneb, 3.4 GHz, 4 x 512 KB L2, 6 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-980X (Gulftown, 3.33 GHz, 6 x 256 KB L2, 12 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-975 (Bloomfield, 3.33 GHz, 4 x 256 KB L2, 8 MB L3);
  • Intel Core i7-870 (Lynnfield, 2.93 GHz, 4 x 256 KB L2, 8 MB L3).
• Mainboards:
  • ASUS P7P55D Premium (LGA1156, Intel P55 Express);
  • Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P (Socket AM3, AMD 790FX + SB750, DDR3 SDRAM);
  • Gigabyte X58A-UD5 (LGA1366, Intel X58 Express).
• Memory:
  • 2 x 2 GB, DDR3-1600 SDRAM, 9-9-9-24 (Kingston KHX1600C8D3K2/4GX);
  • 3 x 2 GB, DDR3-1600 SDRAM, 9-9-9-24 (Crucial BL3KIT25664TG1608);
• Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 5870.
• HDD: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS.
• PSU: Tagan TG880-U33II (880 W).
• OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
• Drivers:
  • Intel Chipset Driver 9.1.1.1025;
  • ATI Catalyst 10.3 Display Driver.