Testbed and Methods

We are going to compare the performance of the new Core i7 processors against that of the top quad-core CPUs from the previous Core 2 Quad generation. Therefore, we built two test platforms:

LGA1366 platform:

• CPUs:
  • Core i7-965 Extreme Edition (LGA1366, 3.2 GHz, 6.4 GHz QPI, 8 MB L3, Bloomfield);
  • Core i7-940 (LGA1366, 2.93 GHz, 4.8 GHz QPI, 8 MB L3, Bloomfield);
  • Core i7-920 (LGA1366, 2.66 GHz, 4.8 GHz QPI, 8 MB L3, Bloomfield).
• Mainboard: Intel DX58SO Smackover (LGA1366, Intel X58).
• Memory: 3 x 1GB DDR3-1067 SDRAM, 7-7-7-20 (OCZ DDR3 PC3-14400 Platinum Edition).

LGA775 platform:

• CPUs:
  • Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (LGA775, 3.2 GHz, 400 MHz FSB, 2 x 6 MB L2, Yorkfield);
  • Core 2 Quad Q9650 (LGA775, 3.0 GHz, 333 MHz FSB, 2 x 6 MB L2, Yorkfield);
  • Core 2 Quad Q9550 (LGA775, 2.83 GHz, 333 MHz FSB, 2 x 6 MB L2, Yorkfield).
• Mainboard: ASUS P5E3 Premium/Wi-Fi@n (LGA775, Intel X48, DDR3 SDRAM).
• Memory: 4 x 1GB DDR3-1600 SDRAM, 7-7-7-20 (OCZ DDR3 PC3-14400 Platinum Edition)

The memory was configured differently because of different number of supported channels and also because the memory kits we has at our disposal at the time of the tests couldn’t work at high speeds without increasing their voltage over 1.65V, which Intel does not recommend.

Other testbed components were the same in both cases:

• Graphics card: ATI RADEON HD 4870;
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD;
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.