SiSoft Sandra Results
Memory Latency
Latency in nanoseconds
Shorter bars are better
The synthetic POV-Ray benchmark rated both processors evenly, but recoding a 350MB AVI file in DivX 6.8 was a massive triumph for Core i7. DivX seems to be an early adopter of new SSE instructions but the jump from Core 2 to Core i7 is quite remarkable.
AVI Conversion Results
Time in seconds
Shorter bars are better
The Asus Rampage II has CPU Level Up settings in the Bios that allow for easy overclocking with the delightful pre-set names i7-crazy-3.60G and i7-crazy-4.00G. The 3.6GHz setting raises the 133MHz base clock to 150MHz with the multiplier at 24x and memory at 8x, while the 4.0GHz setting is 26 x 155MHz and 6 x 155MHz memory. That’s only 910MHz, so we raised the memory speed to the next setting which is 1282MHz. We would have expected the memory speed to be 1240MHz (8 x 155MHz) and wonder whether this might be due to the effects of dynamic overclocking.
The effects on performance of the increased clock speed were as impressive as we would have hoped, but the power draw was worryingly high. At 3.2GHz, the Core i7 965 was slightly more juicy than the QX9650 but when we overclocked the Core i7, the power consumption climbed to the heavens and showed no sign of the clever power-saving technologies we had hoped to see.
POVRay Rendering Time Results
Time in seconds
Shorter bars are better
Once we had Core i7 running at 4GHz, we monkeyed around with the memory to see just what effect triple-channel was having. To get the memory in dual-channel mode, we pulled out one module and naturally enough saw that memory bandwidth plunged. However, the effect on performance was fairly minor.
Interestingly, we saw power consumption under load drop by 15W, which suggests that the memory controller in the processor core is working rather hard.
COMMENTS
Ugh!
You did it again, the graphs are completely meaningless.
@Blackadder; no, you get all the memory you buy, so long as you can address it all.
@Tak Omega; there's still time.
@Blackadder
It is just like two channel but three instead.
If you populate slot one of channels one, two and three then you have three GB RAM. If you populate both slots of each channel then you have six GB RAM.
Gaming
I really would like to see the gaming systems tested with this.
I'll give Intel credit for not coming up with a "tri-core" version simply because the chip didn't pass QA.
tri-channel memory
@blackadder
yes, in one sense, rather than one big memory DIMM, you'd want to be fitting three DIMMS to get the advantage of the three channels.
luckily memory is pretty cheap these days! time to buy some shares in a DDR3 manufacturer!
@E
"I wish there was a Sarah Palin icon. I'd use it because she is a monster too!"
Seconded that, but I think it would be more apt if it stood for 'The following post is absolute drivel, I don't know what I'm talking about' - THEN it would be suitable to put Sarah Palin next to it :-)
Or maybe we could have a couple of global warming icons, Palin vs Al Gore or something...
