HOORAY! (Or make that....hooray.) New i7 CPUs!
In a move that is sure to amaze and astound almost no-one, Intel has essentially bumped the speed of its mid-range and 'extreme' edition i7 chips by a mind-leaving-alone 4%!
To be fair, any speed gain for no extra cost is a good thing, but as CPU generational releases go, this one's a yawner. The i7 950 has a base speed of 3.06 GHz, compared to the 2.93 GHz i7 940 it replaces. At the top of the line, the i7 975 starts at 3.33 GHz, compared to the now defunct 3.2 GHz i7 965.
The really good news isn't that the new chips have a marginally better base speed though - it's that all current i7 chips (including the still highly-recommended 920) are now being produced with Intel's latest stepping: D0. (That's 'dee-zero'.)
The D0 chips are particularly good at overclocking, so we should start seeing our average OC go well above 4.0 GHz on the 950 & 975, and it should become very unusual for us to not hit 4.0GHz on the 920's. So the new chips really are worth getting excited about after all!
To be fair, any speed gain for no extra cost is a good thing, but as CPU generational releases go, this one's a yawner. The i7 950 has a base speed of 3.06 GHz, compared to the 2.93 GHz i7 940 it replaces. At the top of the line, the i7 975 starts at 3.33 GHz, compared to the now defunct 3.2 GHz i7 965.
The really good news isn't that the new chips have a marginally better base speed though - it's that all current i7 chips (including the still highly-recommended 920) are now being produced with Intel's latest stepping: D0. (That's 'dee-zero'.)
The D0 chips are particularly good at overclocking, so we should start seeing our average OC go well above 4.0 GHz on the 950 & 975, and it should become very unusual for us to not hit 4.0GHz on the 920's. So the new chips really are worth getting excited about after all!
posted by Thomas Glen at
1:22 PM
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