Intel i7 920 - A quantum leap in processor speed and technology (Intel Core i7 920 / 2.66 GHz)

Member Name: neillya1

Product:	Intel Core i7 920 / 2.66 GHz
Date:	15/03/09 (393 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing performance, runs very cool, has 8 effective cores (4 physical)

Disadvantages: The i7 motherboard range is still rather limited, so it is only compatiable with a few motherboards

So, the Nehalem (aka Core i7) range from Intel has finnaly arrived and, being the geek I am, I instantly snapped one up as soon as possible.

I was lucky enough to get the i7 920 full retail package (Meaning it came with the processor and heatsink) for just £220 on eBay, cheaper than anywhere else I could find.

I installed it in my Asus P6T motherboard (Note: There aren't many i7 motherboards available yet, the Asus P6T is however the best so far) straight away and attached a 3rd part heaksink (Thermalalright Ultra-120), so I cannot comment on how good the Intel heatsink is. I did notice however that the heatsink came with pre-applied thermal paste, which is a nice touch for those who use it. It is not recommended that you use the stock heatsink if you wish to overclock though.

Installation is easy, place is in the right way (it only fits one way so don't worry about that) and lower the lever arm to secure it in place.

The first thing I noticed after installing this CPU was the physical size of it compared to my old E6850. It was quite a bit larger (1366 pins vs 775 on the E6850), which should (in theory) mean heat will be disappated better, allowing for cooler running of the CPU and more overclocking potential.

Well after installing and installing Vista 64-bit (this was a new build), I checked the Vista performance rating of this CPU - 5.9, without any overclock! That is impressive I must say.

Also, Vista recognizes this as 8 cores, not 4, as each core also has Hyperthreading enabled (This was last seen on the P4 series), so can carry out 2 tasks at once, instead of one. This is, of course, a nice advantage!

I did some testing before overclocking, just to see how well it performed on stock speeds.
I noticed that .RAR files were decompressed so much quicker, a file that would have taken 20 minutes before now took me less than 5!
Audio and video encoding was also astoundingly quick - a 1 minute DiVX file took me around 48 seconds to compress. It took around 3 minutes on my E6850.

After this I started overclocking. It's really simple with the i7 range, just change the CPU multiplier up to a maximum of 20 and hey presto! Overclock complete.
I changed straight away to 20x multiplier, giving me a speed of 3GHz. This was the same clock speed as my E6850, but with 8 effective cores vs 2.
After overclocking, the results were phenomenal.

Vista performance raiting of course remained unchanged, it was already at the highest possible, but in games is where it really began to shine.

Far Cry 2 was running in DX10 mode, 1680x1050 resolution and all graphics settings maxed out and was fully smooth and playable, the performacne truly was fantastic! Crysis runs great too, "maxed out" and still very, very playable with around 20-24 FPS.

And the CPU temperature never once ventured above 40C, with an overclock on it. This IS impressive! As this CPU is based on 45nm architecture, it consumes less power that previous CPUs, and therefore produces a fair amount less heat.

Bear in mind that if you do upgrade to i7, you need a new motherboard (which in itself is pricey) and DDR3 RAM (Again, pricey).
I use the Asus P6T motherboard which I would highly recommend and OCZ 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM (6GB of it), again which I would highly recommend.

A full i7 upgrade is still very expensive, and isn't likely to come down in price soon.
I very, very highly recommend this processor, but only to those who use their PCs for gaming, audio/video editing or graphic design, otherwise most of the power will go wasted.

If you are in the group of people that could make use of this CPU though, then I strongly recommend you buy it.

A quick note: Don't be tempted by the i7 940, at almost double the price of the 920. With the i920 overclocked to 3GHz, performance is the same as the 940.
Infact, all the 940 is is a 920 that has been pre overclocked, so save a few hundered £££ and overclock yourself (But be sure to invest in a good fan/cooler!)

For refernece, the system I am running this on is:

1000W PSU
Intel Core i7 920
6GB OCZ 1600MHz RAM
8800GTS 640MB (Now showing it's age)
Asus P6T Motherboard

And I used OCZ Freeze thermal paste with a Thermalalright 120 Extreme CPU cooler.

Summary: A fantastic CPU and worth every penny for a performance enthusiast - Not worth it for casual users

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