- Home›
- Performance›
- Desktop›
- New Features in Intel® Core™ i7 Processors
New Features in Intel® Core™ i7 Processors
Intel® Core™ i7 processor family
The Intel® Core™ i7 processor family represents the next step in processor energy efficiency, performance, and dynamic scalability. Designed from the ground up to take advantage of hafnium-based Intel® 45nm hi-k metal gate silicon technology, Intel® Core™ i7 processors will also be the first to introduce Intel® QuickPath technology. Intel QuickPath technology is a point-to-point connection—there is no single bus that all the processors must use and contend with to reach memory and I/O. This improves scalability and eliminates the competition between processors for bus bandwidth. In addition, Intel® Core™ i7 processors feature Intel® Hyper-Threading technology, an integrated memory controller and Intel® Turbo Boost technology.
-
Meet the 100+ club¹
-
Record setting performance with SPEC* CPU2006
For the first time in history, Intel® processors break the 100 SPECint_rate_base2006 score. The entire Intel® Core™ i7 processor family achieves scores over 100. Introducing the highest performing processor and best processors on the planet: Intel® Core™ i7-965 processor Extreme Edition, the Intel® Core™ i7-940 processor, and the Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor.
Higher is better Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor Intel® Core™ i7-940 Processor Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition SPEC* CPU2006β (SPECint_rate_base2006*) 102 108 117
-
Intel® Core™ i7 processors with integrated memory controller
-
Feed more data to the processor with the integrated memory controller
The Intel® Core™ i7 processors incorporate an integrated memory controller which handles the data flow between main memory and the execution engine. This means faster access time to memory and less latency for requests. Now applications can feed more data to the processor and you can spend less time waiting for results. Sandra* 2009 is used to measure the flow of data to and from system memory.
Higher is better Intel® Core™ Extreme Processor QX9770 Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition Memory bandwidth comparisonΦ (Sandra* 2009) INT 8.48 (Baseline) 18.33 (Over 2x faster) Memory bandwidth comparisonΦ (Sandra* 2009) Float 8.47 (Baseline) 18.31 (Over 2x faster)
-
Intel® Hyper-Threading technology
-
Media creation benefits from Intel® Hyper-Threading technology
New in the Intel® Core™ i7 processors, the Intel® Hyper-Threading technology enables the processor to run twice the number of threads per core. That means all those applications with multiple threads, that you use to create different types of media, will perform better. If you are rendering an intense scene, the Intel® Hyper-Threading technology speeds up media creation. The results below display multi-core and ray-tracing rendering performance.
Higher is better Intel® Core™ Extreme Processor QX9770 Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition POV-ray* 3.7 Beta 28Δ (Ray-tracing image rendering score) 2967 (Baseline) 4327 (46% higher) Lower is better Intel® Core™ Extreme Processor QX9770 Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition Autodesk* 3ds Max 2009Θ (Time in seconds to render a 3D scene) 36 (Baseline) 26 (39% faster) Higher is better Intel® Core™ Extreme Processor QX9770 Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition Cinebench* R10Σ (Multicore CPU 3D rendering score) 12553 (Baseline) 15768 (26% higher)
¹ "Meet the 100+ club" is based on SPECint_rate_base2006* scores. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance.
β SPECint*_rate_base2006 and SPECfp*_rate_base2006 are capacity-based metrics used to measure throughput of a computer that is performing a number of tasks. This is achieved by running multiple copies of each benchmark simultaneously with the number of copies set to set to the number of logical hardware cores seen by the operating system. SPEC* CPU2006 provides a comparative measure of compute intensive performance across the widest practical range of hardware. The product consists of source code benchmarks that are developed from real user applications. These benchmarks depend on the processor, memory and compiler on the tested system. SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp, SPECrate are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For more information go to: www.spec.org/spec/trademarks.html.
Φ SiSoftware Sandra* 2009 (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a diagnostics utility and synthetic benchmark test suite that includes several tests for measuring the performance of the processor, video adapter, memory controller and on-board devices. We use Sandra 2009 to measure memory bandwidth performance.
Δ POV-Ray* is a high-quality, freely available ray-tracing software package. The workload used here is the built in benchmark test included by the POV-Ray developers to evaluate total system performance using all of POV-Ray's features and is available for download at www.povray.org/download/benchmark.php. Sample scenes should not be used to benchmark POV-Ray because the sample scenes were written to debug the software and often only utilize part of the rendering features.
Θ Autodesk 3DS Max* 2009 allows users to perform animation modeling, rendering and design visualization. The workload consists of a scene of a Dragon_Character_Rig.max rendered at 1920x1080. One frame is rendered. The render options set are atmospherics, effects and displacement. The advanced lighting options are also set.
Σ Cinebench* R10 is a benchmark tool used to measure the CPU and graphics capability for 3D rendering. The scenes use cpu-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders. The results shown are based on running the multi-core CPU rendering test.
Warning: Altering clock frequency and/or voltage may: (i) reduce system stability and useful life of the system, processor and other system components; (ii) cause the processor and other system components to fail; (iii) cause reductions in system performance; (iv) cause additional heat or other damage; and (v) affect system data integrity. Intel has not tested, and does not warranty, the operation of the processor beyond its specifications. Intel has not tested, and does not warranty, the operation of other system components beyond their industry standard specifications. Intel assumes no responsibility that the processor and other system components, including if used with altered clock frequencies and/or voltages, will be fit for any particular purpose.
Performance tests and ratings are measured using specific computer systems and/or components and reflect the approximate performance of Intel® products as measured by those tests. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance. Buyers should consult other sources of information to evaluate the performance of systems or components they are considering purchasing. For more information on performance tests and on the performance of Intel products, visit Intel® Performance Benchmark Limitations.
Relative performance for each benchmark is calculated by taking the actual benchmark result for the first platform tested and assigning it a value of 1.0 as a baseline. Relative performance for the remaining platforms tested was calculated by dividing the actual benchmark result for the baseline platform into each of the specific benchmark results of each of the other platforms and assigning them a relative performance number that correlates with the performance improvements reported.