i7 versus Quad Core

Hey guys. I haven't been involved in doing research about computer parts for months so I'm not up to date. I just stumbled on Intel making a new Quad Core processor named i7. Is it better than the regular quad core processors because...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_3
Drawbacks

The Core i7 does not support error-correcting memory.[2][3][4] Some high-end motherboards that support the Core i7 advertise support for ECC memory, for example Supermicro's C7X58 and X8SAX (for example, see Supermicro's X8SAX page), however, in the same motherboard manuals, it is made clear that ECC is only supported if the CPU has the feature enabled.

Some early articles suggested that i7's design is not ideal for gaming performance. In a test done on leaked hardware, a Core i7 940 compared to a QX9770 shows the Core i7 is slower than Yorkfield clock for clock in 2 while being faster in the other two. The difference in all cases is small, and is due to the significantly smaller sized L2 cache on the processor cores, with each core able to access its own 256 kB of L2 cache. In contrast, the most recent Yorkfields have up to 12 MB of L2 cache. To help compensate, the Core i7 also has a new L3 cache of 8 MB, shared among all four cores, similar to AMD's "Barcelona" processors. ........

You can read the rest at the link provided above.

What are your thoughts? Is the Intel i7 truly an improvement?

 

Uh, those "early" articles got it wrong. The i7 is an awesome chip and either is way better than or equal to Core 2 Quads.

The i7 920, a 300 dollar CPU, outperforms the QX9750, a 1300 dollar CPU, in almost every test.

http://financemanila.net/2008/11/intel-core-i7-leaps-over-core-2-duo-and-quad-core/

There are many reasons for this huge performance gain... but I won't go over them all because this topic belongs in DesktopReview and will likely be closed soon.

 

Hep! don't curse it. We may find it in the new Clevo 9xx *crosses fingers*.

 

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