Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition

The Core i7-990X was originally slated to

launch late last year, but never arrived.

It’s unclear whether it got stuck behind

Sandy Bridge or the processor it was slated to

replace, the Core i7-980X, took longer than

expected to sell out; either way, this is a simple

clock bump for the 32nm Gulftown proc.

The 990X features the same 248mm2

die and 1.17 billion transistors as that of

the 980X. Intel pushed the clock speed to

3.46GHz, but didn’t alter much else; there’s

still 12MB of shared Intel Smart Cache,

six discrete execution cores with Hyper-

Threading for handling up to 12 threads,

and the on-chip memory controller with

support for triple-channel DDR3-1066

memory. Turbo Boost can push two or more

cores of the 990X to 3.59GHz, or when

only one core is active, to up to 3.72GHz.

The only other tweak Intel made is the

inclusion of six new processor instructions

designed to improve AES encryption and

decryption performance.

The Intel Core i7-990X also ships with

the DBX-B HSF, which we raved about

in our Core i7-980X review last year, but

Intel beefed it up to accommodate the larger

thermal envelope of the 990X. Intel claims

the new heatsink exceeds the CPU’s thermal

requirements, even when set to quiet mode.

Déjà Vu All Over Again
Intel also sent us the latest revision of its
flagship X58 motherboard, the DX58SO2
(Smackover 2). The original Smackover
board had a rather unusual layout; Intel
rotated the LGA 1366 socket 90 degrees,
positioned the memory above the CPU
at the top of the board, and soldered the
X58 chipset to the right of the CPU. Other
quirks included four DDR3 RAM slots, a
superfluous 4-pin Molex power connector,
and unangled SATA ports.
With Smackover 2, Intel chose a much
more traditional layout, provided six triplechannel
memory slots and another x16
PCI-E slot (for three total; x16, x16, x8),
nixed the additional power port, added
another VRM power phase, and installed

angled SATA ports. In addition, SO2 got
a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a second Gigabit
LAN port, and a Back-To-BIOS button
on the rear I/O. We also like the onboard
power, reset, and base clock overclocking
buttons. The board even ships with an
externally mountable Wi-Fi module.

Scoreboard
As we pointed out last May, Intel’s
hexa-core CPUs are unmatched when
running apps that can scale beyond four
cores. But the big problem back then is
still a problem today; those applications
are few and far between, save for a few
imaging and media applications and the
odd CPU-intensive game. Compared
to Intel’s Sandy Bridge platform (Core
i7-2600K and DP67BG), the 990X
only excels in a few areas of our test suite:
Sandra’s Processor Multi-Media test,
Cinebench 11.5, and POV-Ray 3.7.

Benchmark Results Intel Core i7-990X &Gigabyte DX58SO
3DMark 11 Extreme
3DMark Overall X2051
Graphics Score 1852
Physics Score 8116
Combined Score 2323
Graphics Test 1 9.4fps
Graphics Test 2 9.64fps
Graphics Test 3 9.14fps
Graphics Test 4 5.65fps
Physics Test 25.77fps
Combined Test 10.81fps
PCMark Vantage Pro 1.0.2
Overall 17027
Memories 12481
TV And Movies 6901
Gaming 18229
Music 11996
Communications 16002
Productivity 18606
HDD 29662
SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite
Processor Arithmetic
Dhrystone ALU (GIPS) 102.37
Whetstone iSSE3 (GFLOPS) 87.1
Processor Multi-Media
x16 iSSE4.1 (Mpixels/s) 226.83
x8 iSSE2 (Mpixels/s) 169.2
x4 iSSE2 (Mpixels/s) 91.8
Memory Bandwidth
Integer Buffered 16.89
iSSE2 (GBps)
Floating-Point Buffered 16.58
iSSE2 (GBps)
Media Transcode
Transcode WMV (KBps) 772
Transcode H264 (KBps) 774
Cinebench 11.5
CPU*** 7.24
POV-Ray 3.7 Beta** 1279.9
Aliens vs. Predator (4XAA) 44.6fps
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CoP (4xAA) 45.3fps

Final Word
If a six-core processor is a must for
you, and you’re not willing to wait until
Z68 launches toward the end of this year,
then we can’t think of a better way to
spend your lottery winnings than on the
Intel Core i7-990X and DX58SO2.