Intel Core i7 970 Gulftown On Linux

When looking at the Core i7 970 at its stock speeds with turbo boost capabilities, the CPU performed very well and practically winning every benchmark. Granted, the CPUs we used for this comparison were limited to what we had access to, and that meant no six-core AMD tests or any of Intel's Extreme Edition processors. The only tests where the Core i7 970 "Gulftown" did not come out the winner was with the software that did not have enough work to keep all twelve CPU threads busy and so the Core i7 870 commanded the lead due to its higher turbo frequency. The Core i7 870 quad-core with Hyper Threading can be boosted up to 3.60GHz when needed, but with the Core i7 970 in most cases you can overclock this CPU to at least 3.6GHz if not 4.0GHz. Of course, that is unless the motherboard (or cooling) limits you in doing so as we were faced with in this set of tests.

The Linux support for the Intel Core i7 970 "Gulftown" is spot on with no really issues to speak of, considering that even the thermal monitoring is working under Linux. More importantly, you will just want to find a good LGA-1366 motherboard that suits your needs and has no major hiccups with Linux.

Our test results in this article illustrate that there are a number of real-world Linux programs already able to take advantage of the increasing number of cores offered by Intel processors and just not by a higher clock frequency. Among these programs are 7-Zip, PBZIP2, x264, GraphicsMagick, and GCC compiling with multiple jobs. There are also the synthetic tests like C-Ray, Crafty, Crafty, and NPB EP.B illustrating the benefits of OpenMP on this high-end CPU.

With the Intel Core i7 970 processor being strikingly fast, there is not much to dislike about this CPU besides its price tag. The Core i7 970 is currently retailing for just under $900 USD at retailers like NewEgg.com and Amazon.com. The only other alternative to a six-core Intel chip at the moment is the Core i7 980X EE, which is actually only $100~150 more than the i7-970 yet is clocked higher and is known for being able to be overclock extremely well. If you are serious about getting the best performance you can just spend a little bit more and end up with an Extreme Edition processor. For those not wanting to spend nearly $1000 USD on a single processor, in 2011 we should hopefully see some less expensive six-core CPUs work their way out of Intel's factories. Regardless though, if you end up with an Intel Core i7 970 the performance should not disappoint.

In the coming days we will also be publishing more Core i7 970 benchmarks under Linux, including a look at this CPU when running Gallium3D's LLVMpipe driver and how well it scales across the twelve threads as well as how the LLVM and GCC compiler performance compare.