Intel's six-core Gulftown processor benchmarked months early

[Matthew DeCarlo]

The folks at PCLab.pl have gotten their hands on a sample of Intel's upcoming Gulftown Core i9 processor and put it through its paces. PCLab pitted the six-core chip against Intel's Core i5, Core i7, Core 2 Quad and AMD's Phenom II. The chip was tested in three separate motherboards, the Gigabyte EX58-Extreme, Asus Rampage II Gene, and Asus P6T SE.

Clocked at 2800MHz, the Core i9 beat the competition in a majority of the tests -- especially those optimized for multi-core chips -- but Gulftown slips behind its predecessors in many benchmarks. Intel's upcoming hexa-core CPU takes the cake when it comes to tasks like video encoding, but those two additional cores make little to no real-world difference in most games and other standard use.

PCLab found that the Core i9 performed rather well in terms of power usage, consuming far less than the Core i7 during maximum load, and only a hair more when idle. It ran cooler than the competing CPUs, with an idle temperature of 30C and 42C under load, which compares to the Core i7 at 32C and 49C. The chip also overclocked well, reaching a core clock frequency beyond 4.3GHz.

Realize that these results could change, as the tested product was only an early engineering sample. The Core i9 is expected to launch at some point during the first quarter of next year, and we will likely write review of our own when the time comes.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/37072-intels-six-core-gulftown-processor-benchmarked-months-early.html

 

[TomSEA]

4.3Ghz overclock? Not bad for a quad. Think I might keep my eye on this i9 for my next upgrade.

 

[Guest]

Ita a hex core wiht HT (12 threads) not 4 core with 8 threads.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Guest, I'm not sure I follow what your comment is in response to.

 

[Guest]

it's a response to TomSEA, he said "not bad for a quad". It's not a quad(4)-core, it's a hex(6)-core.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Yikes, not sure how I didn't see that :/. Good eye!

 

[Basher]

LOL

 

[Guest]

Some weeks ago I saw in news that somebody is coming up with 100 core processor. right now I'm using a core 2 quad and I'll not change it for next three years at least.

 

[red1776]

I have this feeling that as far as software goes, they are going to skip quads, and go right into hex or octo core.

 

[Razerblade]

Nice, But I'm not sure Hex cores will take off that quickly! I think they will release Oct cores and these are the ones which people are going to want! Saying that though, this hex core definitely looks set to be a very good processor if they improve it before release!

 

[freedomthinker]

I think Intel is by far taking this far too fast , they still haven't perfected their other chips and want to go strait to hex cores ? Mm.

 

[Afenix]

The release date is planned to be in 2010, but even intel hasn't set one exact date yet, so they can easily release it in 2011. I'm just happy that it will be on the 1366 platform, cause i'm so sick of buying another motherboard when a new intel cpu is out.

 

[yorro]

Hexa core? Just when applications were about to adapt quads. As a developer, I have no idea how this would impact the software industry, specially gaming.

 

[Didou]

If you're a good developer, you don't "adapt" to a fixed amount of cores. You just multi-thread your code where applicable & it will automatically benefit from having more than one physical computing core available (hyper-threading has been known to actually hurt performance in some cases).

Going from two cores to four, six or more shouldn't be that complicated once an application's code is multi-threaded, the operating system will distribute the threads evenly amongst the cores.

 

[deadmongol]

6 cores huh. this certainly is an eye candy..

@freedon thinker, i agree, it's certainly is too fast. intel developers sure are in a hurry, if this keeps on going i think we'll have 12 cores in no time. =))

 

[yukka]

Wondering if clock speed will ever be the way to gauge cpu ability - Intel seem happy to have hit a ceiling around 3.3.ghz and thats about it. More and more cores but same speed clock. How long before they work on a completely new system that will have multicore but fly off the motherboard with its clock speed.

 

[slh28]

6 cores at well over 4ghz? That sounds awesome, and the best part is the temps don't look too bad either

 

[harby]

Well, everyone should keep in mind that the benchmarks were on an early prototype. I'm sure number and/or overclockability will improve once wields improve and proceed to more refined revisions. Still, I wonder what the price will be on this and more importantly, how will AMD react.

 

[Ranger12]

More cores is definetly better than just having blazing fast clock speeds. Intel is going a tad fast. I'm still running a core 2 and I had a pentium d (which was almost worse than my P4, lol) until a few months ago. The i5 and i7 are just so dang expensive when you start adding on new mobo and new ram and all the other problems that always come up when you switch mobos.

 

[Moltar]

ranger12, I agree with you in a certain sense. More cores is better in "certain situations." For the everyday consumer, 6 cores, let alone 12 with HT, is over kill. The only reason I can see for owning a processor like this is for a couple of reasons, servers, digital editing/rendering, i.e. A higher overclock is typically better for most situations because most programs don't support multiple threads as of yet. Take gaming for example, most games have a hard time even supporting 2 cores let alone 6. Don't get me wrong, the i9 sounds like a beast.

 

[Xinthran]

Yeah, sounds like a beast, but there is really no need for it now or even in the near future. It just seems silly to me that Intel would be allowing themselves to extend their reach so far. They need to work out some way to bring their outrageous prices down. How many individuals can afford $1,000 for a Core i7 EE? It just makes no sense.

 

[fref]

Wow, I wasn't even aware that Intel was working on a Core i9... This will be great for 3D artists working with 3D Studio Max and the likes.

 

[Didou]

These CPUs originate from the server market where you can never get enough performance & the innovations done in that department trickle down to the general consumer because it's more cost-effective to produce CPU parts that are very similar yet targeted at different markets (Atom being an exception as it doesn't share much with the Core/Xeon parts).

 

[saintbodhisatva]

yukka said:
Wondering if clock speed will ever be the way to gauge cpu ability - Intel seem happy to have hit a ceiling around 3.3.ghz and thats about it. More and more cores but same speed clock. How long before they work on a completely new system that will have multicore but fly off the motherboard with its clock speed.

thats kind of something that has always been hard to make more known. clock for clock a P4 cpu would be owned by a one of the four cores of an i7, i think even with HT turned off. AMD seems to be capitalizing on this by releasing "Higher" clock ratings but not necessarily faster than the Lower clock ratings of Intel.

 

[Nirkon]

It's good to see that were progressing with the CPU arena,
but I also see that AMD is still getting hammered... which
at the end of the road, might mean the end for them,
and then Intel will have a monopoly, which is not good for anyone...