Intel Core i7-950 Review

Test Setup

We're going to test the 950 on our standard X58 test rig, and as the main contender to the i7-950 is the i7-930, we'll be running up against that in our graphs.

Intel Core i7 950 Processor
Mushkin Ridgeback 998826
ASUS Rampage 3 Extreme
Corsair AX1200w
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
Noctua NH-D14
ATI HD5870

Overclocking

The first place to start with any overclock is to test out the highest BCLK we can achieve. Here we only managed 212.4MHz but as we saw with our review on monday, that doesn't necessarily translate into a poor overclock anymore. Especially with this i7-950 having such a high multiplier available to it.

As with all of the modern Intel CPUs, 4GHz is easily achievable. The major thing to notice here is the voltage that it's stable at. A mere 1.184v.

This was so impressive we stopped overclocking for a bit and went to see how low the core voltage could go and it would still be stable. Amazingly the i7-950 managed to be completely stable at stock using only 1v on the core. One.

Pushing as hard as we could to find the upper limit, with some serious, but Intel approved, voltage we saw 4.67GHz. This is about the right amount of increase over the i7-930 given the extra multiplier available to us. Impressive by any standard.

Of course there is no way we'd want to run over 1.5v for any sensible amount of time and so things were dialled back to a more sensible level for our overclocking benchmark runs. Thanks to the solidity of the Rampage III Extreme and the serious potential of the i7-950, we were rock solid at 4.4GHz.