The Web has been flooded for some hours with a lot of news on Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors. Test samples arrived to reviewers and we've seen quite a few articles that describe the architecture and the performance levels of the chips. The first impression is that the giant chip manufacturer managed to come up with a great architecture, code-named Nehalem. As many of you already know, we will see three of the new chips on the market this month, in less than two weeks.
Since all tests came up really good, some reviewers also considered overclocking the chip, especially given previous news about its limitations. We learned a few weeks ago that the Core i7 chip wouldn't go too well with
high voltage memory modules. Intel warned motherboard and memory makers that the life span of the CPU would be dramatically shortened if the voltage of the memory
rises above the 1.65, considered a safe limit.
Even so, the company stated that its new CPUs
would overclock very well without high voltage memory, while the memory could also be overclocked. The secret lies on a very good cooling system, and the speed of the processor could be leveraged at quite high levels. Now that the chip made it to reviewers, it is confirmed. Intel's Core i7 microprocessors can be easily overclocked.
One great thing Intel's Nehalem chips feature is the Turbo Mode, which allows users to access individual multiplier settings for each core of the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition CPU. While the performance can be tuned for one, two, three or all cores, the utility also grants users access to the chip's thermal and voltage limiters. Messing around with these settings enables users to boost the speed up to 4.0GHz quite easily.
The Core i7 965 Extreme Edition chip coming under the new architecture was tested by
techspot. According to them, the chip, which comes at 3.33GHz by default, was boosted to 3.88GHz, and showed no effort while running at the leveraged speed. They also say that future “on detail” overclocking tests will probably allow for higher speeds to be reached.
The guys from
PCPerspective also got their hands on one of the Extreme chips and subjected it to overclocking tests. They managed to reach 4.0GHz at ease, and the processor remained stable enough, they say. Their test results showed that the CPU would maintain such a speed when only the frequency of one core was leveraged, but there would be speed fluctuations when all cores got overclocked. The reason could be the power management technology Intel included in the chip, which dictates how much speed and energy is required to perform tasks.
The overall impression is that Intel’s Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor allows for easy speed boosting which it handles quite well. As soon as the overclocking tests are pushed a little far, the limits of the CPU will be unveiled, but they are expected to be high ones. We'll keep you posted on the results as soon as they appear, so stay tuned.
