Final Words

In March I called the Core i7 980X the first Extreme Edition CPU that I was excited about. Price aside, you make no tradeoffs with the 980X. You get the absolute best performance in heavily threaded applications and nearly the same in all other workloads. Power consumption was also a non-issue, at least compared to last year's 45nm quad-core. Whether or not the 980X was worth it really depended on what sort of applications you're using. If you're doing a lot of 3D rendering, video encoding or other heavily threaded tasks it makes sense. Otherwise, despite the class leading performance, it's not a good value.

Recounting an old conclusion is one of the laziest things I can do as a writer, but I'm doing it here because the very same points hold true to today's Core i7 970. You save $100 and give up unlocked multipliers and a very small amount of performance. If you're going to be running at stock clock speeds, the 970 is a fine way to make the Gulftown jump a little more palatable. If you're planning on overclocking, the 980X may be a better option. The unlocked multiplier helps and you may be able to get a little more headroom out of the 980X if the Core i7 970 is truly just a binned 980X.

Thankfully at these price points there's not much deliberating necessary. You either have the budget for it or you don't. And if you're remotely considering splurging, keep in mind that quad-core will get even faster early next year with Sandy Bridge.

Like the 980X, the Core i7 970 isn't something I'd personally buy simply because of the price. It's a great performer however. For some, that's all that matters. And looking at Intel's roadmap, you won't see a significantly faster 6-core replacement until Q4 2011.

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