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In ProShow Producer, the Core i7 completed its runs
about 25 percent faster. Using WinRAR to compress a
folder of digital RAW files, the Core i7 was 43 percent
faster. In other tests, especially gaming, the QX9770
closed the spread down to single digits, but for the
most part, the Core i7 was from 14 to 20 percent faster
than its Penryn counterpart.
Not everything came up roses for the Core i7, how-
ever. We saw the Core i7 cough up a hair ball in FEAR
with an odd 51fps compared with the QX9770’s 122fps
and a shocking 239fps from the Phenom. Intel says
this is the result of a USB bug, as a duplicate system
in its lab performed as expected. A more believable
result was in World in Conflict: The Core i7 reached
250fps versus the QX9770’s 220 and the Phenom’s 136.
Even an Arthur Andersen accountant would have
to declare the Core i7 the new champion after peeping
our benchmark table. From encoding performance to
3D rendering to gaming, the Core i7’s more efficient
core, boatloads of memory bandwidth, and low RAM
latency make it a shockingly fast CPU.IN T E L’S CO R E I 7
BENCHMARKS
(^) Core i7-965 Phenom X4 9950 Core 2 Extreme
Extreme Edition Black Edition QX9770
MainConcept (sec) 958.0 1,897.0 1,489.0
MainConcept Pro (sec) 608.0 1,124.0 889.0
ProShow Producer 3.1 (sec) 619.0 1,210.0 772.0
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 617.0 987.0 686.0
Cinebench 10 32-bit 15,398.0 8,179.0 12,175.0
Cinebench 10 64-bit 18,963.0 10,431.0 13,849.0
ScienceMark Overall 2,091.2 1,608.7 1,920.2
ScienceMark Membench 13,312.0 7,279.0 8,559.5
PCMark Vantage x64 Overall 7,510.0 5,724.0 6,423.0
PCMark Vantage Overall 6,705.0 5,299.0 5,961.0
Sisoft Sandra RAM Bandwidth (GB/s) 18.2 9.7 7.4
Sisoft Sandra RAM Latency (ns) 77.0 95.0 79.0
Everest Ultimate MEM Read (MB/s) 15,167.0 6,701.0 8,252.0
Everest Ultimate MEM Write (MB/s) 12,041.0 4,856.0 8,490.0
Everest Ultimate MEM Copy (MB/s) 15,583.0 7,760.0 8,426.0
Everest Ultimate MEM Latency (ns) 39.2 64.7 66.7
WinRAR 3.80 RAW files (sec) 584.0 1,091.0 837.0
POV-Ray 3.7 (sec) 408.0 712.0 488.0
Photoshop CS3 (sec) 110.0 168.0 115.0
Valve Map Compilation (sec) 125.0 167.0 116.0
3DMark06 OV 12,859.0 11,639.0 12,906.0
3DMark06 CPU 5,638.0 3,532.0 4,717.0
3DMark Vantage 7,516.0 7,301.0 7,588.0
3DMark Vantage CPU 39,725.0 26,709.0 32,446.0
3DMark Vantage GPU 5,917.0 5,877.0 6,044.0
FEAR (fps) 51.0 239.0 122.0
Quake 4 (fps) 228.0 152.3 206.6
Valve Particle Test 161.0 69.0 111.0
Crysis (fps) 164.0 112.0 153.0
World In Conflict (fps) 250.0 136.0 220.0
Best scores are bolded.