Intel Core i7 970 Gulftown On Linux

“Intel will be introducing their first Sandy Bridge CPUs in the
coming months, which we already know has Linux graphics support
well underway, but for now the top-end Intel desktop processors are
the Gulftown CPUs that were introduced earlier this year. The
Gulftown CPUs boast six physical processing cores with Hyper
Threading to put the total thread count per CPU at 12. Besides
putting 12 processing threads at your disposal, these CPUs are
built upon the 32nm die shrink of Nehalem and boast 12MB of L3
cache. The first Gulftown desktop product to launch was the Intel
Core i7 980X, which was quickly followed by the Core i7 970, and we
now finally have the chance to test out this incredibly fast but
expensive processor under Linux.

“The Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition is a $1000 USD processor
that is clocked at 3.33GHz and has a maximum turbo frequency of
3.60GHz. The clock speeds are the primary difference between the
Core i7 980X and Core i7 970, with the latter arriving clocked at
3.2GHz and a turbo frequency of 3.46GHz, but is priced over $100
USD less than the Extreme Edition part. The QPI speed is also at
4.8 GT/s for the i7-970 and 6.4 GT/s for the i7-980X. The Gulftown
desktop processors utilize Intel’s QPI (QuickPath Interconnect)
interface, offer 256KB of L2 cache per physical core, have a TDP
rating of 130 Watts, utilize the LGA-1366 socket, support through
SSE 4.2, and again they have 12MB of L3 cache and are built on a
32nm process. The only other processor coming close to these CPUs
right now would be the Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition, which
also breaches the $1000 price barrier, but is based upon the older
Bloomfield architecture while being a 3.33GHz quad-core + Hyper
Threading 45nm CPU. Falling below the Core i7 970 is the Core i7
960, which is another Bloomfield part and will set you back at just
over $500 USD for a 3.2GHz processor.”

Complete Story