Fortunate is the human being who is able to witness a once-in-a-lifetime natural phenomena, be it a solar eclipse, a visiting comet, or a natural alignment of heavenly bodies. The PC enthusiast’s little world of technology may not have the same impact as a rare heavenly phenomena, but certain events have just as much impact as a falling meteorite, when we consider the anticipation that accompanies the release of one of the most awaited PC component ever – the Intel Core i7 processor.

                                             An older version of CPU-Z could not identify this brand new Core i7.

Perhaps that introduction was a bit too dramatic, but it is no exaggeration that Intel’s Core i7 is a fortuitous result of a number of separate circumstances aligning with each other to form the perfect conditions for releasing this super-processor. The most obvious telling-point would be Intel Corporation’s recently adopted “tick-tock” release strategy, the Core i7 launch being a big “tock” to the earlier “tick” that was a simple increase in clock speeds without a corresponding decrease in the fabrication process size of the older Core 2 processors.

                                             Size comparison between the newCore i7 and an older LGA-775 based proc.

Another is the downward trend of memory prices, further ushering in the new memory types such as DDR3, especially important since the Intel X58 is designed to support only DDR3 due to the new way of handling memory and CPU interconnect – which will be discussed a bit later in this article. Various industry tidbits also deign to fall into place just at the right time, primary of which is Nvidia’s loosening of their hold on their SLI technology – although this little tidbit is more important for the X58 chipset that is the foundation of the Core i7.

                                             Core i7 system from Intel.

A final item dropping into alignment is the increasingly aggressive stance of GPU manufacturers concerning traditionally CPU-bound tasks such as encoding, decoding, and movie rendering, as well as some other more specialized tasks that escape my thought processes at the moment. With the Core i7’s obvious processing power, CPUs are once again staking its claim as the king of components in a PC, whether the adversary be CUDA-based shaders or ATI-fueled stream processors.

                                             Four memory slot; 3 of which supports three channel mode.

We received our Core i7 unit with all the anticipation collected over a period of weeks leading up from rumors to actual product announcements from Intel. The good thing is, the unit that finally arrived did not disappoint. A first glance did not reveal anything overly amazing about the unit – the Intel processor was clad in the usual squat, standard heatsink with four snap-on connectors (the unit had a clear side window). In fact, the CPU area looked just like that of any Core processor available. The first unique detail that registered was the number of memory slots – this particular X-58 based motherboard had four memory slots, three blue slots and a single black one.

                                             Rear panel connectivity of the Intel-sourced X58 motherboard.

Of course, this is due to the Core i7’s memory preference of a triple-channel design, which basically means that the memory subsystem’s full potential can only be reached by employing three sticks of matched memory. The Core i7 can still function with one or two sticks, but the triple channel optimization cannot be taken advantage of then, same as when four sticks are plugged into the board.

                                             A comparison between the highest scoring Core2 Extreme and our own Core i7.

Other aspects of the unit were pretty standard, although some choice components were included with the unit for us at the HWZ offices to review. Number one is the 3D Aurora casing, an imposing hunk of metal and plastic combined with blue led lighting and well thought-out aesthetics and interior. The aforementioned Intel X58 motherboard, 3 sticks of 1GB DDR3 1066 memory comes standard, as does an Inno3D 9800GT videocard. Rounding out the test unit are a 250GB Seagate hard disk, a DVD writer and a 600W Gigabyte PSU. On the whole, nothing to indicate that this tower casing held one of the very fastest processors ever – until we ran some benchmarks that is.

                                             3DMark scores. Note the huge CPU score from our Core i7 920.

Before the benchmark numbers though, we wanted to find out how this new Intel product differed from the former champion, the Core 2 Quad QX9770. Both are based on the Penryn core, and the Core i7 965 extreme has the same 3.2 GHz clock speed as the QX9770 (the 920 model we have runs at 2.67GHz). Almost everything else has changed though, starting with 8MB of level 3 cache, hyper-threading support (for a total of 8 “cores”), and an integrated memory controller.

The Core i7 chips are physically larger than their older counterparts, with a corresponding increase of contacts that necessitates a different socket (socket 1366). Also important to note is that the Core i7 is a “true” quad core chip – meaning the four cores and all related paraphernalia are on one chip, instead of two dual-core processors stuck together.

                                            Motherboard information from CPU-Z.

On to some benchmark numbers – we quickly ran through PCMark and 3DMark Vantage, as well as studying the Core i7’s characteristics using our normal programs. PCMark Vantage did not reveal anything too spectacular, a score of 5263 PCMarks lags behind the best recorded score of 13307 PCMarks, achieved by a Core 2 Extreme QX9650, but running at a highly-overclocked 4GHz.

                                              8 cores hum away under Prime 95 stress testing - note that only some cores are actually active.

3DMark held a surprise though – a CPU score of 33651 blows past even a heavily overclocked Core 2 Extreme QX9770’s score of “just “ 22157. Naturally, a single 9800 GT on our Core i7 test system is far from enough to challenge the numbers of the top 3DMark Vantage scores, but the CPU score is more than enough to convince many at the HWZ offices that the Core i7 is the real thing.

                                             Win Experience index doesn't lie.

In my reviewing this hunk of silicon and circuitry, I’m quite thankful to the PC component gods for wrangling all of the relevant components into line and creating the perfect environment for birthing a processor that destroys benchmarks, re-establishes the CPU’s dominance, and gives more power to the PC user than what should be legally allowable. In this I’m truly fortunate for being able to witness the birth of this once-in-a-lifetime processor from Intel, one that we will enjoy flogging in the future during our benchmarking sessions with the new generation of PC components coming up to complement this siliconic marvel.