SPCR

Core i7-2600K outpaces Intel top of the line 6 core i7-990X Extreme Edition per Toms Hardware

"I noticed that AMD’s Phenom II X6 wasn’t seeing better performance because most components in the benchmark suite didn’t seem to be taking advantage of more than four cores.

The same issue afflicts Intel’s new Core i7-990X Extreme Edition, giving us our first real indication that this $1000 processor is simply out of its element in the mainstream desktop space. The result is that we have to watch the sub-$400 Core i7-2600K take a first-place finish, followed by the -990X and -980X."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cor ... 874-4.html

Even in Media Encoding, the one place where you would expect the 6 core i7-990X to maintain a hefty advantage, it eeks out only a slight advantage and the i7-2600K still outperforms the 6 core i7-990X Extreme Edition in I-tunes encoding.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cor ... 874-9.html

Eh, it's not really all that surprising, is it? The Gulftown CPUs are a die-shrink of a 2-and-a-bit year old architecture, while the SB chips are less than 2 months old . The fact it keeps up in some applications is pretty impressive I reckon! More to the point, who on earth considers a $1k CPU to be a "mainstream desktop" component? o.O

mentawl wrote:Eh, it's not really all that surprising, is it? The Gulftown CPUs are a die-shrink of a 2-and-a-bit year old architecture, while the SB chips are less than 2 months old . The fact it keeps up in some applications is pretty impressive I reckon! More to the point, who on earth considers a $1k CPU to be a "mainstream desktop" component? o.O

You can't be too rich, too thin, or have too many $1k CPUs.

Fair point

990 and 980 still have a slight lead on some content creation apps. Its a very slim lead that shrinks if you considr overclocking

On a workstation it maybe makes sense but I cant see why anyone would prefer 990/980 for a desktop.

The 980x/990x is idiotic to purchase imho for 99% of users just because it's far more expensive, far more power hungry, and on a much more expensive platform. Sandy bridge really blows everything out of the water efficiency and speed-wise. I can't see anything else getting recommended unless bulldozer/llano are successful.