Six-Core Analysis, Part 2: Intel Core i7-980X Scaling

Benchmark Results: Synthetics

Raw CPU horsepower scales perfectly. Each core you switch on adds essentially the same computing power.

The encryption tests show top performance per core when using all six cores.

If you remember the Phenom II X6's results, you'll recall that at least three cores are required to saturate the 13+ GB/s memory bandwidth of dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory. Here, the Intel Core i7 six-core processor gets rather close to the 19 GB/s throughput maximum of triple-channel DDR3-1333 memory with only two cores.