Member Reviews: Intel Core i7-970 Processor 3.20 GHz 12 MB Cache Socket LGA1366

It is a great processor that still completely keeps up with the newer Intel and AMD generations. I was able to OC it to 4.4Ghz under air cooling, and the performance is phenomenal. This cpu handles multi-threaded applications incredibly well -in fact at 4.4ghz it is well faster than a stock i7-3960X (I am well aware the latter can be overclocked as well, but it still shows how powerful this cpu is). The single-threaded peformance is also excellent, though it comes at 10-12% worse than SB. The chip however can easily handle driving twopowerful cards such as the GTX 680in SLI with both GPUs at 95+% usage at all times. so to summerize for multi-threaded usage it easily bests Bulldozer,...

I upgraded to the i7 970 from the 920 with the Intel Retail Edge program. Best investment I have made into my rig. Period. This chip is also highly overlooked, given that at the launch price the 980X or 990X could be had for not much more. For starters, it runs cooler than the 920 despite the additional cores. Maybe I had a less-than-stellar 920 (ok, I did - but still, read on) but this chip is decently cooler at a higher clock on more cores in my experience. Under an H50 with OCZ Freeze at 4.2GHz I load at roughly 62C, peaking at 70C if I let it run overnight in a burn-in test - and that's at 1.25v. The stock cooler that comes with it is a beast, too - which is a nice surprise. The...

Upgrading from a i7 920 I didn't notice and difference in games or general use and it runs quite a bit hotter than the standard i7s. None of these drawbacks matter because the sole purpose of this CPU is folding power. My CPU PPD went up from 12,000 to ~35,000. These sort of results are extremely close to that of the flagship Intel Extreme processors but costing a little over half the price. I'm sure that with some lovely water cooling you could get the load temps below 60c and the clock speed up to 4.5GHz. My little H70 can only just cope with 4.2GHz. If you want future proofing this is your chip as not GPUs for quite a few years will be bottle necked by this chip. It gets a 4.5...