Benchmarks - overclocking
We hazard those contemplating buying this chip won't leave it at default speeds, mighty fast as they are. The 'Extreme' nature of the CPU means that increasing the speed is simply a matter of going into the BIOS, selecting a suitably high multiplier, increasing voltage, and hoping that everything is tickety-boo.
Divulging details, Turbo Boost, Intel SpeedStep, and all power-saving technologies were switched off. Core voltage was raised from the default 1.15V to 1.325V and some head scratching later we came up with this:
Now, 4.5GHz isn't particularly high by Sandy Bridge standards, with chips routinely touching 5GHz with some care and effort in overclocking. Bear in mind we used a Zalman CNPS11X Performa heatsink, though we can confirm that excessive temperature was not the reason behind what may seem a mediocre overclock.
There will be more investigation into this matter in the days to come, but for now, here's a taste of what a 4.5GHz-clocked Sandy Bridge Extreme can do in our benchmarks.
The fastest becomes, well, even faster.
