Power-draw, and overclocking
| Power consumption - idle | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i7 975 EE | Intel Core i7 965 EE | AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 | Intel Core i7 920 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 | AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE |
| 151 | 157 | 126 | 129 | 160 | 125 | 123 |
Core i7 requires an X58 motherboard to run, of course, and our test Foxconn Bloodrage has more bells and whistles on it than most. Couple this with the CPU's thirstiness and the (system) idle power-draw isn't great.
| Power consumption - load (2D) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i7 975 EE | Intel Core i7 965 EE | AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 | Intel Core i7 920 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 | AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE |
| 270 | 271 | 206 | 177 | 256 | 180 | 201 |
And that situation is only exacerbated as we load up all the cores and threads. A Core 2 Quad Q9550 chews through 93W less when under identical load, and that's telling.
Overclocking
A D0 stepping and base 3.33GHz clock-speed makes the Core i7 975 EE ripe for overclocking. Using a cheap and cheerful AKASA AK-965 cooler, the sample chip clocked up to 4.1GHz without any additional bump in voltage and 4.3GHz with reasonable bumps on all fronts. Should the sample be indicative of retail models, we reckon that enthusiasts will push it to 4.5GHz with premium air-cooling and 5GHz-plus with something more esoteric.
