Intel outs the world's fastest processor in RP | News | Techie.com.ph
5:53 PM | Friday | 30 July 2010

Intel, the company that makes us want to chuck our PCs in the trash every time they open their mouths, has once again done their thing. Today, they introduced the world's fastest consumer desktop CPU in the Philippines. Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on the Intel Core i7-980x.

It took a while but the i7-980x "Gulftown" CPU is now the king of desktop processors, replacing the older but still lickety-quick i7-975.

Two key innovations are present with the 980x: it now houses over a billion transistors (thanks to the new 32nm manufacturing process) spread across six cores with Hyper-Threading and Turbo capabilities. That's 12 threads running at speeds of up to 3.6GHz! In plain English, that's one machine running with the power of six average desktop PCs.

According to Intel Philippines' Country Manager Ricky Banaag, the 980x is ideal for gaming and media-rich applications such as video editing. Paired with the right components - a combination of which can cost anywhere from P100,000 or more - the processor can give the user an unparalleled computing experience (for that price, it should!).

We took a few spy shots of the i7-980x and the things we saw were nothing short of astounding. The Windows Experience  Index gave it a score of 7.5. That's an extremely high value considering that the WEI is based on the score of the "worst-performing" component. In this case, the bottleneck was coming from the 80GB SSD (everything else got a 7.8). Just think, how fast does everything else need to be for the friggin' SSD to become the slowest part of the rig?

The box price is set at US$999 (about P50,000 when you factor in taxes). The surprising thing, though, is that both the i7-980x and the i7-975 are going for the same price so it's literally a no-brainer which system hardcore PC freaks should go for. In either case, buyers will still get a fast proc AND the chance to fly into space on board a MIG-31 fighter jet since the Blast Off With Turbo Boost promo is still on-going.

The processor is the one thing that instantly makes any PC user want to upgrade but remember, it's only one part. You'll need a mobo, a GPU (or two), RAM sticks, etc. that, chances are, are just as expensive as the processor itself. Bummer.

As Admiral Ackbar from Return of the Jedi so eloquently said, "It's a Trap!"... but a very tempting one indeed.