First preview of Intel's hexacore Gulftown

According to Intel's latest roadmaps, we're to expect the first 32nm Core i7 hexacore processors in early 2010. The first sampels of the chip, codenamed Westmere, have already been shipped. HKEPC has acquired the chip and ran several benchmarks. Surprisingly, the chip is no longer branded Core i9, but Core i7 1000.

The use of the smaller 32nm process has shrunken the transistors even further down, allowing enough space to be created for two additional cores and a large shared L3-cache. The 32nm hexacore chip, known as Gulftown on the roadmaps, features 12MB of L3-cache and 12 virtual cores through Hyperthreading. The chip is clocked at 2,4 GHz, has an 18x multiplier and a reference Bclk of 133 MHz. The integrated memorycontroller is compatible with triple-channel DDR3 and reaches a memory bandwidth of 25,6 GB/s.

CPU-Z recognizes the Gulftown as a Core i7 chip

The processor was tested on an Intel X58 motherboard in combination with a fast GeForce GTX 295 graphics card. The overviews below show the performance of the current Bloomfield quadcore in comparison to the hexacore Gulftown chip. Both processors featured a 2,4 GHz clock frequencies, which makes the differences between four and six cores more visual.

The game benchmarks have all been run at 1024x768 with all details on low to prevent the graphics card from being the limiting factor.

3D benchmarks show a performance increase in 3DMark06 en Vantage, where tested games hardly benefit

 The hexacore Gulftown doesn't seem to be able to optimally use its added cores.

Synthetic benchmarks such as SiSoft Sandra do result in significantly better performance

The Core i7 1000, as this hexacore megachip is to be called, doesn't seem to benefit from the additional cores in all tests. In most cases, this can be blamed on the software, which is hardly ever prepared to operate on systems with over four cores. This makes the chip only useful for specific applications. For gamers, the investment in a hexacore chip is a bit unnecessary, while users of professional image/video editing software will certainly benefit from the new CPU.

Lastly, HKEPC has compared the power consumption of the Bloomfield quadcore to that of the Gulftown hexacore. The GTX 295 powerhouse was replaced by a lowbudget GeForce G210 card. In combination with the quadcore Core i7 processor, the system consumes respectively 131,4 and 163,4 Watt between idle and load. The 32nm hexacore makes the system even more efficient, though only slightly. The results of the Gulftown are 127,8 and 159,9 Watt for idle and load. Remarkable is the temperature of the processor; the 32nm Gulftown reached 52,2 degrees Celsius under full load, a temperature that is three degrees lowe than the Core i7 965 at that same frequency, when using the same processor cooler.

The Core i7 1000 with six 32nm cores and 12MB L3-cache

Tags: corei7 ddr3 gtx295 x58 3dmark

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