Related Articles

Core i7 965 Extreme - high end part

The new Intel Core i7 965 Extreme processor is the new top of the line Nehalem based processor being launched this month. It replaces the Core 2 Quad QX9770 as the highest performance part being sold by Intel for the consumer marketplace, and it is supposed to be a performance monster.

At $999 per processor in OEM quantities, it is priced at almost twice the price of the 940 and almost four times the price of the 920, and the 965 runs at a blistering 3.2GHz, significantly faster than the 2.66GHz of the 920 and the 2.93GHz of the 940.

The Core i7 965 features:

• New Intel Core Microarchitecture (Nehalem)
• 45nm high-K process
• Socket 1366
• 3.20GHz "stock" clock speed
• 6.4GT/sec QPI interface (12.8GB/sec in each direction)
• 32KB of L1 code cache
• 32KB of L1 data cache
• 256KB of L2 unified code/data cache
• 8MB of L3 shared unified cache
• support for three channels of DDR3-1066 memory
• 130W TDP
• "Overspeed protection removed" - overclockable with variable multipliers!!!

Here is an image of the Core i7 965 Intel provided us with:

We don't know what heatsink Intel will ship with the Core i7 965 Extreme - it is conceivable that it will ship with one similar to the one shown below that is packaged with the 920, or it might be something more similar to the Thermalright Intel provided us for testing the 965.

The Core i7 965 Extreme should retail for just over $1000 and it represents the "performance" segment of the current i7 line.

I can't wait to see how it will perform, and how high it will overclock!

The i7 965 we received ran at a default 1.15V core voltage, and had a 130W TDP programmed into the processor.