jmke

It is evident that it doesn’t make sense from the performance prospective to compare the CPUs with new and old processor stepping. Since Intel didn’t introduce any new technologies and didn’t make any architectural changes, CPUs with C0 and D0 processor steppings working at the same clock speeds will perform equally fast in regular benchmarks. That is why it is not very interesting to dwell on performance of the new Core i7-975 XE in our today’s article. However, the heat dissipation and power consumption measurements are, on the contrary, extremely interesting to perform. This is what we are going to do next.


http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...-i7-975xe.html

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Rutar

Couldn't the VID be the influencing factor in this comparison and not the stepping?

jmke

but stepping could include lower VID to reach same speed!

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geoffrey

In that case, where is the technological progress?

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jmke

is that reply aimed at me?

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Kougar

Higher overclocks at lower voltages with more consistency. Sounds like technological progress to me?

XS is full of reports of people OCing D0 steppings on air as far as their C0s on water, some report their D0 overclocks on water better than their own C0 chips did on DICE(!). It makes the B3 -> G0 Q6600 stepping change look like nothing.

Anandtech's first and (previously) only retail D0 Core i7 920 overclocked as good as their best C0 965 & 920 chips and did so using lower voltages on everything. To quote them:

Some on XS are running benches with their 920 D0's between 4.5 and 4.7GHz on air using <1.5v. Core i7 920 D0 looks to be a better overclocker than the Core i7 965 was in many cases. Key phrase seems to be retail kits, Xbit used an ES sample here and stayed below 1.40v.