Intel Core i7 980X

We all love speed demon processors eating away tough benchmarks and high end applications without even burping, don’t we? We don’t like the idea of burping processors anyway! Intel has pushed up the ante by unveiling the Core i7 980X “Gulftown” processor which has 6 cores on a single 32-nm fabricated die.

FEATURES

This 6 core monster can handle 12 simultaneous threads. As mentioned earlier, Gulftown has a 32-nm fabrication process, 12 MB L3 cache. Apart from this, 256 KB L2 cache is provided for each core. 1066 MHz triple channel memory controller is thrown in with a maximum memory bandwidth of 32 GB/s. A sigh of relief for x58 chipset owners is that this processor is based on the socket 1366 and all x58 boards will be able to run this processor after a bios update. With 1170 million transistors, packed in, it is a serious number cruncher. Previous generation features like turbo boost are kept in.

POWER CONSUMPTION

The official power rating for the processor (TDP) is 130 Watts. Under full load, the temperature remains around 55-60 degree Celsius.

PERFORMANCE

This beast mauls the previous generation processors by a huge margin.

Some serious performance jumps out there.

 

VERDICT

This processor is definitely a performance monster but these benchmarks are multithreaded unlike most other applications. Most games support a maximum of 2 cores so it will be an overkill for gamers. For now, most of the quad core i7 owners not bother. Those with unlimited budgets (or have just robbed a bank) looking for the fastest computer on the planet can of course go for it. And the cost… a mere 999$ or Rs 50,000.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Filling up a bad guy with more bullets than you can count on your fingers is immensely satisfying, isn’t it? How about blowing up every tree and building up so that the baddie has nowhere to hide? Throw in some squad mates who keep you entertained with good humor and the recipe for a blockbuster game is complete. Bad Company 2 offers all of the above goodies (and much more) and will keep you entertained for hours.

The game begins with a prologue World War 2 mission which gives you an idea about how the game’s going to be. The rest of the game takes you to snow filled valleys, the unforgiving Bolivian jungle and snow capped mountains.

The gunfights are intense and the game throws in a lot of bad guys waiting to be stuffed with bullets and to satisfy the demon in you (just don’t tell your mom!). Your team mates are quite smart and don’t stand there in open trying to eat bullets (though they can because they don’t die at all!). They are mostly behind cover. In fact, they even tell you to do so. No cover lasts long due to great environment destructibility though. Stand inside a building during a fight and the building will be brought down in no time.

The game has a few bugs too. Sometimes, your teammates refuse to move ahead when they are supposed to. When you encounter enemies, they just magically appear on the spot.

The game sounds amazing and immerses you aurally. Your team mates shout out instructions to you and even the enemies do so. The grenades sound good and all the weapons can be distinguished by just hearing their sounds.

The game is visually appealing. It is one of the best looking FPS  games right now. The jungles look vivid, the snow covered mountains look extremely realistic.

Overall, this game is really awesome and any gamer worth his salt should play it.

MSI 890GXM

With new 6 core processors knocking on the door, AMD has launched its new chipset 890GX. AMD has thrown in a some new features like SATA 3.0 and some minor changes to the 790GX chipset. USB 3.0 is not natively supported but can be added by manufacturers like MSI did on this board.

 INTEGRATED GRAPHICS

The IGP is based on the Radeon HD 4290. HD video decoding is not a problem thanks to UVD 2.0. AMD has also thrown in a dedicated 128MB memory cache (128 bit) for the IGP. The chipset also supports hybrid crossfire which lets you combine the IGP and a discreet GPU in crossfire.

PERFORMANCE

The chipset brings a considerable amount of performance jump over previous generation chipsets as we can see in the performance tests.

 

A little improvement here and there.

VERDICT

This board is definitely brings small a performance jump but nothing groundbreaking really. AMD will probably release a bios update for 790 series to support the upcoming 6 core processors anyway so, if you own a 790 series board, this board is totally avoidable.