Intel Core i7 970 

My CPU PPD went up from 12,000 to ~35,000.

It gets a 4.5 because there is a issue with the multi that doesn't allow 25x without a hardware mod other than that I can find no faults with this chip.

Under an H50 with OCZ Freeze at 4.2GHz I load at roughly 62C, peaking at 70C if I let it run overnight in a burn-in test - and that's at 1.25v..

The temps were more than acceptable for stock clocks, and even giving it a slight kick to 3.90GHz and a small voltage bump didn't get unreasonable (holds at 70C after about 20 minutes of burn-in) - though for a folding machine or a 24/7 use you'd probably want to stay stock if you wanted to use the stock cooler.

You sacrifice a tiny amount of clock speed and an unlocked multiplier for easier overclocking, but the Core i7-970 is otherwise a fine way to supercharge your LGA1366-based desktop.

The chip however can easily handle driving twopowerful cards such as the GTX 680in SLI with both GPUs at 95+% usage at all times.

If you can, the Core i7-970 would seem to be a worthwhile way to save a little money and still get most of the performance benefits of the Extreme Edition chip.

For starters, it runs cooler than the 920 despite the additional cores.

But what else did you expect from six of the most advanced processor cores money can buy.

Maybe I had a less-than-stellar 920 (ok, I did - but still, read on) but this chip is decently cooler at a higher clock on more cores in my experience.

In performance terms, therefore, no compromises are required.

I'm sure that with some lovely water cooling you could get the load temps below 60c and the clock speed up to 4.5GHz.

Upgrading from a i7 920 I didn't notice and difference in games or general use and it runs quite a bit hotter than the standard i7s.