top of the line Intel chips

have just been looking at the top of the line intel i7's, and from what i read about the overclocking options it hardly seems worth all that extra money for the performance you get out of it, the 980x looks like the majority of people can only get it to run just over 4Ghz stable, there are a few cases where extreme oc/s are getting just over 6ghz, but most of the standard or lower end i7's can get up to around 4.5 can they not?, is there somthing i'm missing (aside from the extra 2 cores) that justifies the extra £400 or somthing?

the hex chips are a different monster, and when you think of the clocks also realize that the temps are generally way better with the hex's. I have a new 950 that will do 4200 on air with good temps but it thats about it. the hex's generally will do substantially more than the 930 or 950 chips, not sure that make them worth that much more, but the hex's are sweet units for sure.

The 980X is geared more towards Extreme Overclockers, with an unlocked multiplier. Unless you're going subzero, there's really no use in getting it. That said, mine runs just fine on ambient at 4.4 and up to 5.7 on Dry Ice. My 920 ran 4.2 with ease. W3520 struggled to run 4.2. X5677 would run 4.4 with hardly any voltage adjusting, lol (but it's a 32nm process, just like gulftown) The lower end i7's you're refering to (930,950) tend to run out of steam around 4.2-4.3, but find a good 920 d0 and it'll do 4.4 - 4.5.

What do you the 980s for anyways? The price tag is insane for the performance gain.

tyl998 said:

What do you the 980s for anyways? The price tag is insane for the performance gain.

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Benchmarking primarily, DC, or a workstation that can utilize the core count. Many people that buy them do not need anything more than a i3 530. But this is OCF, where excess runs rampant
Many of our benchers have one (or a few), and/or their Xeon counterpart.