More on the i7 chip

As I mentioned in my last post, I just built a new system based on the Intel i7-975 chip running at 3.33 Ghz. If you recall from the last post, my benchmark run took 5 minutes 8 seconds on a 2.66 Ghz i7. The same benchmark took 8 minutes 53 seconds on a 3.00 Ghz Xeon system (what I used to think was Intel's fastest processor for modeling). The new system, though, runs the same benchmark in 4 minutes 8 seconds, or about 20% faster than the 2.66 Ghz i7. It's hard to believe this is over twice as fast as a comparable Xeon.

So, if you are concerned about run time, get an i7 system!