Introduction

When Intel pushed the Core i7 out the door it was not to top its rival, AMD, but to top its own Core 2 CPUs. We saw the i7 simply trounce on just about all other single socket systems (and some multi-socket systems as well).

Intel did not sit back and relax, though; they took the C0 stepping and tweaked it to give it an extra edge. Soon everyone was talking about the D0 stepping of the i7; it had better headroom, better thermal tolerance and even seemed slightly faster than the same clocked C0 CPU.

Again Intel did not stop there. Instead they pushed out another flagship CPU. This is the i7 975, a D0 stepping monster that looks like it can take on all comers.

We managed to get our hands on one and take it for a spin against the current champ, the i7 965 C0 stepping CPU. Let's see if it really is worthy of the crown.