iXBT Labs take a further look at the Core i7 performance in the 'minimalistic' mode (without Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading), with only Hyper-Threading enabled, and with only Turbo Boost enabled. And, of course, they also compare the results to the nominal mode (both are enabled). Here's a taster:

Turbo Boost technology demonstrates impressive performance gains practically everywhere. On the one hand, it's not bad: "common overclocking" provides performance gains to all users without exception, no consequences to system stability (at least according to the manufacturer). On the other hand, overclockers lose their semi-legal ways to get higher performance for less money, as manufacturers take advantage of their favorite tricks. However, it was easy to predict the appearance of something like Turbo Boost: any popular semi-legal practice always attracts manufacturers who want to benefit even by such tricks.

Despite its new reincarnation, Hyper-Threading is still as controversial as in times of NetBurst. This technology yields zero performance gains according to our overall score (rounded), even though some tests demonstrate significant performance gains or drops. The reasons are lying on the surface: it's not easy to optimize software for virtual multiprocessing. What concerns Intel, this company abandoned this field, having rolled out truly multi-core processors -- and software developers immediately followed suit. To all appearances, Hyper-Threading is being revived now. However, developers already accumulated negative experience -- HT had been actively advertised at first, and then it was forgotten because of more popular market tendencies. So those developers, who have already mastered this technology in its first reincarnation, will hardly welcome the revival of HT.

Our today's analysis once again proved the main conclusion from our Intel Core i7 review: it's a "no-nonsense" processor. Candid performance drops of Core i7 caused by the reanimated Hyper-Threading are smoothed over by Turbo Boost in most cases. As a result, the overall impression from its performance in the nominal mode is moderately positive (few users want to know details, like our today's tests). Time will pass, and they may get used to Hyper-Threading and learn to program software that at least won't suffer from this technology, or even will benefit from it -- we already have positive examples. Intel seems to have reached perfection in broadcasting positive thinking attitude to potential users: it does not grab and haul them into its concept of radiant future (farewell, Rambus), it just pushes them mildly in the right direction.