New Feature of the X58 #1: the Core I7 Platform, the Drawbacks

Hey this is Icarus here again with more details on the Core i7 processors. In this article, I will be talking about some drawbacks of these processors.

Now, there is no piece of technology out there that is ABSOLUTELY perfect, so don’t take these drawbacks like “Oh my God this is so bad… I’m not going to buy this” because, to be honest, this is still new technology. Drawbacks are common in all pieces of technology, and especially prominent in hardware that have just been released, just like some newly-released games have major bugs that get fixed as people play the games.

One of the main drawbacks of the Core i7 is its lack of support of ECC. ECC, or Error Correction Code, is a feature that is supported by the predecessors of the Core i7 processors. When computers are running, there are many small errors in the code created by computing errors, hardware malfunction, or other reasons. What Error Correction Code does is that the system replaces the coding error with correct data and keeps the computer running. That’s why most computers of today run very well with very few errors causing Blue-Screen-of-Deaths.  Now, the Core i7 does not support memory(RAM) with ECC anymore; thus, the Core i7 is slightly more vulnerable to small errors building up into a BSOD. However, there have also been rumors that the Core i7 supports ECC only when someone enables the feature on the computer. This, however, is not confirmed.

Another thing that may be a drawback is its overclockability. In earlier tests of the Core i7 processors, tests showed that the Core i7 processors were not ideal for consumers who like to take their processors to the edge in overclocking. However, there have also been recent reports that this processor is EXTREMELY overclockable. So what does this mean? Nothing really, just that, like any other piece of hardware, every hardware is slightly different even when machines make them, and that small physical difference can make a huge difference in overclocking.