Customer Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful CPU
Comment: I build a few 1156&1366 PC recently, used i7-930,920,i7-860,i5-750,650,661.
this i7-860 is excellent CPU, 32nm technology, so heat is never a problem, runs extremely stable,
Wonderful CPU, no Con expereienced.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Excellent i7 (1156) Choice
Comment: OK, with the exception of the 980X, which is insanely expensive (wait for the locked version coming out later), this is the best CPU Intel makes. It is a steal at this price. The unlocked i7 1156 is also a great value, for about $50 more than the 860. This will do all that you need, unless you are a professional animator or video editor. I have built many Intel boxes...and this will be the CPU in my next build. Again, forget about dropping $1,000 on a 980X, unless you are made of money and have a need to impress your friends with the specs on your CPU. To me, the specs of your wallet are more important than the specs of your CPU...within reason.
Customer Rating:
Summary: TEN BUCKS OUT OF TEN!!
Comment: I put together a new computer from scratch for the first time, instead of rebuilding existing units. I definitely needed to rebuild a few before trying this, BUT Intel and the other companies ARE making it much easier to do this. The major pieces are an Intel DP55SB Extreme mobo, i7 860 processor, 650wd-HD(64mb cache-6gbt/sec.), Creative X-Fi Titanium sound, Sony 7241 DVD-RW w/lightscribe, Win7pro64, 2x2gb Patriot Viper 1600 RAM(still have two empty slots), and Sapphire HD5750 card. I got a deal on a couple of pieces, and was able to put this together for $1,100, and saved $200 with some special deals I received, so really $1,400.
Amazon is an awesome place to put a computer together. My first DP55sb they shipped me had a big gash in the box, but not the brown outer box(?), and they took it right back. They sent me a new one OVERNIGHT!! I bought the w7x64ult, but got a w7pro64 for almost nothing from a friend, and shipped back the Ultimate to Amazon. They charged me a couple of dollars for the return shipping, cool. By the way, the only software items I've had any trouble loading were Microsoft products, 2006 Gears of War(runs super too), and 1998 Greetings Workshop. Still workin' on Greetings Workshop. Almost forgot, bluetooth took a little while to connect to printer. Was ridiculouly easy, but had never done it, and there isn't a lot of info on connection process. Embarassingly easy when you find it(taskbar).
Processor and fan combo went together and on the motherboard quite simply and easily, bam. Hard to imagine all that power in such a tiny little guy. The w7 experience rating for this system came in at 5.9, which is the basic limitations of the 650wd drive only. All other facets of the Windows Experience rating were 7.3 out of 7.9 possible points. Averaged together it was 7.0 out of 7.9. Who gets a 7.9, IBM's Blue Monster? This processor is fast with 4 cores and each one is hyperthreaded to a virtual 8 cores. The 2.8ghz can be clocked up to 3.46ghz. I haven't found anything yet that is challenging this unit past a yawn at 2.8ghz. The motherboard also comes with a very nice dashboard for tweaking and monitoring many items.
I went straight to one of my favorite quickie mini games, Half life2: Lost Coast, which has a video stress test to measure frames per second. My 3.2ghzHT XP Gateway with the ATIx1950 always came in at 28-35fps, and ran all the HL's just fine. I dialed it up on the new system and got a whopping 220fps! I had to put my glasses on to see if there really was a decimal point in there anywhere, WOW! I didn't realize I was this far behind in the computing world. The next game I loaded up was STALKER: SoC, and it did not disappoint me. I have never been able to get this game to run without plenty of chop suey. In fact, it looked so good on the HD5750/Intel combo that it did not even look like the same game. Windows 7 has so far run every game I through at it, except Call of Duty 2. Haven't found a fix yet.
I had one question, and Intel answered very expertly.
If you are thinking about building a computer, this setup worked nearly flawlessly for me, and I'm not a genius, but have some some basic working knowledge. The only two hitches came at start up. This DP55sb mobo will give you an error(digitally too) of 21. Which means that there is a problem with the RAM. I loaded the RAM on the 0/a+b slots, and who knew that it needed to be on the 0 and 1-a slots?! Right next to each other, and next to the processor. If I had loaded 4 pieces of RAM I never would have known. The next hiccup came when loading w7x64pro. The product key entry system is faulty! You'd think they would be paying a group junior high kids 8 bucks an hour to sit and load and reload the operating system all day to make sure that worked properly. This is a known issue, not just me. I will post the answer in the w7x64pro product page review. w7 is pretty cool, stable, and fast.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent CPU
Comment: Pros: so far, it runs all my applications and games with no problems at all, it is also very stable.
Cons: I upgraded from a Core 2 Quad Q6600 and I certainly feel the difference, but my Windows Experience index went from 7.3 to 7.5, I was expecting a little bit more.
Other thoughts: usually I don't O.C. my computer so I can't really share my opinion about the CPU behavior during that process.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent CPU
Comment: Not a lot to say here. This is a great, powerful CPU that overclocks well. Easily can be pushed to 3.8Ghz on air cooling, while maintaining acceptable temperatures.
It was a huge upgrade over an E8400 (overclocked to 3.6Ghz), in gaming as well as multitasking in apps like Photoshop, Visual Studio, and SQL Server.
Turbo mode on these chips is excellent when using single thread apps. The performance of the Turbo mode is better than the 1366 socket brothers and sisters. If you're an avid overclocker, this means nothing, because you'll likely have that option turned off to manually handle it.
It's a beast of a chip that will definitely increase all of your benchmarks in an upgrade form previous technology.
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