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Intel Core i7-3960X Review: Sandy Bridge-E And X79 Express

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  • Sandy Bridge
  • Intel i7
  • Intel
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November 14, 2011 6:00:05 AM

Intel's Sandy Bridge design impressed us nearly a year ago, but it was intended for mainstream customers. The company took its time readying the enthusiast version, Sandy Bridge-E. Now, the LGA 2011-based platform and its accompanying CPUs are ready.

Intel Core i7-3960X Review: Sandy Bridge-E And X79 Express : Read more

More about : intel core 3960x review sandy bridge x79 express

November 14, 2011 6:23:19 AM

Wow,lots of details and benchies.Great review as always Chris !
Score
28
November 14, 2011 6:50:28 AM

So no SAS/Full Sata 3 ports but u do get PCIe 3 ... no Quicksync but u do get 2 more cores and the added cache ... no USB 3.0 but u get quad channel memory which in real life every day computing is a minimal gain at best. Feels an awful lot like a weak trade if you ask me. I'm basically asked to buy the P67 chipset with sprinkles on top. And for 1000$ it feels like it falls short. For heavy workloads it's cheaper and faster to make yourself 2 systems based on 1155 or bulldozer and render, fold, chew numbers that way. X79 should have launched with an ivy bridge based cpu inside and a better chipset to live to it's name.
What we have today is simply a platform for bragging rights not a serious contender to the X38, X48, X58 family.
Score
17
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November 14, 2011 6:58:09 AM

Enjoyed the review Chris ! WoW.
Score
3
November 14, 2011 7:00:45 AM

Not to take the review to much off topic but its worth bringing up because this review was so complete , as in covering a vast array of situations and programs. Its truly embarrassing for AMD that the FX-8XXX series is beaten not only bye chips with half the cores but half the cores that are a generation behind. In fact as of this moment the FX set is almost inspiring it its lack of any value at first glance at some of these marks one could say that AMD's most expensive chip at over 200$ is one of its slowest being beaten bye both the x4 and x6 phenoms.
Score
-13
November 14, 2011 7:07:57 AM

Illfindu, you are beating a dead horse... Old news, lets move on (sorry, just tired of the same thing being said over and over, which will end in an amd fanboy fight). Great review though!
Score
13
November 14, 2011 7:12:00 AM

This article tells me 2 things , either our current software is a total piece of crap since it has absolutely no clue of multi core cpus, or the future without AMD is so grim that intel makes you pay 1000 bucks for a cpu that doesn`t perform really that fast ... but for sure the software industry needs to take a better look at those multicore optimisations.
Score
24
November 14, 2011 7:12:39 AM

I think Intel would be raking in the dough if they left all 8 cores enabled for the 3960X. I doubt that a later revision will enable them. 8c/16t will probably hit the desktop with IB-E (can't wait) :) 
Score
-4
November 14, 2011 7:13:28 AM

:| Well AMD is fighting a losing battle.. (In High-End CPU's, which I actually use for rendering etc..)
I would LOVE to see them pick up their game and provide me with a worthy upgrade over my 4GHz i7 2600 (Non-K). I would swoop it up.

Look, BD had 4 modules with two "cores" each, each module is equivalent to a Sandy Bridge core.
They should just combine both of those cores or make them a single core, so we get 4 threads.

Then create 4-6-8 core versions of those CPU's..
Think about it.. the FX8150 is more of a 4-core CPU where the resources are halved pretty much so you get two threads per core, it would have been MUCH MUCH better if they just kept 4 strong cores.


Not sure why either but I always seem to start an AMD related comment :\
Score
-9
November 14, 2011 7:21:25 AM

great but too expensive....
Score
3
November 14, 2011 7:23:17 AM

Hi Chris,

The labels are wrong on the graphs on this page the last ones should read DDR2-2133 on the last two shouldn't it?

JeanLuc
Score
0
November 14, 2011 7:33:13 AM

The 3930k certainly appears to be the chip to watch for out of this bunch. The 3820 is basically a 2600k/2700k on a more expensive platform, and the 3960x needed to be the full 8c/16t version of the processor to sell for $1000. (If you are dropping that much A dual socket EVGA SR2 setup still makes more since)

The only use for the 3820 really seems to be a cheap placeholder processor if you need a new PC now, but want to wait for a likely full 8c/16t version to come out around the time Ivy Bridge is released. The 3930k should prove to be a very good high end gaming/ mid range workstation part though for people who invest close to $1k in graphics cards.
Score
-2
November 14, 2011 7:40:41 AM

So, are we getting any overclocked measurements in the near future?

The funny thing is that cores don't scale well. They do, but it's far from ideal as the percentages from the 2600K show (and the FX-8150 but that's a different story).


But the takeaway:

-If you're playing games the i5-2500K is the best purchase you can make and it's enough for Tri-580 SLI. Only WoW shows any difference, but most games ignore it.

-X79 is Intel being just plain lazy. No matter how you slice it- the X79 should have been called X67 and left like that. It's also a wildcat platform that will only support at most 6 CPUs that aren't terribly crippled.

-A Phenom II 955BE (or unlocked 960T, or a 1090T/1100T) is still a fine CPU to have unless you're gaming with dual graphics cards or doing time-intensive tasks.
Score
17
November 14, 2011 9:07:21 AM

Irrevocably thorough review Chris. Excellent work, as usual. Oh, and I and do want a 3960X. Don't need it. Can't justify it. Just want it.
Score
5
November 14, 2011 9:19:02 AM

JeanLucHi Chris,The labels are wrong on the graphs on this page the last ones should read DDR2-2133 on the last two shouldn't it?JeanLuc


Yessir! Working on it now!
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5
November 14, 2011 9:22:30 AM

If this is coming out now, when is Ivy Bridge scheduled to come out
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0
November 14, 2011 9:44:28 AM

hmmm, nice review, Chris! Can you do some overclocking review on these chips?
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2
November 14, 2011 9:51:48 AM

any chances to unlock the disabled core?
Score
5
November 14, 2011 9:56:39 AM

iam2thecrowe said:
everyone saying its too expensive, no sh%t!!! Top end cpus have and will always be expensive. Lets go back to 2006 - amd FX-62 - over $1000 at launch. and back to 1999 - AMD athlon 700mhz - near $900 http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/cpu/athlo... . pentium III http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/pentium3/prices.asp $700+. Has everyone lost their memory???

Yes. Its expensive. In other news the Earth orbits the Sun. I wish I had enough $$$ that the costs of this CPU was inconsequential to me.
Score
-6
November 14, 2011 9:59:39 AM

I heard when windows 8 come out this processor will get more benefit lawl
Score
4
November 14, 2011 10:06:58 AM

Considering how CPU-limited Skyrim is, it would be a nice addition in future reviews, even if it doesn't scale much past two cores.

Anywho...Overkill, thy name is this thing. The days of a $600 let alone $1000 dollar CPU being even close to a value proposal are long over, something a fifth the price of the lower is easily adequate for most people, and if you're really using six hyperthreaded cores you probably want a workstation class CPU anyways.
Score
7
Anonymous
November 14, 2011 10:29:20 AM

I really do believe that Intel does not disable cores because of "suit it's need", but because of malfunction of that cores when they test particular die. After they decide how many cores are working they pack and label processor as one of the known (and yet unknown) version of CPU.

It would be no economical sense to have perfect "core-extreme" capable pieces and sell them as Celerons. They lock variable frequencies and cut off cores and or cache to make as mush as possible CPUs out of a die. To lower costs and to sell those not perfect ones as well. As far as I know, they sell the lovest quality parts first, than after life cycle they put out the best ones at the end of cycle as X editions. Of course for the premium price some of the best parts are sold at first too, to grab atention.
Score
-1
a b å Intel
November 14, 2011 10:31:15 AM

great article. awesome work. i've been waiting for this review for a while.
not that i am gonna buy a $500+ cpu, this review does a great job comparing different flagship cpus from different price points, and brands.
i am impressed by sb-e's power draw. after fx 8150 i was skeptical about how a 130w tdp enthusiast class cpu($1000) would perform on idle and on load. this thing takes less power on idle and less power on load considering it has higher tdp, clock speed, components, more cores(than 2600k) etc. and it has good single thread performance. sb-e is proof how an enthusiast class cpu should behave (despite the price T_T).
i wonder if 3960x's performance percentage would go up if power consumption was taken into account.
Score
1
November 14, 2011 10:38:02 AM

It has 2 cores and 5mb cache disabled. Does it mean that it can be unlocked by any new MB
Score
-5
November 14, 2011 10:38:39 AM

A dream processor
Score
-2
November 14, 2011 11:00:46 AM

CPU value: $300
Bragging rights: $700
Score
8
November 14, 2011 11:04:55 AM

Great review. Also proves that my 3 year old 920 still kicks ass !!!!!!!!!!!
Score
5
November 14, 2011 11:19:53 AM

i am so not very impressed with AMD's cpus at the moment....they have a lot of work to do
Score
3
November 14, 2011 11:21:39 AM

Chris, if you want some CPU intensive games for benchmark, you should give a look at RTS titles. Try to run a skirmish against multiple AI opponents in High difficulty settings. These games usually are not very graphics intensive (unless you cram the settings to the extreme), but these skirmishes can make the CPU work! And nice review, again!
Score
7
November 14, 2011 11:31:52 AM

I just wish they didn't castrate the $1000 Core i7-3960X and left all 8 cores active. That would have made the price tag worthwhile for extreme enthusiasts. I guess Intel feared they would undermine their workstation / server parts...
Score
-1
November 14, 2011 11:34:49 AM

Grrr Need Hardware NOW!! Come on Ivy, Kepler, all of you! :p 

Even if I wouldn't even think about getting a SB-E, reading these reviews is pure enjoyment ;)  Props to you all, its incredible how much Toms has evolved in the last two years, and its done it amazingly.
Score
3
November 14, 2011 11:45:55 AM

Great review Chris!

Intel just chewed up the FX-8150 with SB-E...scary...i know the gulf in price is huge, but if you compare workstation-oriented flagships...

And I think only main stream processors have value left for gaming purposes, because let's face it, if you're getting b/w 60-100 fps on a single screen you're good. keeping vsync on on most monitors would limit the fps to 60 anyway, so i cant see the point of a three card setup with a $1k CPU. Probably good for 3 monitors and 3d gaming i guess...

otherwise, for all practical purposes, flagship CPUs are workstation material....
Score
1
November 14, 2011 11:55:30 AM

I am looking forward to the overclocking results of these new processors. I have been holding out for the x79, not because i was hoping for a big jump in performance, but simply because most of the 68 boards out there cant support my video cards, raid card, sound, network etc. there just arent enough lanes/slots, and the boards that have it are too large. plus I am on a p45 at the moment, and if i enable my 10g network card i lose sound due to not enough pcie lanes =)
Score
0
November 14, 2011 12:00:29 PM

49.5% faster than my 2500k in SolidWorks!! Wow.. I guess if you spend 80% of your time in Solid works this thing IS worth every penny. Think of all the time I'd save this MONTH alone for $1,000
Score
5
November 14, 2011 12:26:18 PM

I will skip this one as well. I got 3 years old x58 ud5 and i7 920. Best buck I ever spent on computers.

Score
2
a b å Intel
November 14, 2011 12:26:36 PM

Glad to see USB 3 support... That being said, other than that abit of a chipset disapointment.

BUT performance is as good as expected.

EDIT : Meant PCI-E 3 support.
Score
0
November 14, 2011 12:26:46 PM

Looks like the my I7 2700k buy was good deal in its only way.
Score
-1
November 14, 2011 12:36:05 PM

I'm beginning to think that Intel is just pouting over the spat about USB 3.0. Seriously, Intel? Enough with the lack of it! It's about time we get native USB 3.0 on Intel boards, for heaven's sake. On top of that, there isn't enough of a performance gain over the Sandy Bridge processors to warrant paying the premium. The only justification is that they're unlocked. If you are a hardcore overclocker, then be my guest. Otherwise, in real world application, these are a bust, IMO.
Score
0
November 14, 2011 12:38:51 PM

ohimThis article tells me 2 things , either our current software is a total piece of crap since it has absolutely no clue of multi core cpus, or the future without AMD is so grim that intel makes you pay 1000 bucks for a cpu that doesn`t perform really that fast ... but for sure the software industry needs to take a better look at those multicore optimisations.

it is deffinitly a software constraint. Look at premiere's increase, as well as the compression increase. When the software is made to take advantage of all the hardware in a system then you can get massive performance! But most titles are like games (tied at least partially to console hardware), or are linier by their very nature and cannot use more than one or two threads effectively. Thankfully this is changing (even chrome and FF are becoming very multi-core friendly), and I think we will find this to be a trend as intel, amd, nvidia, and arm are all pushing towards "many-core" (12-80 cores) solutions in the future instead of mere multicore (2-10 cores). Still, it is going to be a while.
machvelocyany chances to unlock the disabled core?

unlikely. While AMD disables through firmware which can be flashed and work fine if the CPU is not damaged in those areas, Intel tends to physically fuse or break the connection. So unless you have an electron microscope and some mad soldering skills then you only get what you pay for.

tipooConsidering how CPU-limited Skyrim is, it would be a nice addition in future reviews, even if it doesn't scale much past two cores. Anywho...Overkill, thy name is this thing. The days of a $600 let alone $1000 dollar CPU being even close to a value proposal are long over, something a fifth the price of the lower is easily adequate for most people, and if you're really using six hyperthreaded cores you probably want a workstation class CPU anyways.

While overkill for you or me, it is not fast enough for some. The i5 and i7 is about as good as it gets when all you are doing is video games, with the occasional video project, or photo touch-up. But (as hyteck9 said) if you are spending all of your time doing premiere, or heavy database/datamining, or rendering projects in Cad or other heavily threaded 3D modeling work then you would get a nice large performance increase that will more than pay for the processor in time saved and projects completed. More likely though, this will be the cheap option, and large companies will spring for the 8 core 16 thread Xeons, and put 2 of them in a system which would unlock amazing amounts of potential for both server, and productivity loads.


Lastly, great review Chris! you covered just about everything in there! I'm rather disappointed at the lack of features provided by the chipset for this level of board. It seems to just be an z68 that supports the new pinout, when we were expecting more gen 3 connectors that are in use now, and less of the PCIe3 (though a pleasant surprise) which cannot even be used yet. But I suppose there will likely be a better chipset out for these processors before the end of their life cycle.
Score
-1
November 14, 2011 12:38:56 PM

aldaiaCPU value: $300Bragging rights: $700

CPU value: $400
Bragging rights: $600

Be fair. :D 
Score
-2
a b å Intel
November 14, 2011 1:04:51 PM

Hyteck9, I suspect you're one of the very few who can justify this chip from a practical standpoint. Many if not most of "our" (i.e. forum members) systems are overkill for playing games, surfing, and the typical office applications most of us run. Only where time=money is this CPU of practical value. Which brings up...

...very nice review, Chris; very thorough.
Score
0
November 14, 2011 1:16:00 PM

Should we see PCI Express 3.0-capable hardware in the next couple of months, Sandy Bridge-E will have yet another opportunity to set itself apart. No other chipset includes this feature, and we expect graphics cards and RAID controllers to exploit it within the first half of 2012.

Ummm... My ASROCK Extreme3 Gen3 has pcie3. What do you mean "no other chipset includes this feature"? I must not understand the definition of a chipset.
Score
-8
November 14, 2011 1:28:31 PM

When there is no competition at the high end, then expect Intel to charge as much as they can without encouraging the spotlight of the trustbreakers at the DoJ or in the EU. The margin of profit for any of these parts is extremely high, even if they only sell a few thousand parts each month.
Score
-1
November 14, 2011 1:48:10 PM

I get the same performance in BF3 with my measely i7-960 and two GTX 580s that they show in the charts for the Sandy Bridge, Gulf town and the X. There is only a 5fps difference between the 3 (all around 100fps) at 1080p.

Steve Jobs showed us all that it's all in the marketing. He made millions selling sub-par hardware for more $$$. The last couple of gens of Intel processors to emerge since the first i7 (1366s) seem to show little improvement in gaming performance. The new processors may be more capable if you're compiling genetic data or galactic charting information, but from a gaming standpoint, they don't really offer much of an advantage.

Intel is going to have to show some real advantage before I'll start biting at what they put on the hook again. There is still nothing I can't run smoothly maxed out with my good ole' I7-960 and my two GTX 580s in SLI.
Score
0
November 14, 2011 2:07:26 PM

Unfortunately consoles are stifling innovation for PC gaming in general, so you can expect more of the same in terms of few games challenging processors AT ALL because if they push a sandybridge i7 to its limit, the game would be unplayable on a console. Few game companies make PC exclusive games anymore. One game I think would show good CPU scaling would be sc2. Between 4v4 and custom games there is huge processing to be done, particularly during large battles. I am sure a custom map could be created (if one isnt already) that would run a scripted set of events for benchmarking.
Score
1
November 14, 2011 2:20:16 PM

"Ironically, the most mainstream game in this comparison is the one best able to take advantage of Intel’s new $1000 processor. World of Warcraft doesn’t fully tax our GeForce GTX 580 graphics card, so swapping CPUs in and out does impact performance quantifiably."

I want to suggest that the reason the CPU makes a difference in WoW is because it still depends on the CPU more heavily than other games (such as Crysis) for graphics, not that the GTX 580 is more than what WoW can use.

The GTX 580 and any current CPU can hold the 60Hz refresh rate most single LCD monitors use in WoW across your flight path test - but minimum frame rates still drop below well below that, you can't turn multisampling beyond 1x, and of course there are those who have more than 2560x1600 or 60Hz demands.

Thanks for including WoW in your test suite.

;) 
Score
-1
November 14, 2011 2:38:10 PM

The Core i7 920, yes it will still be a beast in 5 years.
Score
-2
November 14, 2011 2:50:19 PM

Extreme Edition Intel CPUs have always been this price - or more. Actually, the fact that that the EE isn't higher in price than the previous first x58 processors on release is an indicator that Intel's mainstream - even their high-end mainstream - CPUs will go down in cost, not up, because anything that actually costs the same now as it did 3 years ago is cheaper because the money is worth less (inflation).

Is it worth the money? Not to most of us, but neither is it our job to scorn people who buy this CPU because they have a purpose different than ours, even if it's just to do extreme benchmarking. I'm not thrilled with people who want to buy such a thing and go around swaggering, thinking they're big cheese just because they own one, and I don't have much respect for the kind of person that goes around swaggering, thinking he/ or she is hot stuff because he/she DIDN'T buy one either.

;) 
Score
-1
Anonymous
November 14, 2011 3:01:54 PM

What kind of monitor was used for the 2560x1600 test? I know it's a little off topic but I didn't see it listed in the test set up.
Score
-1
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