Why bother releasing this 3960x ?

[Frizzo]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/443?vs=444

it doesn't even beat the 990x on half the benchmarks.

 

[rolli59]

Because on average it does and it is a start of a new platform!

 

[cjl]

What are you talking about? It ties or beats the 990x on every single benchmark, in some cases by a pretty significant margin.

(Read each benchmark to determine which way is better - in some of them, lower is better)

 

[Chad Boga]

Because on average it does and it is a start of a new platform!

Looks like a half baked platform to me.

No PCI 3.0, no native USB 3 and brings so little over the i7-990x on x58.

 

[Frizzo]

regardless , the margins aren't very much.

 

[Frizzo]

i do thankyou for pointing that out, it's nice to see statistics for once that are deeper than 1+1. but again, looking at this:


12.4
11

24
22.5

23
23

19.5
21.6

7.42
7.369

6.202
6.047

3.591
3.195

8.5
7.3

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Looks like a half baked platform to me.

No PCI 3.0, no native USB 3 and brings so little over the i7-990x on x58.

?? I thought the AT article specifically mentioned the SB-E has PCIe 3.0, just no current GPUs take advantage of it yet. However I agree native USB 3 would be nice, but of course most mobo OEMs will include that in their chipsets.

And on average the 3960X is some 12% faster than the 990X, and a whopping $9 cheaper too! . If you have your own cooler that is..

I agree that an upgrade wouldn't be worth it to somebody already owning a 980X or 990X, but somebody who needed a workstation, and the choices were the Bulldozer 8150, 1100T, 990X or the 3960X, they would cheap out with the 1100T or go for max performance with the 3960X.

OTOH, looks like there will be an IB-E for s2011 next year, so for somebody with an unlimited budget, it would probably be a drop-in 8 + 8 upgrade.

 

[Chad Boga]

?? I thought the AT article specifically mentioned the SB-E has PCIe 3.0, just no current GPUs take advantage of it yet. However I agree native USB 3 would be nice, but of course most mobo OEMs will include that in their chipsets.

Ahhhh okay, I didn't bother reading the particulars too closely on the official reviews because the product doesn't overly interest me, so was relying on what was in the Tom's Preview, which they address in the now current review:

One of the most controversial points in my Sandy Bridge-E preview was the fact that PCI Express 3.0 was stated "not supported" by the manufacturer of my test platform. Multiple outside sources indicated that third-gen PCIe was planned, but wouldn’t be available, possibly until 2012.

It turns out that PCI Express 3.0 is, in fact, supported by Sandy Bridge-E

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Ahhhh okay, I didn't bother reading the particulars too closely on the official reviews because the product doesn't overly interest me, so was relying on what was in the Tom's Preview, which they address in the now current review:

One of the most controversial points in my Sandy Bridge-E preview was the fact that PCI Express 3.0 was stated "not supported" by the manufacturer of my test platform. Multiple outside sources indicated that third-gen PCIe was planned, but wouldn’t be available, possibly until 2012.

It turns out that PCI Express 3.0 is, in fact, supported by Sandy Bridge-E

Well in most current games and GPUs, I don't think a user will see a lot of difference. However some games (WoW for instance) see some noticeable improvement with the 3930X vs other CPUs with dual and tri-SLI GPUs.

Myself, I'll continue to wait for Ivy Bridge as I really cannot justify even the $550 price for the 3930X. After all, I'm no "megatasker" unlike some CRs here .