
OCR isn’t a workload for which we’d normally tap a thousand-dollar chip. However, ABBYY’s FineReader 10 does scale based on available core count, granting the Core i7-3960X a first-place finish. One of our most commonly-recommended CPUs, Intel’s Core i5-2500K takes exactly twice as long to finish this benchmark. How’s that for perspective?

All of the tests up until now have painted Core i7-3960X in a pretty positive light by virtue of optimizations for threading, which keep all of Sandy Bridge-E’s cores busy. But Lame is single-threaded, so the only advantages this new chip has are its clock rate, IPC, and whatever gains Intel can enable with Turbo Boost.
Not surprisingly, then, the Core i7-3960X comes in right around the Core i7-2600K—a CPU about one-third of its cost. The rest of the field follows behind. Without question, this, like the FX last month, is a processor primarily intended to tackle threaded workloads. The big difference is that it also presents solid single-core performance too, rather than sliding backward, which is what we see FX-8150 do.

The same story presents itself in WinZip, roughly. The -3960X and -2600K swap places, yet remain practically tied.

WinRAR is a completely different animal. Not only does it exploit all six of the Core i7-3960X’s cores, but it also demonstrates an affinity for higher-performance memory. Add to that the clear benefits attributable to Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture and it’s no wonder the incoming flagship does so well, notably outpacing the outgoing top-end model.

Also able to utilize all of a six-core/12-thread processor’s resources, 7-Zip favors the Core i7-3960X just like WinRAR did.
Because this test is well-threaded, FX-8150 delivers a nice gain over the Phenom II X6 1100T, falling just one second short of Intel’s Core i7-2600K.

The creation of a PDF document from a PowerPoint 2010 presentation runs fastest on the Core i7-3960X, but only by a second. The fact that all of the Sandy Bridge-based chips finish within four seconds of each other suggests that the workload only taxes one thread, and favors Intel’s most current architecture over the Nehalem design that came before.
All of AMD’s chips bring up the rear. And because the Phenom II X4 offers better IPC than FX-8150, it’s able to outperform the most recent release. Unfortunately, Phenom II X6 1100T gives up too much clock rate to keep up, despite the fact that its Turbo Core technology dithers at up to 3.7 GHz.

We know from watching Windows’ Task Manager that our Miranda IM client compile test taxes multiple cores, which is why the Core i7-990X manages to slide into second place behind the Core i7-3960X. Intel’s other Sandy Bridge-based chips come in third and fourth, followed by three AMD CPUs. Intel’s Core i7-920 seems to lack the clock rate and architectural advantages of Sandy Bridge to compete in this discipline.
- Say Hello To The PC Hardware Trophy Wife
- Quad-Channel Memory And PCI Express 3.0
- X79 Express: P67, Is That You?
- Cooling And Overclocking Core i7-3960X
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: PCMark 7
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: Sandra 2011
- Benchmark Results: Content Creation
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Media Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Crysis 2
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 3
- Benchmark Results: World Of Warcraft
- Crysis 2 In SLI
- DiRT 3 In SLI
- World Of Warcraft In SLI
- Battlefield 3 In SLI
- Power Consumption
- Core i7-3960X Versus Core i7-990X
- Core i7-3960X Versus Core i7-2600K/Core i5-2500K
- Core i7-3960X Versus FX-8150
- A Symbolic King In A Crowd Full Of Value
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.
What we have today is simply a platform for bragging rights not a serious contender to the X38, X48, X58 family.
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 :\
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
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.
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.
Yessir! Working on it now!
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.