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.
Asus Rampage IV Extreme (LGA 2011) Intel X79 Express Chipset, BIOS 0067
Row 10 - Cell 0
Asus Crosshair V Formula (Socket AM3+) AMD 990FX/SB950 Chipset, BIOS 0813
Row 11 - Cell 0
Asus Rampage III Formula (LGA 1366) Intel X58 Express, BIOS 0505
Row 12 - Cell 0
Asus Maximus IV Extreme (LGA 1155) Intel P67 Express, BIOS 0901
Memory
Crucial 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR3-1333, MT16JTF1G64AZ-1G4D1 @ DDR3-1600 at 1.65 V on Socket AM3+ and LGA 2011, DDR-1333 at 1.65 V on LGA 1155
Row 14 - Cell 0
Crucial 24 GB (3 x 8 GB) DDR3-1333, MT16JTF1G64AZ-1G4D1 @ DDR3-1066 at 1.65 V on LGA 1366
Hard Drive
Intel SSD 510 250 GB, SATA 6 Gb/s
Graphics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 1.5 GB
Power Supply
Cooler Master UCP-1000 W
System Software And Drivers
Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
DirectX
DirectX 11
Graphics Driver
Nvidia GeForce Release 280.26Nvidia GeForce Release 285.62 for all SLI testing
Swipe to scroll horizontally
3D Game Benchmarks And Settings
Benchmark
Details
Crysis 2
Game Settings: Ultra Quality Settings, Anti-Aliasing: Disabled, V-sync: Disabled, High-Quality Textures: Enabled, DirectX 9 and DirectX 11, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 2560x1600, Demo: Central Park
DiRT 3
Game Settings: Ultra Quality Settings, Anti-Aliasing: Disabled and 8x AA, Anisotropic Filtering: Disabled, Sync Every Frame: No, 1680x1050, 1920x1080, 2560x1600, Demo: Built-in Game Demo
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Game Settings: Ultra Quality Settings, Anti-Aliasing: 1x AA and 8x AA, Anisotropic Filtering: 16x, Vertical Sync: Disabled, 1680x1050, 1920x1080, 2560x1600, Demo: Crushblow to The Krazzworks, DirectX 11
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.
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.
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!
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.
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) :)
:| 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 :\