Intel Sandy Bridge-E Review: The Core i7-3960X Gets Tested

[Jack]

Almost a year has passed since Intel introduced its Sandy Bridge architecture at the beginning of the year, and now the chip maker has released the enthusiast version of this core, dubbed Sandy Bridge-E. In the following article we will take a look at the most powerful LGA 2011 processor in Intel’s lineup, the Core i7-3960X, to see how well it performs compared to its predecessor.

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Conclusions

With Sandy Bridge-E, Intel managed to achieve what it set out to do when it started designing this core. The processor we had in our testbed for the last few days, the Core i7-3960X, is simply the most powerful desktop CPU out there.

In heavily threaded benchmarks there’s simply no other chip that can reach its performance. Single threaded performance is also impressive and to top it all out the overclcoking potential of the i7-3960X is top notch.



The main issues however with Sandy Bridge-E isn’t its performance, but rather the price of the CPU. At $999 this is more than three times as much as the Core i7-2600K.

For this much money you get 50% more computing cores and an impressive memory bandwidth, but as our benchmarks have showed this doesn’t mean all that much for non-highly threaded applications, such as games.

However, when running rendering, video encoding and other highly multithreaded software, the Core i7-3960X really does shine.

Finally, the decision to go for Sandy Bridge-E really depends on the kind of tasks that you run. If multi-threaded software is high on your priority list, this moving to this CPU arch makes a lot of sense if you can afford the high price associated with this platform.

Of course that going for the Core i7-3930K could be a much better alternative than the i7-3960X as you get pretty much the same features for almost half the price.



If you however run software that can’t take full advantage from the high number of cores, such as games, than you would be far better off with a Core i7-2600K or i5-2500K and use the extra money for a much better GPU.

The Good:

- Strong performance
- High overclocking potential
- High memory bandwidth

The Bad:

- High Price
- Small gaming performance increase


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[Jack]

TechSpot also did a review for this product, here are the conclusions :

Final Thoughts
Three years later, we are finally able to put the X58/LGA1366 platform to rest, in what's virtually been Intel's flagship platform for the entire duration. Sandy Bridge gave the platform a run for its money earlier this year, but in the remainder the platform managed to stay on top and only recently AMD was able to match it with their new FX series processors.
The AMD FX (Bulldozer) launch was pretty disappointing, to put it mildly, and today’s arrival of the new Sandy Bridge-E processors does nothing to make AMD’s flagship look any more attractive. But as was the case with the Phenom II and the original Core i7, Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge-E are two very different animals that target very different price ranges.

The AMD FX-8150 is currently being listed for around $270 (if you can find stock), while the Core i7-3960X is a bone chilling $990. The Core i7-3930K should deliver a similar level of performance, but even at $555 it's hardly what you would call affordable. It is what you would call half a grand, and that is what you would call almost twice the price of the FX-8150.

Pricing of the Core i7-3820 is yet to be revealed, but we are not crossing our fingers as it shouldn’t be much faster than the Core i7-2600K. The only advantage it has is the slightly larger L3 cache and the quad-channel DDR3 memory support. Therefore realistically to get aboard the LGA2011 platform, users will want to grab the Core i7-3930K along with a supporting motherboard and four sticks of DDR3 memory.

For gamers there's very little to see here. The Core i7-3960X is no faster than the Core i7-2600K or even the Core i5-2500K. However when it came to our application and encoding performance tests the Core i7-3960X was a monster. The Excel, Photoshop and encoding gains over the Core i7-2600K were impressive, in the order of 20% or faster.

Going back to the value perspective, assuming for a moment that the $555 Core i7-3930K delivers almost the same performance as the Core i7-3960X, it still costs 73% more than the Core i7-2600K, and in our application/encoding tests we saw a more modest 20–30% performance gain a majority of the time.

Overall the Core i7-3960X delivered as we expected, the letdown comes from the Intel X79 chipset which offers nothing over the Z68. This is going to be a real problem for LGA2011 motherboards, as we expect them to fetch a price premium over their LGA1155 counterparts, yet most will likely be equipped with the same features. This is going to be the Achilles' heel of Intel’s flagship platform regardless of the added benefits that are found here and there.

80
Pros: Fastest processor money can buy. Good/Great performance gains. Quad channel memory support, up to 40 lanes of PCIe 2.0 bandwidth.

Cons: Costly (new) platform. Lacking features on the chipset side. Power efficient only to an extent.

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[win7holic]

Lab Tested: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition

Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture stole the limelight this year, summarily trouncing its predecessors--and the best that AMD had to offer--with considerable performance boosts and power savings. Today Intel is announcing the Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition: a $990 CPU that distills the lessons the company has learned over the past year into a single piece of premium silicon.

It's a time-honored tradition: Take all the improvements from the most recent architecture shift, and drop them into an unlocked processor aimed at overclockers and workstations with considerable computational workloads.

Sitting at the top of the Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition lineup is the 3.3GHz Core i7-3960X. Here are the specs for it and the other two newcomers (the Core i7-3930K and the Core i7-3820), in handy chart form.

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Intel's "Extreme Edition" CPUs have always represented the company's top consumer offerings. Typically priced in the $1,000 range, they have unlocked multipliers, lots of cache, and lots of cores. But until now, Intel's top Extreme Edition offering, the Core i7-990X CPU, was based on the older Gulftown architecture, and the performance gap between this CPU and the newer Sandy Bridge architecture Core i7-2600K and 2700K is pretty damn narrow, especially considering that the latter costs less than a third the price of the former. But now Intel's made a Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition, with six physical cores and a staggering 15 megabytes of cache. Benchmark Reviews takes the new Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition CPU around the benchmark course, testing it against the best CPUs Intel and AMD have to offer.

Sources

Pros
Excellent all-around performance. Unlocked multiplier for simplified overclocking. Supports dual PCIe x16 video cards at full speed. Includes full range of Sandy Bridge features. Low power usage.
Cons
Very expensive. Requires new motherboard, purchase of separate CPU cooler. No integrated video, Quick Sync technology. Performance within line of sight of top-end Sandy Bridge chips.
Bottom Line
If you're looking for the fastest consumer CPU in the world, the Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition is unquestionably it. But a few caveats may give pause to all but the most rabid enthusiasts.

Intel has a long history of releasing the fastest processors on Earth, and it's continuing that tradition with the Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition. Rather than the next stage of the company's much-touted "tick-tock" development model, which alternates new production processes with new microarchitectures every year, this CPU is merely the enthusiast extension of Intel's most recent "tock": its "second-generation Core" (aka "Sandy Bridge") family. Until now, the chips in that line, like the Intel Core i3-2300, Intel Core i5-2500K, and Intel Core i7-2600K, were aimed at mainstream users. With its blistering performance and faint-worthy price ($990 list), the Core i7-3960X is targeted higher, at truly hard-core gamers and bleeding-edge types. Those who consider themselves members of those clubs will want this first chip in the Sandy Bridge–E (for "Extreme," of course) family, and want it soon, and in many ways it's worthy of their lust. But those who can't afford—or don't want to spend—that much money have some reasons to not fret.

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[Valentin N]

i7-3930K(costs 500$, reasonable price) is a better as well as more valuable investment; it performance the same as 3960 (costs 1000$ ), it has has unlocked multipliers and it cast half. I hope that motherboard manufactures can unlock the two other disabled cores.

This a very good cpu to grid with, good rendering cpu.

 

[Plexx]

Maybe someone could help me here. My friend is buying a Dell XPS17 as well and he asked me what's better. My 2.2GHz i7 QM or the 2.3GHz.

Could someone give me the pros and cons between those 2?

Mine is i7 2720QM 2.2GHz
The 2.3 is i7 2820QM 2.3GHz

He won't have the budget for the i7 2860QM 2.5Ghz.

Any help would be appreciated

 

[Valentin N]

Maybe someone could help me here. My friend is buying a Dell XPS17 as well and he asked me what's better. My 2.2GHz i7 QM or the 2.3GHz.

Could someone give me the pros and cons between those 2?

Mine is i7 2720QM 2.2GHz
The 2.3 is i7 2820QM 2.3GHz

He won't have the budget for the i7 2860QM 2.5Ghz.

Any help would be appreciated

i7-2720. Are you sure that i7-2760 is not there?

 

[Plexx]

Nope. it goes from 2720 to 2820, at least in UK.

Although the Dell Website has slight different variations of cores for the xps17 if you buy it online.

By the way would 2.2Ghz to 2.3Ghz be much of an increase at all?

He is a gamer like me.

 

[Valentin N]

Nope. it goes from 2720 to 2820, at least in UK.

Although the Dell Website has slight different variations of cores for the xps17 if you buy it online.

By the way would 2.2Ghz to 2.3Ghz be much of an increase at all?

He is a gamer like me.

if he is a gamer he should concentrate on the gpu; even the i7-2630qm will do.

100MHz will do a very small difference and it's not worth it.

can you tell him to join here and tell me the price? Thanks

 

[Plexx]

Price is about 1500GBP if he goes for the same core as mine. If he goes for 2.3, then add about 200GBP more...

pretty much what I paid for.

Graphics card is the same as mine (you can see the specs on my signature) - Nvidia GeForce GT 555M 3GB.

The only difference at the moment is 1TB of Hard Disk instead of 640GB since they have a promotion for 1TB and some services he doesn't want.

I did tell him to join here but he keeps forgetting...

 

[Valentin N]

Price is about 1500GBP if he goes for the same core as mine. If he goes for 2.3, then add about 200GBP more...

pretty much what I paid for.

Graphics card is the same as mine (you can see the specs on my signature) - Nvidia GeForce GT 555M 3GB.

The only difference at the moment is 1TB of Hard Disk instead of 640GB since they have a promotion for 1TB and some services he doesn't want.

I did tell him to join here but he keeps forgetting...

Could you tell your friend to add my skype if he has one. Otherwise give me his email through PM. You could also tell him that he might get mail from me. I am saying this since is a bit offtopic