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Review: Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition CPU

by Tarinder Sandhu on 14 November 2011, 09:27 3.5

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa72p

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Testing methodology

 

CPU comparisons

CPU Approx.
pricing
Clock speed Cores threads Motherboard Chipset Memory Memory timings
Intel Core i7 3960X EE £770 3.30GHz 6/12 ASUS Sabertooth X79 X79 DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 990X EE £770 3.46GHz 6/12 ASUS P6X58D-E X58 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 980X EE £430? 3.33GHz 6/12 ASUS P6X58D-E X58 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 970 £350? 3.20GHz 6/12 ASUS P6X58D-E X58 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 950 £180 3.06GHz 4/8 ASUS P6X58D-E X58 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 2700K £260 3.50GHz 4/8 ASUS P8P67 PRO P67 DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 2600K £230 3.40GHz 4/8 ASUS P8P67 PRO P67 DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i5 2500K £160 3.30GHz 4/4 ASUS P8P67 PRO P67 DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i5 650 £120 3.00GHz 2/4 Gigabyte H55M H55 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i7 870 £150 3.60GHz 4/8 ASUS P7P55D P55 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
Intel Core i5 750 £120 2.67GHz 4/4 ASUS P7P55D P55 DDR3 1,333 9-9-9-24-2T
AMD FX-8150 £190 3.60GHz 8/8 ASUS Crosshair V Formula 990FX DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T £140 3.30GHz 6/6 ASUS Crosshair V Formula 990FX DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T £120 2.80GHz 6/6 ASUS Crosshair IV Formula 890FX DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
AMD Phenom II X4 980BE £130 3.70GHz 4/4 ASUS Crosshair IV Formula 890FX DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
AMD Phenom II X4 975BE £120 3.60GHz 4/4 ASUS Crosshair IV Formula 890FX DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
AMD Athlon II X4 645 £80 3.10GHz 4/4 ASUS Crosshair IV Formula 890FX DDR3 1,600 9-9-9-24-2T
*Suggested retail price. Some parts may be unavailable now.

Common components

Discrete GPU AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB (Cat 11.5)
Power Supply Corsair HX1000W
RAM 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
16GB G.Skill DDR3 for SNB-E
Monitor Dell 30in 3007WFP
Disk drive(s) Corsair V128 SSD
Chassis Corsair Obsidian Series 700D
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate, SP1, 64-bit

Benchmarks

CPU  
AIDA64 Useful application to test memory bandwidth
HEXUS.PiFast Using CPU power to crunch to constant to 10m places - light load
iTunes MP3 Encodes WAV files into 192kb/s MP3 - light load
CINEBENCH R11.5 Multi-CPU render - heavy load
TrueCrypt 7.0a Encryption benchmark - heavy load
wPrime 2.0.4 Calculate 1024M prime numbers - heavy load
GPU  
3Mark Vantage DX10 benchmark that stresses the GPU and CPU
COD: BO 30-second FRAPS through a frenetic section, 768p
StarCraft II 90-second FRAPS through a typical battle, 720p
Power-draw Run at idle and wPrime load (2D)

Notes

We've updated the comparison table to include a Sandy Bridge Core i7 2700K, which is nothing more than a minor clock-bump over the Core i7 2600K.

A Zalman CNPS11X Performa cooler was used during testing. It's a budget heatsink but plenty good enough to run our set of benchmarks.

A street price of $990 (£770) means there's only one real comparison to be had here, and that's Core i7 3960X vs. last-gen Core i7 990X. Let's get on with this rumble.