Testing methodology
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CPU comparisons |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP | |||||||||||
| Disk drive(s) | Corsair V128 SSD | |||||||||||
| Chassis | Corsair Obsidian Series 700D | |||||||||||
| Operating system | Windows 7 Ultimate, SP1, 64-bit | |||||||||||
Benchmarks |
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| 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.
