Final thoughts and rating
The introduction of the Core i7-3820 brings Intel's best consumer platform within the financial reach of a substantially greater number of enthusiasts. Set to retail at around £250 and harnessing many of the performance-centric features of the more expensive Core i7-3930K/3960X, this release should be trumpeted with gay abandon, right?
The quad-core, eight-thread Core i7-3820 ticks a lot of the right mainstream boxes, absolutely, but Intel has aced this particular paper before. For example, the equivalently-priced Core i7-2700K can generally match the performance of this new SNB-E chip, at stock speeds and when overclocked, while consuming less power. What's more, the 2700K - and the same applies to 2600K - also offers 'free' graphics if you choose a particular motherboard, which in turn is fundamentally cheaper than the £175 that needs shelling out for a basic X79.
You see, bringing SNB-E to the mainstream pits it against the best-engineered chips of recent years, and whilst the Core i7-3820 is very good, Core i7-2600K/2700K are simply excellent. And before I'm fully sated with explaining just what the 3820 is up against, Intel is going to release the improved version of 2600K/2700K in a few months, imbued with Ivy Bridge trickery, that'll be a drop-in upgrade on most present 6-series boards.
So what does this all mean for Core i7-3820? You need to think of it more as a platform than an isolated CPU, for starters. If your apps love memory bandwidth then the quad-channel memory architecture can be a boon. X79 is the only Intel chipset to provide PCIe 3.0 certification and enough lanes to run four-way graphics with ease, and upgrading to the six-core monster processors requires nothing more than a 10-minute chip-switching exercise and abject pleading with your bank manager.
The cheapest SNB-E chip, the £250 Core i7-3820, is set to officially launch in a few weeks - mid-February being a good bet. Think of it merely as a standalone chip and Intel's mainstream Sandy Bridge processors are better. Think of it as a platform and it begins to make sense to a select band of enthusiasts. And I guess that's all Intel really wants it to do.
The Good
SNB-E for £250
Overclocks well
Good power-draw numbers for high-end platform
The Bad
Sandy Bridge LGA1155 provides super-stern competition
Mainstream Ivy Bridge on the horizon
HEXUS Rating
Intel Core i7-3820 CPU (LGA2011)
HEXUS Awards
Intel Core i7-3820 CPU (LGA2011)
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBC.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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