Intel Core i7-3960X - Sandy Bridge E Processor Review @ [H]

Ouch.

My "old" X58 I7 rig still does noicely.

Hopefully the "K" variant will be a decent value.
 
*sigh*

And again, none of the motherboards makers except MSI make a board with a slot layout that suits what I need to do.

I was hoping to go with ASUS this time, but I guess that won't be happening.

The ASUS P9X79 Pro looked promising, until I read that sticking any card in one of the white slots, forces the second blue x16 slot down to x8.

I have two of those Radeon 6970 three slot ASUS Direct CU II monsters and I also need a free x1 slot for my SB Titanium HD card.

The only motherboard I have found that these three cards with fit AND won't drop me down from x16-x16 to x16-x8 is the MSI X79A-GD45, and it has the cheapo Realtek 8111E network chipset on it, instead of the better Intel chip found on the higher end models.

The Big Bang XPower X79 might work, but I can't find any documentation on how its PCIe slots work yet...

That, and it will likely cost more than the entire last computer I built just for the motherboard, and it has those childish gun part heatsinks...

*sigh*
 
Zarathustra[H];1038019419 said:
I have two of those Radeon 6970 three slot ASUS Direct CU II monsters and I also need a free x1 slot for my SB Titanium HD card.
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Even do it a sorta nice card, its what you would say, a standard issue card.

I am running 3x 5870 2GB Matrix water cooled single slot cards, and water cooling beats any 3 slot air cooled card.

Just my 2 cents.
 
But let me say this, while Intel has been beating the drum about this being the "Ultimate Desktop Processor for Gamers," I think that is a lot of horse shit.
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LOL :D Quota of the year for me.

Thank you for the review Kyle and for telling it like it is!
 
Zarathustra[H];1038019260 said:
This is not news, and IMHO not a big deal. Motherboard manufacturers will integrate USB3 chips onto the boards anyway.

And SATA ports? I don't care either.

What does matter to me are PCIe lanes.
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Third party solutions for USB and SATA 6 are available but not as good as native. This is their enthusiast platform. We pay high bucks for the boards and procs. The x79 "platform" is a failing. They need to get their shit together, and get that stuff on the chipset. I have no motivation moving from X58 right now.
 
ianken said:
Ouch.

My "old" X58 I7 rig still does noicely.

Hopefully the "K" variant will be a decent value.
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Yes it does but how can anyone deny that the 2500K beats it all day long for overall performance and value. The power usage of the 2500k easily beats all of them.


What "K" variant is that?
 
Great review.

I found this sentence very valuable. " Now how you would exactly use all this bandwidth in normal desktop operations is beyond me, but it surely will become an e-peen synthetic benchmark to be held out in front of you."

Overall the poor power usage of this chip kills any interest I had for it. Looks like even if 2 cores were disabled the power usage would still be much higher than 2500k.


SB-E 32nm isn't for me. Bring on the 22n CPUs.
 
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When they make Xeons out of these, they will be the chip of choice for VMWare farms. That memory bandwidth and processing power is what they need. That pipe is consumed quickly when you load up working servers.
 
Sure this has been quoted many times already, so here it is again because it gave me a quite a good chuckle...

"But let me say this, while Intel has been beating the drum about this being the "Ultimate Desktop Processor for Gamers," I think that is a lot of horse shit." :p

Great stuff!
 
This review really caught me off guard, i was expecting to read this is the best thing since sliced bread.
 
I think I, like most other 1155 users, can safely say I am all the more pleased with my purchase over SB-E and BD. Unfortunately for us enthusiasts, the situation which made 1366 great no longer exists in regards to 2011 leaving it as a pricy solution with questionable benefits for most of us. Thanks for the great review though and I think the assumption is right in that one of the few shining usages for 2011 will be triple/quad GPUs and triple monitors.
 
Just stopped by my local Minneapolis Microcenter. They have the 3960x for $1149 and the 3930K for $649. Had about 10 of each in the CPU case.
 
Sharpe said:
While the cheaper K6III's and Athlons were beating more expensive P3's and P4's in every performance arena, fanboys were waving that tattered, charred and threadbare Intel flag high. Intel shows its appreciation to them with products like this 3960X.

It's a beast!


And people wonder why we needed AMD while the PC's performance was still relevant. It's not anymore, of course.

Goodbye AMD and goodbye processor wars -- a time when having the fastest processor actually meant something other than that you're either very wealthy or a total spendthrift*.

Consoles like the Xbox are far better than the PC for gaming anyway. The PC is a dinosaur on the verge of extinction and everyone knows it; deep down, even the computer geeks (enthusiasts) do.

Intel is right: the Xbox hasn't needed to upgrade its CPU in (longer than) four years so why should you need to upgrade your PC's processor?

So, keep rallying against AMD. Fuck them! Bulldozer is total shit and it's blatantly, in-your-face obvious to everyone everywhere. Let the PC die already. Let's hurry up and usher in this new era of mobile devices and tablets and gaming consoles as fast as possible. I mean, does anyone actually enjoy building computers anymore?! Didn't think so! :D Rhetorical question, I know!

If you were an Intel fanboy during the processor wars of the very late 90's and early 2000's, especially during that window** when AMD was clearly making better cpu's than Intel in every way -- performance, price, and stability -- then good for you! You picked the winner!
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If you think consoles can match pcs for gaming you obviously have an utterly shite pc.
 
Yep an overclocked 2500K is the best option for gamers who don't want to spend a lot.

Honestly, I'm still perfectly happy with my first rev i7 920 @ 3.96GHz.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038019260 said:
This is not news, and IMHO not a big deal. Motherboard manufacturers will integrate USB3 chips onto the boards anyway.

That, and maybe I'm just an unusual user, but I don't have a single USB 3.0 device. In fact, other than for my mouse, I barely use anything USB at all.
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Keyboard, thumb drive, smartphone? Lots of uses for USB.
 
wolfman3k5 said:
I guess that Intel figured that Enthusiasts are just morons that need to throw money at something...
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Why am I a moron for wanting a six core cpu with lots of memory in my desktop for rendering?

I'm still on a core 2 6850 - I skipped i7 and sandybridge but am now looking for a big step up. I want 6 cores, a current sb setup is not going to give me a 6 core ivybridge next year, an sb-e setup might give me a 6 or possibly even an 8 core ivybridge-e in the future, if it doesn't then I'll still have a 6 core sandybridge.

There are plenty here with top end GPU's that run to more than the 3930, let alone those running more than one and who will change them quite happily when the next card comes out and the people here talking about how expensive or how much a waste the sb-e is wouldn't bat an eyelid.

Yes, this review is about the 3960 but the 3930 is in a different price bracket altogether and within the bracket of the high end 4 core i7's from not too long ago. Similarly there are those bemoaning the tdp of these chips yet they are the same as those i7's they no doubt jumped at without a second thought and are now 'protecting' from the threat of the big, bad expensive and power hungry sb-e snatching at their e-peen crown...

There's lots of talk here that these chips are just for bragging rights but the tone from many saying that just comes across as almost a relief, a justification to themselves that they don't have to worry that their current setup is going to be eclipsed, that their current e-peen is in danger of being damaged.

Sb-e is and was always going to be sb with the option of extra cores and more memory support. On that it has delivered, why all the seeming hate?

If you don't want it, fine, but give over on all the negatives when, in reality, if they were cheaper then you know as well as me you'd swap out your 4 core for a 6 in a heartbeat whether you used those extra two cores or not. Some will buy just for the bragging rights without doubt but it seems there are plenty here with that exact reason at the forefront of their negativity but just without the cash to carry it out.

And I listen to Toms because I want more than one opinion.
 
Ultima99 said:
Keyboard, thumb drive, smartphone? Lots of uses for USB.
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Keyboard hardly taxes usb 1 let alone usb 2, as for usb 3...
Smartphone data transfer is not going to be much different between usb 2 and usb 3 even if there were any phones with usb 3 support. Same for usb memory sticks given the relatively small size.

Usb 3 only really comes into advantage with an external usb drive.
 
Magic Man said:
There's lots of talk here that these chips are just for bragging rights but the tone from many saying that just comes across as almost a relief, a justification to themselves that they don't have to worry that their current setup is going to be eclipsed, that their current e-peen is in danger of being damaged.

Sb-e is and was always going to be sb with the option of extra cores and more memory support. On that it has delivered, why all the seeming hate?
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I too find this a bit hilarious. SB adopters were absolutely scathing in their criticism of anyone (like myself) who decided the gains coming from Nehalem were too insignificant to justify the cost. Now, these same people balk at the very idea of SB-E, something that clearly outclasses their precious new setup.

Vega will grab one because he can use it. The wanna-be's will keep on trashing SB-E.

Too much epeen and emotion surrounds this sort of stuff.
 
Magic Man said:
And I listen to Toms because I want more than one opinion.
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Think there are better opinions to listen to.
http://www.extremetech.com/
http://www.anandtech.com/
http://www.pcper.com/
http://www.techpowerup.com/
http://www.techreport.com/

I use to be a fan of THG, till Tom starting to sell his journalistic soul in exchange for advertizing money.
http://semiaccurate.com/ and http://fudzilla.com/ have even a lot more credit with me then THG.

I moved THG years ago to the secondary folder of tech links i only look up if i really need something.
The only thing i use THG for is there video en CPU charts.
 
Blacklash said:
Yep an overclocked 2500K is the best option for gamers who don't want to spend a lot.

Honestly, I'm still perfectly happy with my first rev i7 920 @ 3.96GHz.
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I hear ya. I'm happy with my i7 920 C0 @ 3.7GHz. I mean. I want something faster and I want something new but I just don't know what is worth getting. Even if I get a i7 2600K/2700K, an Asus Maximus IV-Z and 16GB of RAM. Is the $900 really a worth while upgrade over my present system.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038019260 said:
This is not news, and IMHO not a big deal. Motherboard manufacturers will integrate USB3 chips onto the boards anyway.

That, and maybe I'm just an unusual user, but I don't have a single USB 3.0 device. In fact, other than for my mouse, I barely use anything USB at all.

I have an external DVD Burner, but it is hooked up using eSATA,

And SATA ports? I don't care either. I use one eSATA port for the above mentioned DVD burner, and one internal SATA port for my SSD. All of my volume storage is on my NAS.

I don't even care much about the 2 extra cores. I don't think I really need them (in fact they may just hamper my overclock by adding more heat)

What does matter to me are PCIe lanes.

if I could have a $300 LGA2011 2600K with all the PCIe lanes on this board, I would. Unfortunately that's not an option.

If only the 3820 were a "K" part, that would be ideal.
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This may have already been pointed out and I could be wrong, but if Intel does not integrate things like USB 3.0 into the chipset directly, then the chip that a motherboard manufacturer puts onto their board will need to use some of the bandwidth the PCIe lanes would use. So, even though you were not concerned with USB 3.0, it can hurt performance with other parts as the discrete chip will use some of the shared bandwidth. Also, technologies like USB tend not to take off in usage until large chipset manufacturers like Intel officially integrate and support it.
 
jcollett said:
This may have already been pointed out and I could be wrong, but if Intel does not integrate things like USB 3.0 into the chipset directly, then the chip that a motherboard manufacturer puts onto their board will need to use some of the bandwidth the PCIe lanes would use. So, even though you were not concerned with USB 3.0, it can hurt performance with other parts as the discrete chip will use some of the shared bandwidth. Also, technologies like USB tend not to take off in usage until large chipset manufacturers like Intel officially integrate and support it.
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That's what the 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes coming off of the X79 chipset are for :p

These are not PCIe lanes you'd want to run a video card off of, due to latencies, etc, and are separate from the 40 PCIe 3.0 Lanes connected directly to the CPU.
 
Magic Man said:
Keyboard hardly taxes usb 1 let alone usb 2, as for usb 3...
Smartphone data transfer is not going to be much different between usb 2 and usb 3 even if there were any phones with usb 3 support. Same for usb memory sticks given the relatively small size.

Usb 3 only really comes into advantage with an external usb drive.
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I knew someone would wind up thinking I meant USB3 would revolutionize keyboards as we know it... :rolleyes:
 
Also, I can't help but think that Intel are doing this one wrong.

By introducing Sandy Bridge first, and following it with SB-E I think they are selling a lot of people cheaper CPU's who are later going to be content with them.

When they introduced Bloomfield they got a lot of people on the X58 bandwagon, and then came out with the regular desktop Lynfield parts later.

This probably earned them more money from impatient people who wanted the latest performance increase now, rather than waiting for the regular desktop parts.
 
Salanmon said:
the $1000 X CPUs always seemed to have enormous diminishing returns
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The one recent exception I can think of to this is the 980x. Yes it was expensive but at the time you got two extra cores and slightly higher clock speeds VS the highest non-extreme chip.

If your workload can take advantage of the extra cores $500 extra than an i7-940 (the fastest non-extreme chip at the time) for half as much performance again doesn't sound too bad to me.
 
Marketing it as the best Gaming CPU is fail. But other than that, I think people here are failing to recognize what this CPU is made for. It rapes your shitty 2600K in multi threaded apps, by a lot(look at the review again of those specific benchmarks/apps). Sure a dual Xeon system will rape it, but you can't really do anything other than that with dual Xeons. You are completely fucked if you want to game on those. So this CPU is most likely targeted at those who use multithreaded apps for work while also gaming on the same PC.

Also, who the hell cares about power consumption when the CPU costs $1000? Are you telling me, if you have the money to get it, you would skimp on the PSU and cooling?
 
Magic Man said:
Link to the Asus boards... http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011

No Asus SSD caching on the ROG board...?
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Nice. I just decided to pick up an ASUS P9X79 WS. More money than I've EVER spent on a motherboard before (unless you count my old Shuttle SX58H7 XPC case as a motherboard.)

It looks like it has the right features though. From my research it looks to me like I will be able to get my x16-x16 Crossfire config, and if I don't I guess 16x-8x really isn't a big deal after all though it pains me to not run something to its fullest due to something as silly as a slot layout.
 
i just wanted to say thanks for another great article, this is why i have been following hardocp for the last decade. and i love the little jokes in the articles like, "As we have seen, the 3960X chews through multi-threaded encoding and rendering faster than Herman Cain goes through secretaries." i just want you to know that some of us old schoolers still read the articles instead of going right to the conclusion. laughed my ass off, keep up the great work kyle, steve, and the rest of the crew!
 
Shotglass01 said:
Third party solutions for USB and SATA 6 are available but not as good as native. This is their enthusiast platform. We pay high bucks for the boards and procs. The x79 "platform" is a failing. They need to get their shit together, and get that stuff on the chipset. I have no motivation moving from X58 right now.
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It's Intel. They'll just add some more 6gb/s sata and native USB and sell it as the x79.5 chipset within a couple of months.
 
Based on all that I have read here and elsewhere, SB-E still has some kinks in it to work out. It really may be better to wait until we see a new stepping and motherboard revisions.

But by that time IvyBridge may be upon us and it may be better to go with that instead.

It really seems like Intel is their own worst enemy these days. It would have been better to launch lga 2011 with a Ivy part.
 
Does the CPU cooler mounting setup actually go to the rear of the board or is it setup so the CPU socket is forced to hold all of the cooler's weight like it looks in the pics?
 
cyclone3d said:
Does the CPU cooler mounting setup actually go to the rear of the board or is it setup so the CPU socket is forced to hold all of the cooler's weight like it looks in the pics?
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The socket has a whole backplate structure integrated. It is far from flimsy.
 
Kyle, question for you:

Anand saw a very small idle power bump between the new SB-E chip and SB. Your review shows a 60W difference! He does use 4 DIMMs on his SB system, but that should make the SB system draw more power, not make the SB-E system draw less.

Any ideas as to where the difference is? Maybe the motherboard? (He used an Intel board, you used a high-end Asus board.)
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
Kyle, question for you:

Anand saw a very small idle power bump between the new SB-E chip and SB. Your review shows a 60W difference! He does use 4 DIMMs on his SB system, but that should make the SB system draw more power, not make the SB-E system draw less.

Any ideas as to where the difference is? Maybe the motherboard? (He used an Intel board, you used a high-end Asus board.)
Click to expand...

Just reporting what we saw and I am confident in my numbers.
 
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