New 6-Core Sandy Bridge Extreme i7-3960X

TheRhino wrote on 11/14/2011, 4:28 AM
The new 6-core Sandy Bridge Extreme was reviewed and benchmarked by Overclockers(dot)com today. IMO the interesting points were that it could be overclocked to 4.5ghz like the 2600K and when doing so produced nearly 2X the Cinebench 11.5 score as the stock 2600K. When oveclocked it bested a stock 980X by 40%.

Remember, if you just bought a 2600K on the older socket design, the 3960X will not work - it requires a Socket 2011 which accesses 4 channel memory and has the northbridge built into the chip. (Why it has so many pins...)

They noted that Intel provided room for 8 cores on the new chip design but 2 were unused. Intel claimed that the extra cores increased heat & therefore lowered potential clock speeds. IMO they will likely introduce the 8 core later since no single chip solution can beat this 6-core i7-3960X let-alone an 8-core release.

As I have mentioned in various forums where people have asked what type of system to build, this is it, one based on the Socket 2011 which is considered Intel's new flagship over the dated 1366. As I also noted, it was not a very long wait. Although the new chip will likely run at least $1000 and require a $300 motherboard, in our work time=money & money=time. I would rather buy a new chip than pay overtime...

However, our plan is to wait until the new video cards are released along with a RAID card that utilizes the benefits of the new PCIe 3.0 specs. IMO this should relieve some of the bottlenecks we experience where the CPU is only working at 70%, etc....

EDIT: Today NewEgg has the 6-core i7-3930K for $600 US which should overclock nicely. I don't always buy the fastest chip in the lineup as long as the cheaper ones in the series have the same number of cores and overclock nicely...

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...

Comments

farss wrote on 11/14/2011, 5:11 AM
I was just about to start a thread about this but you've saved me the trouble.
Only thing is these new CPUs are not exactly cheap :(

Bob.
Wolfgang S. wrote on 11/14/2011, 5:32 AM
A great CPU - but with about 980 (3.3 Ghz) Euro not really cheap! :(

With 3.2 Ghz about 700 Euro.... ok.

Compared with the i7 2600K for 300 Euro.

Desktop: PC AMD 3960X, 24x3,8 Mhz * RTX 3080 Ti (12 GB)* Blackmagic Extreme 4K 12G * QNAP Max8 10 Gb Lan * Resolve Studio 18 * Edius X* Blackmagic Pocket 6K/6K Pro, EVA1, FS7

Laptop: ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED * internal HDR preview * i9 12900H with i-GPU Iris XE * 32 GB Ram) * Geforce RTX 3070 TI 8GB * internal HDR preview on the laptop monitor * Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K mini

HDR monitor: ProArt Monitor PA32 UCG-K 1600 nits, Atomos Sumo

Others: Edius NX (Canopus NX)-card in an old XP-System. Edius 4.6 and other systems