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...
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...