Core i7-3970X Extreme Review: Can It Stomp An Eight-Core Xeon?

[cangelini]

After one year of dominating the enthusiast space, Intel's Core i7-3960X is being replaced. The new Core i7-3970X features higher clock rates, but also imposes a 150 W TDP. Just for kicks, we're putting it up against another 150 W CPU: the Xeon E5-2687W.

Core i7-3970X Extreme Review: Can It Stomp An Eight-Core Xeon? : Read more

 

[amuffin]

100mhz faster than the 3960X, not worth the extra premium.

Same thing goes for the 3960X compared to the 3930K....not worth the extra 100mhz for $400....

 

[jaquith]

Boo on Intel for not enabling all 8-cores especially at that price!

 

[tumetsu]

I've recently started facepalming every time I see BF3 in CPU benchmarks. "Boy oh boy, this hasn't been confirmed like a hundred times already but the single player is decidedly graphics-bound, so here, have these charts with identical results anyway."

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]Boo on Intel for not enabling all 8-cores especially at that price![/citation]
They don't have much of a choice when it comes to the i7's. With the 32nm Sandy Bridge-E Intel has to make a choice between prioritizing clocks or core count within a 150W TDP, based on the target workload for a particular processor. For Xeon's the choice is easy, more cores. For desktop applications the choice isn't as clear, but I think most users would still benefit more from a higher clocked 6-core than a lower claocked 8-core. That's slowly changing though.

Intel also doesn't want a situation where their LGA 1155 processors outperform their $1000 extreme edition in lightly threaded workloads, which is yet another reason to favor 6-core for now.

I'd personally like to see an 8-core i7, even if it means lower clocks, but I don't think that'll happen until Ivy Bridge-E. At 22nm Intel probably won't have to make a choice, we'll get the best of both worlds.

 

[samuelspark]

So much money...

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]Boo on Intel for not enabling all 8-cores especially at that price![/citation]
why would they....they don't need to do it at this time....amd's top cpu is still very slow when compared with even intels mid rannge cpus

 

[unknown9122]

Why do people still benchmark on itunes 10.4? 10.7 is out... as for the 8 cores as said above^, there is no need to have more than 6. Because if it had 8, then xeons would not sell to pros.

 

[BoredErica]

Why are we not manually overclocking this expensive CPU? Why do we do benchmarks against stock ig 2500k?

 

[A Bad Day]

You also forgot something when comparing against Xeon:

Stability test.

Run the i7 for one month under Prime95. It will crash. Run the Xeon for one month under Prime95. If it crashes, then you got a defective Xeon because they're not suppose to crash under 24/7 workload.

 

[anthonyorr]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]why would they....they don't need to do it at this time....amd's top cpu is still very slow when compared with even intels mid rannge cpus[/citation]

Why would you even include the 8350? It is 1/6th the price of this CPU. I couldn't imagine what a modern AMD desktop CPU would consist of at the $1000+ price range.

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]I'd personally like to see an 8-core i7, even if it means lower clocks, but I don't think that'll happen until Ivy Bridge-E. At 22nm Intel probably won't have to make a choice, we'll get the best of both worlds.[/citation]

Or set the TDP to 195W and add a warning stating that Intel's stock coolers won't be sufficient for the thermal load.

 

[merikafyeah]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]You also forgot something when comparing against Xeon:Stability test.Run the i7 for one month under Prime95. It will crash. Run the Xeon for one month under Prime95. If it crashes, then you got a defective Xeon because they're not suppose to crash under 24/7 workload.[/citation]
The i7 isn't supposed to crash under 24/7 workloads any more than a Xeon is. The footnote to this statement however has everything to do with thermal envelopes. The primary reason why Intel charges $1000 more for a Xeon is because Xeons can operate stably at higher temperatures. This is very, very important because cooling costs lots and lots of money when you need to cool hundreds of server racks and rendering farms all year round and there can't be any downtime. Ever. Because lost time equals lost money. They say every minute of downtime means a million dollars lost, so you pay extra to ensure a sudden heat wave doesn't wipe out your business. (Though some companies could certainly use better flood protection as to not rape their customers for lost profits, but I digress.)

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]anthonyorr[/nom]Why would you even include the 8350? It is 1/6th the price of this CPU. I couldn't imagine what a modern AMD desktop CPU would consist of at the $1000+ price range.[/citation]
lol....here is the answer...a lsow cpu, lol

 

[apache_lives]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]You also forgot something when comparing against Xeon:Stability test.Run the i7 for one month under Prime95. It will crash. Run the Xeon for one month under Prime95. If it crashes, then you got a defective Xeon because they're not suppose to crash under 24/7 workload.[/citation]

Not correct

Your talking about a processor (i7) vs a platform (Xeon, since the Xeon's usually require ECC memory, server boards, usually server OS etc) -- 99.999% of the time crashes/issues are NOT processor related.

Crashes are usually from things like non JEDEC standard spec ram, poorly written SSD firmware, bad drivers and so on - not a processors fault.

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]merikafyeah[/nom](Though some companies could certainly use better flood protection as to not rape their customers for lost profits, but I digress.)[/citation]

I recall seeing a picture of a tiny server room flooded with raw sewage from a busted pipe. The management of the small business attempted to ignore the laws of physics and told the IT that there will be no shutdowns.

I'm pretty sure there was a smell of magic smoke accompanying the sewage odor shortly afterwards.

 

[clonazepam]

Great article.

"Complete Tom's Hardware Suite" Chart... ugh I hate being color blind, must concentrate harder.

The 3DMark 11 benchmark was a "Performance" run I'm guessing. Couldn't find that anywhere.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]You also forgot something when comparing against Xeon:Stability test.Run the i7 for one month under Prime95. It will crash. Run the Xeon for one month under Prime95. If it crashes, then you got a defective Xeon because they're not suppose to crash under 24/7 workload.[/citation]

If the i7 fails, then it's no less faulty than the Xeon. They're the same chips, just with different feature sets.

 

[TheBigTroll]

nah. xeons are binned for lower power consumption and lower heat output compared to the i7 counterparts

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]TheBigTroll[/nom]nah. xeons are binned for lower power consumption and lower heat output compared to the i7 counterparts[/citation]

Same chips still. Binning doesn't change what they're made of. Similar to how the Tahitis in the 7970 GHz Edition are better binned than those in the regular 7970, but they're still the same chips.

 

[TheBigTroll]

true. but they are different in their own way

 

[Guest]

ivy bridge i5 is still the best for gaming, gamers that buy $1000 processors are just plain dumb, plus ivy is way more efficient and you dont have to pay 2-3 times as much for a mobo

 

[BoredErica]

If they are very rich, that's their thing. Don't call it dumb.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

This article made me think of how much the conclusion is based on the benchmarks selected. Instead of the heavy multithreaded tests, you could have added more single threaded ones, and the conclusion would have been resoundingly positive, instead of the meh its now.

 

[Vatharian]

I think intel would surely find gold-binned SKUs capable of K-grade CPU at 8 cores, BUT there would be only few hundred over the year, tops. Not worth the business and marketing costs. Otoh I have i7-2600K capable of stable 5.1-5.2 GHz, and even in some heavily threaded applications it goes head-to-head with 4.1 GHz OCed 3960X. Two additional cores doesn't mean +50% performance, especially when HT is on and we have additional platform-specific overhead (SB-E's IPC factor is little lower than on SB desktop). Thing is, I have to keep it under Koolance CPU-360 and one dedicated 360 radiator to run it 24/7. With this in mind, cost of SB with WC approached that of a SB-E.