Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) And X79 Platform Preview

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for the price, the 8150 at 250 dollars will smoke intel out the water. IF you really want to go dolla per dollar , a dual socket amd opteron 6220 system will severely outperform the intel i73960 for alot cheaper. Thats 16 x 3.5 ghz turbo bulldozer cores against 6 3.3 ghz sandy bridge cores. hmm
 

jprahman

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I was really looking forward to Sandy Bridge-E, but it looks like a mixed bag from the review. The lack of USB 3 and especially PCI-E 3 was really disappointing, especially for an enthusiast class processor and chipset. The dearth of SATA ports was pretty surprising too, everything up to this review had indicated far more.

The extra performance you can get looks pretty nice for stuff like transcoding, but the performance in the majority of applications doesn't justify the extra cost for the i7-3960. I'd rather get a i7-2600K or i5-2500K... or wait for Bulldozer to see how it performs relative to an i5-2500k or i7-2600k.

To be honest, this review almost comes off like an attempt to chill any interest high-end enthusiasts might have for Bulldozer.
 

Wamphryi

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I just got an i7 2600 K and like a previous writer commented I have no regrets either. The 2600 K is such good bang for buck and lots of people seem to be snapping them up.
 

raclimja

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what a massive disappointment, i was hoping for big performance improvement from intel


i guess i will just stick with my i5 2500k and upgrade my aging HD 4870 x2 to something like GTX 680 or HD 7900
 
You say the i7-3820 will be a tough sell, but maybe, like the i7-2600, it will be an excellent non-overclocked part for OEM machines. For that purpose, I think a machine that can run DDR3 1600MHz at without overclocking is a reasonable upgrade over the i7-2600.

There is a market for people who want top-end gaming machines but never want to look inside other than to add more graphics. Based off of Cyberpower, IBuyPower, Alienware, etc.--I bet that market is at least as big as enthusiasts that hand pick their parts.
 
[citation][nom]leeashton[/nom]well said people forget that clock for clock the phenom II out performs the Core i7 but not for brute performance[/citation]I'd like to see where you heard that. Based off of this, it appears that the Phenom II only matches a Core 2 Duo, looses to Nehalem, and gets its butt handed to it by SB: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/processor-architecture-benchmark,2974.html

I love AMD, but the argument can't be made for their performance. They do well at extremely low price points now and Llano on the desktop is great for the extremely light gamers that want some gaming capability (OEM do-it-all machines). But for the enthusiast, or quoting performance, AMD desperately needs Zambezi to do more than I expect is possible.
 

compton

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I'm not really surprised at all. I'm interested in how power efficient X79 is compared to the stellar performance per watt of the 2500K/2600K. If the new SB-E parts idle anywhere near as low as SB does, it will be impressive. The platform itself isn't really as impressive if it does end up launching in this configuration -- but plain ol' Sandy Bridge is already pretty impressive. I'm still blown away by my 2500K and a couple of Intel SSDs, so I can't imaging myself benefiting from X79. I know there are many enthusiasts out there running older X58 setups who are going to upgrade to X79 no matter what, but I pick and choose my battles. The value of 1155 K parts and P/Z chipsets is hard to overcome.

Ivy Bridge could be where it's at.
 

SteelCity1981

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So this is it from Intel? Seems like a lot of hype for nothing. The Core Core 17 2600x isn't that far behind in the benchmarks overall thn the Core i7 3960x. not to mention the Core i7 3960x barely edges out the Core i7 990x in the vast majority of the benchmarks that it replaced.
 

tomskent

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i7-3960X is a nice bump in performance for highly threaded apps, that said, 95% of the consumers wont need it. A 2500k is more then enough, especially when overclocked.
Cant wait to see what Bulldozer can do, what Ivy Bridge can do, what the new gen video cards can do. An exciting next several months!

 

Agges

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Fingers crossed that this brings a price drop on the LGA 1366 line..

Okay, very optimistic of looking at the past but one can dream.
 

agnickolov

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The 3.6GHz clock on 3820 is of most interest to me for a software development workstation. That's 200MHz over 2600 at the same price and the clock matters the most for compilation. Of course the platform cost will be higher... The 6 threads of 3930K are interesting as well - 6 files compiling in parallel instead of 4, though that makes no difference for still single-threaded linking. The biggest problem I expect is there will be no business-friendly offerings based on X79 - they will all center on Xeons.
 

rantoc

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Compared to the 2600k im not impressed, hopefully its due to cpu throtteling due to temp or intel wont sell to many of thoose considering ivy is around the corner!
 
well, im still running on a Q6600, and i was planing to wait for the bulldozer/sandy-E to see if i upgrade one way or another.

So far, it looks like its either a 2500-k or the bulldozer. Lets wait and see.

(i do hope that if the sandy-e comes out, the 2500-k will drop a bit ;D-
 

nikkidpartypooper

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I love Intel,but I can't afford to buy the sandy-E chipset at all. Looks like I gotta hope for the AMD's bulldozer line of processors to really fail the test and if they do,then I will be able to buy real dirt cheap amd hardware parts to make a new pc.
 
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