Intel Core i7-4960X Preview: Ivy Bridge-E, Benchmarked

[Someone Somewhere]

surface alongside Haswell-based 9-series chipsets

Shouldn't that be Broadwell?

No, that's the Haswell refresh.

Which are what the 9-series chipsets will launch with, correct?

I think most people think of 6-series as Sandy Bridge, and 7-series as Ivy, so why isn't 9-series Broadwell?

 

[cangelini]

Hi to all,

in this review I have found several errors in the analysis. The author says that Core i7 3820 is not enough competitive with core i7 4770 or 3770. This claim is absolutely wrong.
In a real work enviroment using any NLE software like Premiere, Vegas, Edius, ivsEdits etc.working with HD footage (1920x1080) when large amount of data have to be moved in memory (It is not very difficult it is enough to set some PIPs) the i7 3820 Quad channel controller offers exactly the double of performance than dual channel memory i7 Cpus. It is easy to check that in many situations i7 3820 allows to mix double Timeline layers than 3770. The author should know that a quadchannel memory controller allows up to 4 cores can read/write the memory while as it is obvious in a dual channel system only two cores can access to memory. Moreover really not only the cpu cores are affected by memory controller channels also PCI-E DMA accesses can lock some cores to receive data. This means that all 4 cores of corei7 3820 have better probabilities to work on data on most available time while with i7 4770/3770 two cores have to wait while the either 2 cores are accessing to memory. With current Tomshardware benchmarks this huge difference not appears very evident but If they benchmark the same test opening two concurrent sessions the sound will appear completely different.

Some other few words on PCI-E 3. there is a tiny benchmark that measures CPU COPYMEM performance and raw PCI-E transfers speed. We have not fond yet any difference between PCI-E 16x 2.0/2.1/3.0 so many words spent on 8GT/s are only marketing numbers.
http://www.ivs.it/public/ivsEdits_Folder/Setup_ivsEdits_SpeedTester.exe

Plese note : running the test with AMD Catalyst 13.6 Beta2 all RADEON 7xxx GPUS dont are able to switch the clock from Idle to work phase so the result read in 1920x1080 FPS is totally disappointing. AMD is already informed about this iussue.

For someone who can use the bandwidth, fine, go with -3820. But I maintain that the -3930K is a better buy. And if you're in a production environment, running threaded software, why cheap out on the quad-core? I'd rather have the -3770K/-4770K and more modern platform than a -3820/X79.

 

[cangelini]

surface alongside Haswell-based 9-series chipsets

Shouldn't that be Broadwell?

No, that's the Haswell refresh.

Which are what the 9-series chipsets will launch with, correct?

I think most people think of 6-series as Sandy Bridge, and 7-series as Ivy, so why isn't 9-series Broadwell?

Because these guys think they're super clever with their marketing Just this morning I asked myself, "FX-9590 is still Vishera. Why the hell did they increment the model family?" Same goes with OEM Radeon HD 8000-series graphics cards, or shoot, even the Core i7-3000-series Sandy Bridge-E chips that us enthusiasts might be inclined to think of as from the Ivy Bridge generation, not SNB-E.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Yeah, marketing is stupid. I still think SB-E should have been the 2820, 2930K, 2960X, and 2970X. Most irritating is we have HD8000 GPUs based on VLIW5 - sort of outdated, now.

However, given they are likely to launch with Broadwell (give or take a couple of weeks), plus if the whole BGA thing is correct are likely to be largely exclusive to broadwell, I think it's fair to call them Broadwell. Unless you want to call Haswell's chipsets Lynx Point.

 

[Shawna593767]

Heck I just want an I5- 4xxxX with 6 non threaded cores around 300

 

[lp231]

Ahh I missed the good ol days where there is competition. Then these benchmarks will be exciting. Now it's meh...
Still using socket 775, don't see the point of going to IB-E, probably Haswell-E or Skylake

 

[SNA3]

Ahh I missed the good ol days where there is competition. Then these benchmarks will be exciting. Now it's meh...
Still using socket 775, don't see the point of going to IB-E, probably Haswell-E or Skylake

8 , 10 , 12 cores alone is a good reason.

 

[lp231]

Ahh I missed the good ol days where there is competition. Then these benchmarks will be exciting. Now it's meh...
Still using socket 775, don't see the point of going to IB-E, probably Haswell-E or Skylake

8 , 10 , 12 cores alone is a good reason.

While multi-core is one excuse to upgrade, but if the processor isn't a major break through from its predecessors, then
I won't bother on buying it even if that thing has 48 cores. The amount of cores is one thing, but what lies underneath is more important. Just like a car, you can purchase a car just based on horse power or based on the technology and features it comes with it.

 

[SNA3]

Ahh I missed the good ol days where there is competition. Then these benchmarks will be exciting. Now it's meh...
Still using socket 775, don't see the point of going to IB-E, probably Haswell-E or Skylake

8 , 10 , 12 cores alone is a good reason.

While multi-core is one excuse to upgrade, but if the processor isn't a major break through from its predecessors, then
I won't bother on buying it even if that thing has 48 cores. The amount of cores is one thing, but what lies underneath is more important. Just like a car, you can purchase a car just based on horse power or based on the technology and features it comes with it.

Depends on your Application , I am not talking about Gaming here.

have you seen the new Mac pro with 12 cores Ivy-Bridge-e ? I disagree they made it closed machine , BUT , the 12 cores are coming.

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

welcome to the future...

oh and even PS4 is 8 cores , so i guess games will be optimized now for 8 cores as well .

 

[RedJaron]

oh and even PS4 is 8 cores , so i guess games will be optimized now for 8 cores as well .

But since it's an AMD chip, is it a true octa-core, or will it be like Bulldozer? ( eight integer cores sharing resources with four FP cores. ) Methinks the latter.

 

[SNA3]

oh and even PS4 is 8 cores , so i guess games will be optimized now for 8 cores as well .

But since it's an AMD chip, is it a true octa-core, or will it be like Bulldozer? ( eight integer cores sharing resources with four FP cores. ) Methinks the latter.

it is the AMD Jaguar chip ...

I didnot read about it yet.

 

[lp231]

Ahh I missed the good ol days where there is competition. Then these benchmarks will be exciting. Now it's meh...
Still using socket 775, don't see the point of going to IB-E, probably Haswell-E or Skylake

8 , 10 , 12 cores alone is a good reason.

While multi-core is one excuse to upgrade, but if the processor isn't a major break through from its predecessors, then
I won't bother on buying it even if that thing has 48 cores. The amount of cores is one thing, but what lies underneath is more important. Just like a car, you can purchase a car just based on horse power or based on the technology and features it comes with it.

Depends on your Application , I am not talking about Gaming here.

have you seen the new Mac pro with 12 cores Ivy-Bridge-e ? I disagree they made it closed machine , BUT , the 12 cores are coming.

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

welcome to the future...

oh and even PS4 is 8 cores , so i guess games will be optimized now for 8 cores as well .

Games won't go beyond 4 core yet, so to say a PS4 has 8 cores is pointless.
Also IB-E consumer segment are stuck at 6 cores. For 8 cores that's from Xeon land and it's expensive.
The cheapest 8 core SB-E Xeon E5 price isn't appealing and it's slow in terms of clock speed. Want a decent good 8 core? Then make sure you have $2000 for the CPU itself.
Compare to my current 775 to 2011, will there be improvements? Yes
Compare 2011 SB-E to 2011 IB-E? No
Spend hard earn money on microscopic improvements from SB-E to IB-E, even thought I'm still running on 775? No
Spend hard earn money, where a new CPU has exciting new features, not just 10% increase in performance, and more core count? Yes
Also Haswell-E is said to use a new socket 2011, which is not compatible with SB-E and IB-E so I don't see the point on running on a socket with such a short life span.

 

[SNA3]

Ahh I missed the good ol days where there is competition. Then these benchmarks will be exciting. Now it's meh...
Still using socket 775, don't see the point of going to IB-E, probably Haswell-E or Skylake

8 , 10 , 12 cores alone is a good reason.

While multi-core is one excuse to upgrade, but if the processor isn't a major break through from its predecessors, then
I won't bother on buying it even if that thing has 48 cores. The amount of cores is one thing, but what lies underneath is more important. Just like a car, you can purchase a car just based on horse power or based on the technology and features it comes with it.

Depends on your Application , I am not talking about Gaming here.

have you seen the new Mac pro with 12 cores Ivy-Bridge-e ? I disagree they made it closed machine , BUT , the 12 cores are coming.

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

welcome to the future...

oh and even PS4 is 8 cores , so i guess games will be optimized now for 8 cores as well .

Games won't go beyond 4 core yet, so to say a PS4 has 8 cores is pointless.
Also IB-E consumer segment are stuck at 6 cores. For 8 cores that's from Xeon land and it's expensive.
The cheapest 8 core SB-E Xeon E5 price isn't appealing and it's slow in terms of clock speed. Want a decent good 8 core? Then make sure you have $2000 for the CPU itself.
Compare to my current 775 to 2011, will there be improvements? Yes
Compare 2011 SB-E to 2011 IB-E? No
Spend hard earn money on microscopic improvements from SB-E to IB-E, even thought I'm still running on 775? No
Spend hard earn money, where a new CPU has exciting new features, not just 10% increase in performance, and more core count? Yes
Also Haswell-E is said to use a new socket 2011, which is not compatible with SB-E and IB-E so I don't see the point on running on a socket with such a short life span.

we dont know the prices yet . and we dont know PS4 games yet so lets wait and see.

the 8 cores run at low frequency 1.8ghz , and they MUST take advantage of all the cores to bring good performance. remember old ones ran at 3Ghz...

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Apple has nothing to do with the number of cores. They just picked an upcoming IB-EP chip, which will have up to 12 cores. I really want two of those in a dual socket board (48 threads!!!)...

I'd expect that because the X1/PS4 have 8 threads (to avoid the module argument), i7s will start to get an advantage in the next year or two.

 

[icypyro]

I call bullshit on the power consumption numbers.

I call bullshit on your understanding of TDP. TDP is not a measure of power usage.

Also, and this goes out to all AMD fans out there - please stop all the crying. It's just getting old... Another CPU release, another round of crying AMD fans screaming about unfair tests and Intel bias.

There kind of is honestly. They refused to compare the 8350 with the 3570k, which are both in the same price range. Rather, they unfairly compared the 8350 with the 3770k, where the 8350 obviously lost. I'm no AMD fanboy, but there is definitely something fishy going on with some of these benchmarks.

 

[J_E_D_70]

I'd expect that because the X1/PS4 have 8 threads (to avoid the module argument), i7s will start to get an advantage in the next year or two.

Games may start using more threads but it's not going to matter from an i5 perspective. In a head to head comparison across three highly threaded apps (so the 8350 should have had a signifcant advantage - bit tech article i think), the stock 8350 (with 400mhz per core and four core advantage) beat the stock 3570k by an average of 2.5%.

Given the new console cpu's are running at 40% of the 8350's clock speed on the same or very similar architecture, I just don't buy that anyone with an i5 in the 3ghz range will *ever* fall behind this (last?) generation of consoles.

 

[Lasch24]

If there is no 4930K to replace the 3930K, the Ivy Bridge-E offerings will have about as much sense as buying a GTX Titan, when you can have a 780 for a shitton cheaper..

 

[gsxrme]

and I'll still hold onto my 2600K @ 5.1GHz / 16GB 2200Mhz ram I guess... Every release makes me more and more proud of SandyBridge and what a let down Ivy and Haswell have been.

 

[Shawna593767]

Heck I just want an I5- 4xxxX with 6 non threaded cores around 300

 

[wdmfiber]

Solder... not thermal paste, no need to ask ppl (there wasn't a price war in the extreme high end, for $$ you get the best manufacturing). Sandy Bridge i7/i5's were priced too inexpensively. And after the war was over, they had to cheap out(thermal paste) or raise prices. But really... was there even a need to run AMD into the ground that hard?

Anyway, the TDP is also too high for the bird poop.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Core-i-74960X,23270.html

 

[Someone Somewhere]

I doubt that it was the extra cents per chip that caused the thermal paste; I expect it's artificially limiting the thermal headroom to stop it encroaching on the SB-E market.

 

[PhoneyVirus]

If your building a new system with X79 go for Core i7 4960X if you already have the Core i7 3970X stick with it.

In that context, spending $350 on a -4770K and another $250 on an LGA 1150-capable motherboard just to keep up with the Kardashians doesn’t sound so hot.

Yes I'm one of them and it will be with ASUSTek ROG Maximums 6 Hero and the Core i7 4770K but coming from a Duo Core E8400 in a ASUS P5Q Pro.

On the plus side of things I think you need some time off or just stop writing about Processor reviews Chris Angelini because I can see it in your words.

Thanks for the Overview

 

[PhoneyVirus]

If your building a new system with X79 go for Core i7 4960X if you already have the Core i7 3970X stick with it.

In that context, spending $350 on a -4770K and another $250 on an LGA 1150-capable motherboard just to keep up with the Kardashians doesn’t sound so hot.

Yes I'm one of them and it will be with ASUSTek ROG Maximums 6 Hero and the Core i7 4770K but coming from a Duo Core E8400 in a ASUS P5Q Pro.

On the plus side of things I think you need some time off or just stop writing about Processor reviews Chris Angelini because I can see it in your words.

Thanks for the Overview

 

[Heavensrevenge]

If their not testing with Quad Channel RAM during tests their not showing anything here at all.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

If their not testing with Quad Channel RAM during tests their not showing anything here at all.

Memory G.Skill 16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600, F3-12800CL9Q2-32GBZL @ DDR3-1600 at 1.5 V

That was on the test setup page.