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Intel Ivy Bridge-E 4960X CPU Review (LN2 inside)

CPU by leeghoofd @ 2013-09-09

After upgrading the performance of the mainstream platform by the Haswell family, the Intel engineers also devoted time to perform an overhaul on their high end platform, LGA 2011. The Sandy Bridge-E was a worthy successor of the old and aged LGA1366. Intel waited close to two years for manufacturing the new high end flagship CPU model available to the masses, this in contradiction with the launch schedule on some previously leaked roadmaps. As with the transition from Sandy to Ivy Bridge on the LGA1155 socket, we spot many similarities with the new Ivy Bridge-E. A die shrink to the 22nm process and alike architectural improvements should boost the performance and efficiency. Time to unravel the brand new Intel flagship LGA2011 CPU: the i7-4960X CPU.

Stock 2D Results Part I

Let's start off the stock tests. Keep in mind that the CPUs are all running at max possible Turbo speeds. First up the quick single threaded 1M SuperPi test. The outcome depending on pure MHz and efficiency of the instructions per Clock, all the rest (DRAM timings,...) hardly matters. No wonder the new i7-4960X is the top contender here with the cores running at 4000MHz. The Haswell generation is right on its heels, but the extra clocks make the difference here. In the Wprime32 multithreaded test the i7-4960X is again untouchable. Let's see what happens if we launch the longer test versions of these applications.

SuperPi 32M gets a huge boost versus the Sandy-Bridge E versions. Take note that these are not the sole outcome of the 100MHz higher core clock (4GHz versus 3.9GHz for the 3960X). In fact we spot a similar pattern, as when the transfer was done from Sandy to Ivy Bridge (LGA1155). A far higher efficiency was achieved clock per clock by the new design, depending on the benchmark up to 15% improvements were noticeable. In SuperPi 32M the Haswell generation is superior thanks to superfast Cache and Ultra low latencies.

The Quad Channel DRAM configuration delivers insane numbers in the AIDA 64 Bandwidth test. However as mentioned before it's not all about bandwidth. The Quad channel DRAM setup on the X79 motherboards have got higher latencies (60 versus 50-45) versus the Dual channel configurations of the Ivy and Haswell LGA1155/50 motherboards. Spot the nice Copy boost in the AIDA Bandwidth test versus the Sandy Bridge-E processors.

In the X264HD encoding test we spot that the new improvements in design and instruction set again pay off. An 8-9 FPS performance increase versus the predecessors in the Pass1 test and even a 3-4 FPS increase in Pass2 is impressive. Again this outcome is alike with the Sandy versus Ivy Bridge comparison. The 6 cores and 12 Hyperthreaded ones make these LGA 2011 Ivy Bridge-E CPUs insane crunching or rendering monsters. In Cinebench Release 10 we note that there's a solid performance increase in both the single and multi-threaded test versus the slightly lower clocked predecessor.

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