Published in PC Hardware

Core i7 3960 is up to 36 percent better than i7 990X

by on14 October 2011



Much better in memory tests


Intel has done some basic testing and has included some scores of its soon-to-launch Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition six-core Sandy Bridge E. It’s a mouthful, but so is the spec sheet.

The processor is clocked at 3.3GHz with six cores and twelve threads, 15MB of cache, and it was tested against the current flagship Core i7 990X Extreme Edition, clocked at 3.46GHz, with 12MB cache and six hyperthreaded cores.

In Cinebench 11.5 the Core i7 3960X scores some 13 percent better than i7 990X. In Pov Ray 3.7 it scores 12 percent better compared to i7 990X while in ProShow Gold 4.5, slide show creation task it scores 15 percent better.

The best case scenario shows up in 3Dmark 11 Physics, where Intel's new high end Core i7 3960X scores 36 percent better. This is at the same time the best score that we've seen.

On average you can expect that the new Extreme edition Core i7 3960X will end up about 15 percent faster. In memory benchmarks it eats 990X alive as it has much better memory controller and in Sandy 2011B it can score 111 percent better score in memory bandwidth performance test and in multimedia performance FP subtest it scores 92 percent better scores due to AVX influence on performance.

You can take AMD FX numbers and compare them with these percentage scores to get the better picture what Intel has to launch.

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