REVIEW: Intel Core i7-3960X and Intel X79 DX79SI

Benchmarking

For benchmarks we will be taking a look at a broad array of benchmarks running on this system at stock clocks as well as various overclocked settings to show you guys what kind of performance you can expect out of SNB-E (Sandy Bridge-E) and X79. We will also do our best to compare against the previous generation of Sandy Bridge and AMD's latest and greatest offering (FX-8150) when possible.

SiSoft Sandra 2012
We ran a battery of tests in SiSoft's brand new 2012 Sandra benchmark so that you guys could get an idea of what kind of performance the Core i7 3960X is capable of and how it stacks up against the older Intel and AMD processors out there. Because of the relative newness of Sandra 2012 and the time constraints that we had, we didn't get a chance to benchmark it against AMD's Bulldozer or the older Intel processors, but here are some screen shots of our results compared against what SiSoft benched on Sandra 2012.

Sandra 2012 - Processor Arithmetic


In this test we saw that the Core i7 3960X scored pretty well and scored just as well as or better than the 2600K. In the Dhrystone test, the Core i7 3960X scored 2.21GIPs (152.49-150.28) - lower than the 2600K. Even though this is a sexa-core versus a quad-core, bear in mind that Core i7-3960X is clocked 100MHz lower and also has a much lower Turbo speed. In the Whetstone test, though, the Core i7-3960X definitely took the cake by scoring 119.45 GFLOPS over the Core i7 2600K's 96.52GFLOPs signifying an improvement of approximately 20%.

Sandra 2012 - Multimedia


In the Multimedia test, Sandra 2012 tests the Multi-Media Float in (MPix/s) and Multi-Media Integer in (MPix/s). In this test, the Core i7-3960X obliterates everything in sight by quite a large margin. In the Integer test the Core i7-3960X scores 296.52 MPix/s while the 2600K only scores 239.63, a difference of 20% (once again). In the Float test we saw the margin widen between the i7-2600K and Core i7-3960X even more with the Core i7-3960X scoring 405.79 MPix/s and the Core i7 2600K scoring 306.68 MPix/s. This is a huge improvement of about 33%.

Sandra 2012 - Multi-Core Efficiency


The Multi-Core Efficiency test once again combines two tests, but in this case it combines Inter-Core Bandwidth with Inter-Core Latency. Both seem to be pretty good measurements of what could be considered to be a proper definition of multi-core efficiency. In the Inter-Core Bandwidth test we see the Core i7-3960X blast past all the other processors including the Core i7-2600K. The Core i7-3960X shows 35.64GB/s of inter-core bandwith over the Core i7-2600K's 24.87 which represents nearly a 50% increase in terms of inter-core bandwidth. This can be directly attributed to the increase in the L3 shared cache to 15MB.

In the Inter-Core latency test, the i7-3960X scores worse than the i7-2600K, expectedly so considering that there are 6 cores to deal with rather than 4 in the i7-2600K which should expectedly increase the latency.

Sandra 2012 - Memory Bandwidth


In the memory bandwidth test, we really don't expect anything other than a complete blow out from the Core i7-3960X simply because of the quad-channel capability of the X79/SNB-E platform and the clock speeds that it is capable of. In the integer memory bandwidth test the X79/SNB-E destroys the X58/990X platform in quite a big way. The X58 chipset is triple channel which is already better than the original Sandy Bridge's dual channel.

As you can see in the graph above, the Core i7-3960X combined with the X79 score 37.48 GB/s in memory bandwidth which is nearly a 50% improvement upon a similarly clocked (RAM) X58 setup. If you look at the Sandy Bridge (green) graph, you will notice that it only scores 23.93GB/s and that is while the RAM is clocked at 2133MHz unlike the X79 and X58 which are both at 1600MHz. We will detail the 32GB performance of X79 in another later review as we didn't have enough time to properly explore the benefits of going from single quad-channel to dual quad-channel setups.