# Intel Releases Core i7 ''Sandy Bridge-E'' Processors



## btarunr (Nov 14, 2011)

Intel today released its Core i7-3000 series processor family, codenamed "Sandy Bridge-E". These new processors, along with the new Intel X79 chipset, make up for an entirely new platform. The processors are an upscale of the Sandy Bridge architecture found on chips in the LGA1155 package. The Sandy Bridge-E silicon measures 20.8 x 20.9 mm, with a humungous transistor count of 2.27 billion. In its Core i7-3000 configuration, the silicon has up to 6 cores, up to 15 MB of L3 cache, four DDR3 memory channels, and 40 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes ("some" devices "may" support Gen 3.0, Intel's words). 

Sandy Bridge-E has the same instruction set as Sandy Bridge, which includes SSE up to version 4.2, AVX, AES, and features Turbo Boost 2.0, HyperThreading. It's the memory controller that's complete upscale. It features four independent 64-bit paths to DDR3 DIMMs, making it a quad-channel DDR3 IMC. DDR3-1600 MHz is natively supported. There are three models, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition leads the pack with a clock speed of 3.30 GHz, 3.90 GHz top Turbo Boost speed, and 15 MB of L3 cache. It has 6 cores and 12 threads with HTT enabled. This chip has all its multipliers unlocked and is geared for overclocking. It is priced at US $990 in 1000 unit tray quantities, though retailers might draw a decent margin for the boxed parts. 



 

 

 




The next best chip in the series is Core i7-3930K. With clock speeds of 3.20 GHz and 3.80 GHz (Turbo), this chip has a slightly smaller L3 cache size of 12 MB, though it is still unlocked and geared for overclocking. Like the i7-3960X, this is a 6 core / 12 thread chip. This chip commands a price of $555. Touted to be the most affordable model, the Core i7-3820 is a quad-core part drawn out of disabling two cores (there's no evidence so far that they can be unlocked). With HTT enabled, this chip offers 8 threads. Its L3 cache is further reduced, to 10 MB (still higher than any preceding Core i7 quad-core model). Unfortunately, this chip is "partially unlocked", meaning that its base clock multiplier is locked, though you can still effectively overclock it by tinkering with the base clock. What's even more depressing is that this chip won't be available until Q1 2012. It is supposed to be priced in the $299~$399 range. This means that the only people building Sandy Bridge-E desktops this Christmas will be the ones with at least $600 to spare for a processor.

Moving on to the platform itself, the processor is built on the new LGA2011 package, it's the largest CPU package by dimensions, in recent times. Over its 2011 pins, the processor gives out four DDR3 memory channels and 40 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes, a DMI 4 GB/s connection to the X79 chipset, and a large number of pins handling power. The X79 chipset itself doesn't differ much from the P67 chipset in terms of the kind of connectivity it offers, except support for Intel Smart Response SSD-caching technology.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## mcloughj (Nov 14, 2011)

Expensive. No surprise there but I think a 2600K (or 2500) is still the way to go for most gamers.


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## btarunr (Nov 14, 2011)

mcloughj said:


> Expensive. No surprise there but I think a 2600K (or 2500) is still the way to go for most gamers.



Yup. Not just gamers, but pretty much anyone who doesn't encode videos for a living.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

NOOOOOOOOOOOO MY QUADDDDDDDDDD 

Damn I was looking forward to X79... Guess I'll have to wait? Damn this sucks ass

But prices are pretty good so far


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## buggalugs (Nov 14, 2011)

Yep, major disappointment.

Anand has a review up

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...dy-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive

Fuck you Intel


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## qubit (Nov 14, 2011)

I'm mighty disappointed with this product - same gaming performance as SB. This is what happens when Intel don't have any head to head competition. :shadedshu

I made more noises about it here.


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## btarunr (Nov 14, 2011)

So W1zzard was bang on about the front-page poll options, after all.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

I hope MC offers that i7 3930K for cheap by the time New Year's has past... So far it is priced at first day launch prices lol

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0376493


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## RejZoR (Nov 14, 2011)

Only good thing about it is AVX instruction. Which is also avaiable on 2600K as far as i know. So who cares really.


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## qubit (Nov 14, 2011)

btarunr said:


> So W1zzard was bang on about the front-page poll options, after all.



W1zz is _always_ right. What are you trying to say?!  _qubit dons tinfoil hat_


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## xenocide (Nov 14, 2011)

Performs top of the line in every benchmark--major disappointment.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=65257&vpn=X79A-GD45&manufacture=MSI/MicroStar

http://www.ncix.com/search/?categoryid=0&q=x79

259.99$, 279.99$, 299.99$... This is in CANADA where prices are usually a rip-off... and on LAUNCH DATE. Hope to see 250$ or less in the future


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## xenocide (Nov 14, 2011)

qubit said:


> W1zz is _always_ right. What are you trying to say?!  _qubit dons tinfoil hat_



I especially like that he knew the FX-8150 wouldn't be able to compete head to head with the i7-2600k in the Spring when everyone was convinced it would, and in most cases even best it.


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## Rowsol (Nov 14, 2011)

qubit said:


> I'm mighty disappointed with this product - same gaming performance as SB.



There wasn't any reason to think it would be any better, unless you know of a game that uses 12 threads.

This is intel's bulldozer.


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## qubit (Nov 14, 2011)

Rowsol said:


> There wasn't any reason to think it would be any better, unless you know of a game that uses 12 threads.
> 
> This is intel's bulldozer.



No, it isn't Bulldozer, lol, but it's what happens when you have Bulldozer 'compete' against Intel's current lineup. Check out the other post I linked to, which explains my point in more detail.


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## jimmyxxx (Nov 14, 2011)

> 4*0* PCI-Express 3.0 lanes



Typo there, or am i wrong?


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Nov 14, 2011)

Why is everyone being such a dumbass about this. 1366/1156 had the same gaming performance too. There was never any illusions otherwise. If you're disappointed it's your own fault for having shit for memory.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

jimmyxxx said:


> Typo there, or am i wrong?



No, this is exactly it and known for a while... Like one 16x PCI-E 3.0 and three 8x PCI-E 3.0 or two 16 one 8 etc etc


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## LiveOrDie (Nov 14, 2011)

mcloughj said:


> Expensive. No surprise there but I think a 2600K (or 2500) is still the way to go for most gamers.



Hell no im going to go all out get me one of these i7-3960X  Windows should load support fast , Did any one think intel wanted this chip out this year because its the year 2011


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## Benetanegia (Nov 14, 2011)

I dn't understand the dissapoinment honestly. It's been well known that this was only going to be SB with 6 cores, so single core and light threaded performance was going to be the same. This includes gaming, since no game trully uses much more than 4 cores. Those which do use more threads (few and far between) are more or less taken care of by hyperthreading. Intel can't just create more gaming performance out of nowhere when games don't use more resources.

Heavily multi-threaded apps' performances are were they should be, at a 40%-50% increase over 2600k.

Intel did make a mistake if we look at it from a marketing pov, and they made it several months ago by releasing the midrange part first. Mid-range, in this consolized gaming market and lazy consumer app programers will always take the cake, specially when the difference is the number of cores. That's why everyone always try to release high-end first, even on GPUs which are always used to almost 100% of their potential.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

Live OR Die said:


> Hell no im going to go all out get me one of these i7-3960X  Windows should load support fast , Did any one think intel wanted this chip out this year because its the year 2011



I think that was the whole point when they announced it lol... If it were for 2012 they would have introduced an extra pin somehow lol


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## CDdude55 (Nov 14, 2011)

HardOCP's review is up: http://hardocp.com/article/2011/11/14/intel_core_i73960x_sandy_bridge_e_processor_review/1

Nothing too surprising, in multithreaded applications it takes off, in single-threaded application it's pretty terrible and the older Sandy Bridge come out ahead in a few instances.

When it comes to gaming it looks to be another Bulldozer, it's pretty underwhelming. It performs the same or a little worse in pretty much all titles against older chips.

The only time this chip is a good buy is if you have a lot of money to spend and you do a lot of heavy multithreaded work, that's where it seems to shine.(not surprisingly)


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## claylomax (Nov 14, 2011)

qubit said:


> W1zz is _always_ right. What are you trying to say?!  _qubit dons tinfoil hat_



Still he'll change his test bench: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2450911&postcount=7


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

It was never supposed to see an improvement in games though.... Maybe in multi-GPU though


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 14, 2011)

I think this is more for server/heavy encoder systems


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## nt300 (Nov 14, 2011)

The only. Thing that impresses me is the Quad-Channel support having 64-bit per channel, something Bulldozer was suppose to be but AMD changed there mind last minute. Hope Piledriver gives these a good run to help drive prices down to reality.


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## CDdude55 (Nov 14, 2011)

n-ster said:


> It was never supposed to see an improvement in games though.... Maybe in multi-GPU though



This is true, granted it's the games that aren't using the CPU's resources.


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## Over_Lord (Nov 14, 2011)

n-ster said:


> It was never supposed to see an improvement in games though.... Maybe in multi-GPU though



Minor improvements for 3 way GTX580 SLi(E reads for excessive) over Core i7 990x, mostly same.

Worth 990$?

No


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

thunderising said:


> Minor improvements for 3 way GTX580 SLi(E reads for excessive) over Core i7 990x, mostly same.
> 
> Worth 990$?
> 
> No



Why do you guys seem to always quote the extreme version for the "worth" argument? Is a Bugatti Veyron worth the 1.7 million euros to drop kids off at school? Is an i5 2500K worth it for grandma that never uses the comp and when she does it is to check the time? Is the i7 2600K worth the extra 100$ for gaming? The Extreme version is not for everyone, far from it

K answer me this now... What is a better buy... i7 3930K or i7 970? i7 3960X or the 990X?


kthxsbye


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## btarunr (Nov 14, 2011)

claylomax said:


> Still he'll change his test bench: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2450911&postcount=7



With uncertain PCI-Express 3.0 support on Sandy Bridge-E, I think he is leaning more towards Ivy Bridge.


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## xenocide (Nov 14, 2011)

n-ster said:


> Why do you guys seem to always quote the extreme version for the "worth" argument? Is a Bugatti Veyron worth the 1.7 million euros to drop kids off at school? Is an i5 2500K worth it for grandma that never uses the comp and when she does it is to check the time? Is the i7 2600K worth the extra 100$ for gaming? The Extreme version is not for everyone, far from it



Get out of here with your logic.


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## AsRock (Nov 14, 2011)

Looks crap for games BUT isn't WOW very CPU dependent ( last i heard anyways ) and it does tend to shine there so maybe with games later on next year maybe see it boosting games still ?.

I would love to see a benchmark done with DCS games even more so KA-50 as they lean pretty heavy on the CPU..  Love to see how it does in Arma 2 or even Arma 3 when it's out too.


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## Delta6326 (Nov 14, 2011)

No mention of USB 3.0? it just says usb 2.0 :shadedshu


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## v12dock (Nov 14, 2011)

x86 you are disappointing me


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## kid41212003 (Nov 14, 2011)

The Xeon version supposedly to have 8 cores. True?


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## shb- (Nov 14, 2011)

Anyone who says this is another bulldozer somehow misses that chip still uses SB cores, and its no secret, never been one. So single threaded perf should be the same as 2600 +-, and it is. Noone expected IPC incereses like in bulldys case. I read those reviews and everything is just as i expected. Same as 2600 in single thread, eats competition in multi thread. And it has more pci-e lanes for those who want both multiple gpus and multiple pci-e ssds 

And it is released only 10months after mainstream sb parts. Not 4 years after ; ).


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## bear jesus (Nov 14, 2011)

The only disappointment i see is the 2 disabled cores, other than that it is what it is supposed to be, sandy bridge with more cores and more memory channels.

I wonder when we will see the full fat 8 core chips in desktop form.


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## cool_recep (Nov 14, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> No mention of USB 3.0? it just says usb 2.0 :shadedshu



No problem. With our new Ivy Bridge Platform, you will get USB 3.0 just as low as $999. You will need to buy an Intel Ivy Bridge Processor, Ivy Bridge Chipset Motherboard, New set of RAM modules and probably a new power supply.

Intel.(R) You are our sponsors.(TM)


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## ensabrenoir (Nov 14, 2011)

*?*

Maybe I'm missing something...... it beats everything out there right now....so where is the fail. Sb was a beast 2 begin with this is a tweaked. 6 core sb.  Maybe sb was too good to start with its hard to top now....but please no where close to being a bulldozer. My only reservation is wether to wait for the true x79 chipset


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## MxPhenom 216 (Nov 14, 2011)

buggalugs said:


> Yep, major disappointment.
> 
> Anand has a review up
> 
> ...



at there there is an improvement!

unlike Bulldozer



CDdude55 said:


> This is true, granted it's the games that aren't using the CPU's resources.



Exactly!


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## the54thvoid (Nov 14, 2011)

Hardware heaven tested Skyrim and MW3 and the new cpu showed a significant improvement with a gtx 590 over the old i7 980 and SB i7 2600.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ch-core-i7-3960x-processor-review-skyrim.html

And BFBC2 does well with a 3960

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_core_i7_3960/12.htm

I'm sure someone can pick faults but the only shit thing about this processor is it's price.  Otherwise it is the best multi-purpose cpu out there.  It's just the chipset that is a bit meh..


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## Imhoteps (Nov 14, 2011)

btarunr said:


> Yup. Not just gamers, but pretty much anyone who doesn't encode videos for a living.


I wouldn`t be so radical. Here`s great review in Russian:
http://www.overclockers.ru/lab/4452...stirovanie_i7-3930K_i_i7-3960X_v_2D_i_3D.html.
Those new predators are 50% faster then i7-930. Gaming is not a living.
P.S. Ya - thanks for info.


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## HumanSmoke (Nov 14, 2011)

kid41212003 said:


> The Xeon version supposedly to have 8 cores. True?


Yes, at least some of them.
The Xeon E5 family

Seeing some benchmarks with an EVGA SR-3 and 16 cores/32 threads at it's disposal should be fun.


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## Assimilator (Nov 14, 2011)

Upshot of this: all the cool kids whose parents buy them CPUs will be migrating to SB-E, which hopefully means I can get a second-hand 2500K + board to tide me over until Ivy Bridge. This QX9650 has served well, but it's showing its age.


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## johnnyfiive (Nov 14, 2011)

buggalugs said:


> Yep, major disappointment.
> 
> Anand has a review up
> 
> ...



lol... how is it a disappointment? It beats Sandy Bridge in every benchmark that actually matters for raw CPU performance. Sandy Bridge-e ISN'T a gaming CPU, its a workstation class/level processor, and it does "workstation" types of task's brilliantly. 
The only con is that its not affordable by comparison to Sandy Bridge, but it isn't supposed to be either.

That are so many haters/one-minded people on these forums lately, its really hard to read a thread without getting irritated by ignorance.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

fuck intel, they make you believe they are going to take SB-E and add 2 cores to it and they did exactly that. WHY DO YOU KEEP YOUR PROMISES? WHY AREN'T YOU MORE LIKE BULLDOZER 

ZOMG sucks, major fail like Bulldozer cuz it sucks in gaming except it is the best...

I do not see any contradictions /end sarcasm


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## Crap Daddy (Nov 14, 2011)

As expected. The most powerful desktop CPU in the world and it's little brother came to replace the 990X and it's little brother the i7-970 at the same price point (well a little higher prices since they have no competition whatsoever) offering better performance. That's all folks. The market for enthusiasts (this type of CPUs) is estimated by Intel themselves at roughly 1%.


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## shb- (Nov 14, 2011)

Assimilator said:


> Upshot of this: all the cool kids whose parents buy them CPUs will be migrating to SB-E [..] This QX9650 has served well, but it's showing its age.



So your parents bought you a QX9650 (1k chip too iirc) and then you left home  ?
Joking ofc, cheers.


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## Hayder_Master (Nov 14, 2011)

I7 3690k It's 600$ on newegg and 700$ on amazon.


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## WarraWarra (Nov 14, 2011)

@N-Ster if they did a 2600k and added 2 cores it would not suck this much, we will have to wait for 2nd release of the 38XX/39XX chips to see anything decent.

I think both Intel with Sandy-e and AMD FX-8150 made a crucial jump but f'd their high end users and PL so expect Intel + AMD claiming major loses or low sales for the April tax year just to BS the IRS/TAX guys and then recover from it with Ivy bridge / AMD ?? processor  . 

Accounting wise Intel and AMD wrote the Sandy-e and FX-8150 off as a failure's by June 2011 already. Rigging products to fail is a normal here in the USA and is standard practice, everyone does it.

Ivy-bridge and the socket 1150 is the way to go and by that time / mid March 2012 they would have sorted out major software optimization programing and performance issues so choosing by that time would be ideal purchase time and then you can then get the updated / 2nd release AMD79** and NVidia 6** video cards.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

WarraWarra said:


> @N-Ster if they did a 2600k and added 2 cores it would not suck this much, we will have to wait for 2nd release of the 38XX/39XX chips to see anything decent



Why would you think that? There are some benches that show as much as 60% improvement over a 2600K on multi-threaded synthetic benchmarks


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## cadaveca (Nov 14, 2011)

WarraWarra said:


> @N-Ster if they did a 2600k and added 2 cores it would not suck this much, we will have to wait for 2nd release of the 38XX/39XX chips to see anything decent.



No, a 2600K with two added cores WOULD NOT be faster. Becuase that's exactly what SB-E is...it's actually 2x 2600K, memory controllers and all.

And becuase there are dual memory controllers, not all data may end up in the same ram bank, and this affects single-threaded performance, if only marginally.

I think that again, some people expected too much. SB-E is EXACTLY what I expected. Power consumption, performance..everything is EXACTLY where it was expected to be.

What I want to see is some decent overclocking. And I cannot call it decetn until I play with one myself.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> No, a 2600K with two added cores WOULD NOT be faster. Becuase that's exactly what SB-E is...it's actually 2x 2600K, memory controllers and all.
> 
> And becuase there are dual memory controllers, not all data may end up in the same ram bank, and this affects single-threaded performance, if only marginally.
> 
> ...



OCing is a great point... I am eager to see non-ES chips OCed


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## CyberDruid (Nov 14, 2011)

I am right in assuming this will be a Cruncher's wet dream?


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## cadaveca (Nov 14, 2011)

CyberDruid said:


> I am right in assuming this will be a Cruncher's wet dream?



I think so, yes. I also think that for people in my situation, whith multiple PCs in teh home, it could be useful to act as both a gaming rig and home media server, from the same box.


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## n-ster (Nov 14, 2011)

Is http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152978 (VT-d broken) confirmed for these?


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## johnnyfiive (Nov 14, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> No, a 2600K with two added cores WOULD NOT be faster. Becuase that's exactly what SB-E is...it's actually 2x 2600K, memory controllers and all.
> 
> And becuase there are dual memory controllers, not all data may end up in the same ram bank, and this affects single-threaded performance, if only marginally.
> 
> ...



EXACTLY, agree 100%.


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## cadaveca (Nov 14, 2011)

Of course, that leads to where the real disappointment for me is...I expected 2x 2600K, for 2.5x the price. That means for me, I expected the EE chip to be an 8-core/16-thread monster, and the entry 4-core/8-thread to be about $429 or so, and perform slightly better than 2600K/2700K on bandwdith-heavy applications, like Multi GPU configs and some games.

However, the 4-core/8-thread CPU is not out yet.

SO I'm disappointed in two things, but big deal.


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## Crap Daddy (Nov 14, 2011)

Well, there is something here. Only benches I could find with a single GTX590.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ch-core-i7-3960x-processor-review-skyrim.html


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## 15th Warlock (Nov 14, 2011)

Well, Newegg shipped my 3930K early this morning, so I should have it tomorrow, I placed the order for the Rampage IV Extreme at Excaliber PC this morning too, as they were the only ones to list the board in stock, but an hr. ago a rep. called me to let me know that this was an error on their website and they don't know the ETA for the boards, so they're giving me a full refund, as they had already charged my credit card 

Will have to wait for the board to be in stock at Amazon or Newegg, it seems no etailer is in procession of this board yet here in America, it'll be a shame to have the CPU and no board yet  funny when SB was released last year it was the other way around, I had my UD7 almost week before the CPUs were released


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## Animalpak (Nov 14, 2011)

I am not convinced, perhaps I'll take a 2700K setup...


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## buggalugs (Nov 15, 2011)

johnnyfiive said:


> lol... how is it a disappointment? It beats Sandy Bridge in every benchmark that actually matters for raw CPU performance. Sandy Bridge-e ISN'T a gaming CPU, its a workstation class/level processor, and it does "workstation" types of task's brilliantly.
> The only con is that its not affordable by comparison to Sandy Bridge, but it isn't supposed to be either.
> 
> That are so many haters/one-minded people on these forums lately, its really hard to read a thread without getting irritated by ignorance.



omg shutup you fool. I've always defended the high end. I've always purchased the high end. I'll probably still buy it when the price drops a little and the rev 2 motherboards come out.

Its a disappointment to me because it didnt live up to expectations. The opinion around the net is its expensive and offers very little over current gen. For most tasks people do on the computer there is little to none improvement , it costs double/triple and uses much more power to perform the same as socket 1155.

 The X79 boards are cut down with less features than they were meant to have, so there will most likley be a new revision in a couple of months. We dont even know if PCI-E 3.0 is properly supported.

 And for the idiot who said socket 1366 was the same as socket 1156, Scoket 1366 came out long before socket 1156. Socket 1366 replaced socket 775 at the time and performed much better.

 I'm allowed to give my opinion without being called names. I didnt attack your opinion or anyone elses opinion so shut the fuck up.


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## LiveOrDie (Nov 15, 2011)

Hayder_Master said:


> I7 3690k It's 600$ on newegg and 700$ on amazon.



I think you mean 3930K


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## Wile E (Nov 15, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> No, a 2600K with two added cores WOULD NOT be faster. Becuase that's exactly what SB-E is...it's actually 2x 2600K, memory controllers and all.
> 
> And becuase there are dual memory controllers, not all data may end up in the same ram bank, and this affects single-threaded performance, if only marginally.
> 
> ...



OMG Dave!!! Stop making sense. You are scaring away the delusional.



buggalugs said:


> omg shutup you fool. I've always defended the high end. I've always purchased the high end. I'll probably still buy it when the price drops a little and the rev 2 motherboards come out.
> 
> *Its a disappointment to me because it didnt live up to expectations.* The opinion around the net is its expensive and offers very little over current gen. For most tasks people do on the computer there is little to none improvement , it costs double/triple and uses much more power to perform the same as socket 1155.
> 
> ...


WTF did you expect, exactly? It's still the Sandybridge architecture.


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## Cuzza (Nov 15, 2011)

Clearly it's just one big conspiracy between, intel, game developers and the government to make gamers rage out.


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## Damn_Smooth (Nov 15, 2011)

Cuzza said:


> Clearly it's just one big conspiracy between, intel, game developers and the government to make gamers rage out.



I'm raging and I don't even know what the hell I'm raging about. It can't be SB-e because for once, something lived up to every expectation I had for it.


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## Cuzza (Nov 15, 2011)

I suppose, who needs a reason to rage at intel anyway?


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## Bundy (Nov 15, 2011)

There is a bit of price raping here in Aust. 3930 for $650. I was hoping to order soon but looks like I'll be waiting until the retailers put away the lube.


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## n-ster (Nov 15, 2011)

Bundy said:


> There is a bit of price raping here in Aust. 3930 for $650. I was hoping to order soon but looks like I'll be waiting until the retailers put away the lube.



Same price at Microcenter yesterday but now at 599.99$ 

I think that boxing day might be a good day to buy, else once the quad comes out


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## Benetanegia (Nov 15, 2011)

Wile E said:


> WTF did you expect, exactly? It's still the Sandybridge architecture.





buggalugs said:


> Its a disappointment to me because it didnt live up to expectations. The opinion around the net is its expensive and *offers very little over current gen*. For most tasks people do on the computer there is little to none improvement , it costs double/triple and uses much more power to perform the same as socket 1155.



That's the problem with these people I guess, somehow they think it's a new gen, when it clearly isn't and somehow they believe Intel owes them something.

*SB*-E guys, == Sandy Bridge.


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## xenocide (Nov 15, 2011)

Bundy said:


> There is a bit of price raping here in Aust. 3930 for $650. I was hoping to order soon but looks like I'll be waiting until the retailers put away the lube.



It's always that way these days.  BD CPU's were marked up pretty substantially on a bunch of sites when it first launched as well.


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## Lazzer408 (Nov 15, 2011)

But will it blen... ...ok I'll refrain from saying it.

I'm glad to see Intel putting the cache back in. There's certain things about my i2600k that I swear feel slower then my QX9650 was. I blame it on the 4mb of missing cache. The 2600 feels more "AMD'ish" or "Celeron'ish" in comparison. Any news about any "DDR4" memory that attempts to market itself as DDR3 that runs in 4 channels? Something along the lines of "digital ready" speakers?

Oh, and because I'm such an Intel fanboy I was SO happy so see the Bulldozer reviews. 

@Wile-e: As far as overclocking the sbe. If the cores are the same as 2600k plus an additional mem controller then I would expect the overclocks to be the same as the 2600k IF the additional heat can be managed. Sound about right?


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## repman244 (Nov 15, 2011)

I'm really shocked by some comments here. Why would you expect it to be faster than SB? It's the same core/architecture.
Also, I don't know why are many of you crying about it being bad for gaming, it's not really meant for gaming and guess what! There are actually other things you can do on your computer besides gaming.

And also everyone should note that this is meant to be an upgrade of Gulftowns (6 core version), which was accomplished.
The same way SB was compared to the last generation (1156 socket) SB-E should be compared to 1366.


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## qubit (Nov 15, 2011)

repman244 said:


> Also, I don't know why are many of you crying about it being bad for gaming



Because we're primarily hardware enthusiasts who like to game.  And no-one's complaining it's "bad for gaming", just that it's not any better than SB - and I was one of them.

Anyway, benetanegia cleared that one up for us, here.


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## xenocide (Nov 15, 2011)

qubit said:


> Because we're primarily hardware enthusiasts who like to game.  And no-one's complaining it's "bad for gaming", just that it's not any better than SB - and I was one of them.



Except when it is; http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ch-core-i7-3960x-processor-review-skyrim.html


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## qubit (Nov 15, 2011)

xenocide said:


> Except when it is; http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...ch-core-i7-3960x-processor-review-skyrim.html



It's gaming advantage is very limited though and in some benchies it was actually very slightly worse - it all depends on which review you read. As bene and others have pointed out, this is an incremental change to the architecture, so single threaded performance improvements were not the target of this release, adding more cores was. Oh and vastly increasing the price, too.


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## xenocide (Nov 15, 2011)

qubit said:


> It's gaming advantage is very limited though and in some benchies it was actually very slightly worse - it all depends on which review you read. As bene and others have pointed out, this is an incremental change to the architecture, so single threaded performance improvements were not the target of this release, adding more cores was. Oh and vastly increasing the price, too.



Yea, I read through just about all the reviews, and admittedly cherry-picked.  The point is with a multi-card setup, there is definitely a performance gain.  When the CPU isn't the stressing factor though, you obviously won't see a difference.  I don't think anyone that wants to spend this much on a CPU plans on pairing it with anything but a top of the line GPU.

I think the cost is justified for what it is intended for.  As a work station CPU, it is substantially better than the 2600\2700k.  That is the prime audience.  When Intel said Enthusiast, everyone assumed they meant GAMER, which just isn't true.  I believe you yourself have at times said Gamers make up a small percentage of the hardware market, so it should come as no surprise that Intel considers those building high-powered Work Stations as Enthusiasts.

Also, amazing line from the Tech Report SB-e Review;


> ...most of today's games aren't particularly CPU-intensive, since they're cross-developed for game consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, whose microprocessors have more in common with the engine control computer in a Ford Contour than they do with a Sandy Bridge Extreme.


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## n-ster (Nov 15, 2011)

btarunr said:


> The next best chip in the series is Core i7-3930K. With clock speeds of 3.20 GHz and 3.80 GHz (Turbo), this chip has a slightly smaller L3 cache size of 12 MB, though it is still unlocked and geared for overclocking. Like the i7-3960X, this is a 6 core / 12 thread chip. This chip commands a price of *$555*



Intel Core i7-2700K Sandy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Tu...

i7 2700K = 370$ 
Now let us add 50% to show the extra 2 cores and 50% more cache...
555$

Would ya look at that... I see something in common here 

I think the price is spot on especially compared to Gulftown and the i7 2700K... OK yes the 370$ is an inflated price etc, but you have to consider a price premium for quad-channel and the other goodies


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## Joe Public (Nov 15, 2011)

Personally, the only people I know that buy hex core Intels are people doing stuff like F@H. (bigadv)


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## Wile E (Nov 16, 2011)

Lazzer408 said:


> @Wile-e: As far as overclocking the sbe. If the cores are the same as 2600k plus an additional mem controller then I would expect the overclocks to be the same as the 2600k IF the additional heat can be managed. Sound about right?



I'm thinking that power delivery will play into it as well. If the heat is well managed, I'm gonna say still a little under the 2600k in terms of clocking ability. Just pulling random numbers out of my ass, but I'd take a 4.8Ghz SB-E over a 5.2Ghz SB any day.


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## hat (Nov 16, 2011)

I'm surprised how everyone seems to be so disappointed. It's just a 6x core SB chip. We know how multiple cores go, there's a diminishing return at some point with the vast majority of things, games being one. Many games see a dramatic boost going from one core to two, but the boost gets smaller going from two to four. It's only reasonable to think that the boost would narrow even further or even simply disappear from four to six.


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## [H]@RD5TUFF (Nov 16, 2011)

ordered mine!


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