Thursday, April 25th 2013
Core i7-4960X "Ivy Bridge-E" Roughly 10% Faster than i7-3970X: Early Tests
PC enthusiast "Toppc" with the Coolaler.com, with access to a Core i7 "Ivy Bridge-E" sample clocked to match specifications of the Core i7-4960X, wasted no time in comparing the chip to a Core i7-3970X "Sandy Bridge-E." The two chips share a common socket LGA2011 design, and run on motherboards with Intel X79 Express chipset. An MSI X79A-GD45 Plus, with V17.1 BIOS was used to run the two chips. Among the tests Toppc put the chip through, are overclocker favorites SuperPi mod 1.6, CPU Mark '99, WPrime 1.63, Cinebench 11.5, 3DMark Vantage (CPU score), and 3DMark 06 (CPU score).
The Ivy Bridge-E chip outperformed its predecessor by roughly 5-10 percent across the board. In Cinebench, the i7-4960X scored 10.94 points in comparison to the i7-3970X' 10.16; SuperPi 32M was crunched by the i7-4960X in 9m 22.6s compared to the 9m 55.4s of the i7-3970X; CPU Mark scores between the two are 561 vs. 533, respectively; 3DMark Vantage CPU score being 38,644 points vs. 35,804, respectively; and 3DMark 06 scores 8,586 points vs. 8,099 points, respectively. In WPrime, the i7-4960X crunched 32M in 4.601s, compared to its predecessor's 5.01s. Below are the test screenshots, please note that they're high-resolution images, so please open each in a new tab.
Cinebench 11.5SuperPi and CPU Mark3DMark Vantage CPU score3DMark 06 CPU score and WPrime 1.63
Source:
Coolaler.com
The Ivy Bridge-E chip outperformed its predecessor by roughly 5-10 percent across the board. In Cinebench, the i7-4960X scored 10.94 points in comparison to the i7-3970X' 10.16; SuperPi 32M was crunched by the i7-4960X in 9m 22.6s compared to the 9m 55.4s of the i7-3970X; CPU Mark scores between the two are 561 vs. 533, respectively; 3DMark Vantage CPU score being 38,644 points vs. 35,804, respectively; and 3DMark 06 scores 8,586 points vs. 8,099 points, respectively. In WPrime, the i7-4960X crunched 32M in 4.601s, compared to its predecessor's 5.01s. Below are the test screenshots, please note that they're high-resolution images, so please open each in a new tab.
Cinebench 11.5SuperPi and CPU Mark3DMark Vantage CPU score3DMark 06 CPU score and WPrime 1.63
122 Comments on Core i7-4960X "Ivy Bridge-E" Roughly 10% Faster than i7-3970X: Early Tests
www.techpowerup.com/182238/Intel-Core-i7-quot-Ivy-Bridge-E-quot-HEDT-Lineup-Detailed.html
You'll see that the entry level Ivy Bridge-E processor is listed as a Core i7 4820K which if correct could mean all three processors in the lineup are fully unlocked.
That might mean something,....or not,...
The way I see it, IVY-E was never going to be appealing enough to upgrade to.
Its just like Gulftown was, on the tylersburg platform.. Nice to know its out there but not to actually go out and spend on.
The great thing now is if you have practically anything of the last several generations which has good processing power, you can sit on it for many years and be happy.
Conroe/Wolfdale Nehalem and Sandybridge were all big steps forward, and all quite sufficient for almost everybody.
To me, this is not really bad news at all, it doesn't phase me that its not a leap forward.
The same goes with Haswell, I can see why many will want to see a big performance jump when its out but if it doesn't happen, personally I'm not really concerned. :toast:
Oh i need to update my specs on here. lawl
I literally kept my 3930k inside its box for 6 months before upgrading.
Due to the Nomenclature as well it makes sense considering Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge on the same LGA1155 socket wasn't earth shattering either but at least there was an upgrade for the socket before moving on,....
Thats not small point either because think about the bitching and complaining that occurs when there are no upgrades before moving on to a new socket,....
At least the option is there.
Also note that not everyone is upgrading. Sometimes people and businesses find a need for an additional system or systems. Thats additive, so what would you buy if your in need of another system, the same old Sandy Bridge-E or the new Ivy Bridge-E. In that case I would probably buy the new Ivy Bridge-E,...but I still have to see retail product / reviews first.
Keep in mind that we have heard that Haswell will ship with the USB bug / older stepping chipset initially,...
Steamroller won't change much, Intel can have a slower CPU priced higher and it'll still generate just as much sales. We've seen this in history with the Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron/Sempon vs P3/Celeron/P4/Pentium D. Lower performance doesn't always mean less sales or lower prices for Intel.
I bet these chips will draw a ton of power too if kept clocked at what I run my 3930k (5 Ghz), we are talking upwards of 300w
The biggest improvement is likely memory performance/latency, power consumption, and overclocking.
The biggest letdown for me is Intel still relying on X79 boards for this new chip. an unfinished platform with no Intel USB 3.0 only 2 Intel sata 6Gb/s etc. Its weird when the mainstream platform has better motherboard features than the highend that costs twice as much.
Overclocking isn't any better than SB. IVB just has a better IPC so each Mhz goes a bit further (like 10% further ;),) so even though you might not get clocks as high as a SB chip, you're getting more work done because it's doing 10% more in the same amount of time with the same frequency.
You can thank the die shrink for the better memory latencies too.
So yeah, most of the performance benefits came from the die shrink. The power consumption improvements come from both the shrink and the multi-gate transistors. Don't call it a letdown unless you own one and have legitimately have been let down by it. I'm perfectly happy with my X79 board and I think that most people who insult skt2011 don't really know what they're talking about. I find it astonishing the people complain about really stupid things like X79 not having enough SATA 6 ports or not many USB 3.0 ports (mine has 6 on the back, plus headers for another 4 so that's a matter of opinion,) when the CPU has 40 PCI-E lanes. You need more ports? Get a RAID card. They didn't load the CPU full of PCI-E slots and lanes for nothing.
I would also like to see your 3770k use VT-d and run 64Gb of ram like my 3820 can. What about features again?
People complain about X79 when the real power house is SB-E. The PCH does so little now, it almost hardly matters if you really need more than what it offers. The PCH does enough and if you need more, you really should get dedicated hardware. Remember, the PCH is on DMI not QPI or PCI-E. It can only do so much.
You gotta be careful on how this is tested too as some mobo takes a load more power even at idle.. My Asus Maximus (x38) used to run 190w idle were with another board around 100w with the same chip. It is about 4w when idle and that's if it disable HT or not compering my 2 chips..
I mean how much can a game demand before any extra CPU is totally irrelevant? If you can map the game world at 60fps, maybe throw in a few cycles for AI and stuff that's in-motion, that's about all it's ever going to need. Everything else goes to the GPU.
Office apps, even more so. I can only imagine how many trillions of clock cycles are wasted while Word waits for your next keystroke. The fact of the matter is CPUs now are more than good enough for what we need, and Intel's direction in optimizing toward greater integration and lower power (as opposed to more outright computing power) is totally justified.
This is a good read: www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Accurately-measuring-CPU-power-consumption-a-challenge-authors-say/