Thursday, May 5th 2016
Intel Core i7-6950X Tested Against i7-5960X
Silicon Lottery at OCN got their hands on Intel's upcoming flagship high-end desktop (HEDT) processor, the Core i7-6950X. Based on the 14 nm "Broadwell-E" silicon, the processor offers a staggering 10 cores, with HyperThreading enabling 20 logical CPUs, 25 MB L3 cache, and a quad-channel DDR4 memory controller. The i7-6950X is expected to occupy a price point that's above the $999 traditionally reserved for the top-end HEDT chip. Silicon Lottery successfully overclocked the i7-6950X to 4.50 GHz, from its rumored stock frequency of 3.00 GHz, and compared it to a previous-generation Core i7-5960X 8-core processor. The common platform consisted of an ASUS Rampage V Extreme motherboard, 16 GB of quad-channel DDR4-3000 memory, and GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics.
At its top overclock of 4.50 GHz, the i7-6950X achieved a Cinebench R15 score of 2327 points. At 4.00 GHz, it scored 1904 points, 19.5 percent higher than the i7-5960X at the same clocks (the i7-6950X features two extra cores). The two chips were also put through AIDA64 memory tests. The memory read speeds were nearly the same, but the memory write speeds were found to be a staggering 37 percent higher on the i7-6950X. The memory copy speeds, however, were 10.5 percent lower on the i7-6950X. Intel is expected to launch its next-generation Core i7 HEDT lineup, including two six-core, one eight-core, and one ten-core chips, in a few weeks from now.
Source:
OCN
At its top overclock of 4.50 GHz, the i7-6950X achieved a Cinebench R15 score of 2327 points. At 4.00 GHz, it scored 1904 points, 19.5 percent higher than the i7-5960X at the same clocks (the i7-6950X features two extra cores). The two chips were also put through AIDA64 memory tests. The memory read speeds were nearly the same, but the memory write speeds were found to be a staggering 37 percent higher on the i7-6950X. The memory copy speeds, however, were 10.5 percent lower on the i7-6950X. Intel is expected to launch its next-generation Core i7 HEDT lineup, including two six-core, one eight-core, and one ten-core chips, in a few weeks from now.
23 Comments on Intel Core i7-6950X Tested Against i7-5960X
not so fast: + 60% price (1600+ is expected - though simillar xeons v4 did not exceed 4% price increase - with all corecount and IPC increase) and 2 year "development" (which means that this is the most exciting in HEDT CPU news for another 2 years). So pay up or wait anoter 2 yeas and then maybe Intel will present us another 2 cores and maybe 2499,99 $ pricetag - who knows, but +2 cores is for you to have - enjoy.
A high IPC seems to be the primary performance setter for gaming, with 4 cores or 2+HT being a requirement too in some AAA games. These CPUs don't improve IPC so hence don't improve performance.
Obviously a high end graphics card is needed too or it makes no difference how fast the CPU is.
I see this as being much more valuable to people like me, who run multiple background servers in addition to my main OS (minecraft, teamspeak, ece) or who do any sort of video/audio editing. For them, the big draw will be the chip-set features, and skylake really doesnt fill that need vs broadwell. It makes for some small IPC gains and better overclocking as well though. If Zen also brings out an affordable 8 core, we may finally see software using more CPU cores than we do right now.
They should have an IPC improvement over Haswell-E, not broadwell though.
wow what an upgrade.....good progress Intel
This is however comparing a, "4.5Ghz" overclocked 5960X, to a "3.0Ghz" stock 6950X.
Also, single thread performance running 1 core, at the same 3ghz on each CPU. The 5960X was actually slightly faster. And higher fps in games. This is with both at 3Ghz.
If you have a 5960X add in some heavy overclocking, and you already have the best!
Especially considering, the i7 5960X is like $799 at Micro Center BNIB. And the 6950X is $1,599. That's double the cost! For a negligible boost in the average programs that a 4.6Ghz 5960X will already do!
I7 5960X $800, or get a Xeon 1660 V3. And put the savings toward a Nvidia Quadro P5000. It's a Quadro version of the GTX 1080!
They are great CPUs each of them, I'm considering getting either one to upgrade my i5 6600K 5.1Ghz encoding system. It gets hosed all day at 100% utilization.
I think a 4.5Ghz 5960X, will benefit me greatly! Especially a 6950X lol. Jeez what a beast they both are.
Once the CPU is overclocked to 4+GHz which is what it's made to do.. it crushes everything.
This is the fastest CPU in the world! 6950X