Sandy Bridge-E Benchmarks Leaked: Disappointing Gaming Performance?

[entropy13]

This is a better review than HARDOCP's, but doesn't change the picture.

What picture? That it's a power hog like Bulldozer?

So you're saying those graphs are made-up?


Unlike Bulldozer, that increase in power consumption actually lead to an increase in performance. Hence the fact that even though it "consumes" more power, it does so in a shorter amount of time.


The only "issue" here is the price. But that has always been the case with the Extreme Editions.

 

[cadaveca]

Again..Cache, Cache, cache, cache. Whadda you expect?

The fact the lwoer-binned chips have cache disabled should speak VOLUMES as to what the story is with power consumption, nevermind the seemingly more efficient utilization of memory bandwidth, no matter how slight.

At least with the EE, you get all the cache enabled. It will eb interesting to see how the lack fo cache pans out performance-wise for the "K" 6-core chip, and the "locked" quad.

 

[entropy13]

Tech Report predicts that the 3930K would be around the "point" of the i7 970 (if following along the x-axis) but be way higher up (if following along the y-axis), making it a more likely buy than the new EE.

 

[ramcoza]

well, i7-3960X matches i7 2600K's power consumption at Idle and consume less than FX-8150 at load.

I didn't expect this.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive/7

 

[entropy13]

Here's all the reviews I can find thus far:
http://hardocp.com/article/2011/11/14/intel_core_i73960x_sandy_bridge_e_processor_review/1
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1773/1/
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/44...treme_edition_lga_2011_cpu_review/index1.html
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21987
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i73960X-Extreme-Edition-Sandy-BridgeE-Review/?page=1
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/32591-intel-core-i7-3960x-extreme-edition-cpu/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3960x-x79-sandy-bridge-e,3071.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...dy-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive
http://pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Sandy-Bridge-E-Review-Core-i7-3960X-and-X79-Chipset-Tested
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_core_i7_3960/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-3960x-processor--msi-x79agd65-review/

 

[cadaveca]

Bigger list:

Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...dy-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive
Benchmark Review: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=826&Itemid=63
Bjorn3D: http://www.bjorn3d.com/articles/Intels_X79_Chipset_Core_i7_3960X__DX79SI_Motherboard/2146.html
ExtremeTech: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/104835-intel-end-sandy-bridge-e-3960x-review
Guru3D: http://www.guru3d.com/news/core-i7-3960x-processor--msi-x79agd65-review/
HardOCP: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/14/intel_core_i73960x_sandy_bridge_e_processor_review
HardwareCanucks: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-sandy-bridge-e-core-i7-3960x-cpu-review.html
HCHardware: http://www.hardcore-hardware.com/20...e-i7-3960x-review-sandy-bridge-e-arrives.html
Hexus: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/32591-intel-core-i7-3960x-extreme-edition-cpu/
HotHardware: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i73960X-Extreme-Edition-Sandy-BridgeE-Review/
Inpai.cn: http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7984
LegionHardware: http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/intel_core_i7_3960x_extreme_edition_,1.html
LegitReviews: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1773/1/
NeoSeeker: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/Intel_Core_i7_3960X/
Overclock3d: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/intel_core_i7-3960x_review/1
OverclockersClub: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/intel_core_i7_3960/
PCPerspective: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Proces...E-Review-Core-i7-3960X-and-X79-Chipset-Tested
PCWorld: http://www.pcworld.com/article/243749/lab_tested_intel_core_i73960x_extreme_edition.html#tk.hp_fv
SilentPC: http://www.silentpcreview.com/intel-sandybridge-extreme
TechReport: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21987
Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3960x-x79-sandy-bridge-e,3071.html
TweakTown: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/32591-intel-core-i7-3960x-extreme-edition-cpu/
Vortez: http://www.vortez.net/articles_page...treme_edition_processor_sandy_bridge_e,1.html
Xbit Labs: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-3960x-3930k.html

 

[claylomax]

What picture? That it's a power hog like Bulldozer?

I meant that "doesn't change the picture of power consumption" compared to HARDOCP's review

 

[cadaveca]

All reviews are using ES chips.

I do not think that's of any importance, other than that it should be noted that retail sample clocking is still in question at this point.

That said, many ES chips feature overly high power consumption, and aren't stellar overclockers, as they are intended to test functionality of the platform, including cooling.

I really wish AMD and Intel would stop giving out ES chips to reviewers, and start giving out the same chips end users will get. I suppose that's just me though.

 

[claylomax]

Look at them motherboards prices: http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/motherboards-intel/socket-2011-intel-x79

 

[Recus]

One more:

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...e-i7-3960x-processor-review-introduction.html

 

[qubit]

Yep, disappointing gaming performance, a real shame

Looked at a handful of reviews and yeah, gaming performance is no better than a 2600K, in some cases just a teeny bit worse, so it's disappointing alright. I had suspected that the Chinese website I reported on in the news article was right.

I'd have expected a new revision to show some improvement, surely? Basically, it's working like plain vanilla SB with a couple of extra cores. It does overclock better, though. I'm not commenting on other types of app however, because gaming performance is the only thing I'm personally interested in.

I'll be buying that 2700K system Real Soon Now.

HardOCP had an IPC comparison here, which shows that SB & SB-E are the same.

This is what happens when Intel doesn't have any head-to-head competition. :shadedshu

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post by ye fanbois out there, so I've put on my strongest flameproof jacket.

EDIT: Here's more IPC comparisons by Hardware Canucks.

 

[radrok]

Excuse me but, why would it be disappointing? If you expected this to give any gaming performance advantage with today bad coded games that hardly use more than 4 cores then you'll have to explain me where you'd be expecting it, because there is no architecture change at all, it's just a Sandy Bridge with 2 more cores, an abysmal amount of L3 cache and a bigger memory controller.
It's a multi-threading chewer beast, and that's what I wanted it to be... Honestly I'm not going to buy this for gaming, that would be crazy!
I'm buying this because that's what I need for my work and believe me, it's not a disappointment

 

[qubit]

Excuse me but, why would it be disappointing? If you expected this to give any gaming performance advantage with today bad coded games that hardly use more than 4 cores then you'll have to explain me where you'd be expecting it, because there is no architecture change at all, it's just a Sandy Bridge with 2 more cores, an abysmal amount of L3 cache and a bigger memory controller.
It's a multi-threading chewer beast, and that's what I wanted it to be... Honestly I'm not going to buy this for gaming, that would be crazy!
I'm buying this because that's what I need for my work and believe me, it's not a disappointment

You've said it right there (except you're wrong about the bit where it's because the games are coded "badly"). Because it's basically just SB with a couple of cores bolted on, there's no IPC improvement, which is where the real R&D money has to be spent to improve performance.

This is what happens when there's no competition in the marketplace. And believe me, Bulldozer and its derivatives are zero competition to Intel right now and for the forseable future.

Intel are just sitting on there laurels and laughing all the way to the bank.

 

[radrok]

Wouldn't you see an improvement over the 2600k/2700k if we had games capable of addressing 6-12 threads? That was my point about bad coded games.
To be honest I have a little disappointment...
I would have loved the 3960X to be an 8 core(16t), without the 2 fused off cores... that would have justified the price tag over the 3930K!

 

[Benetanegia]

You've said it right there (except you're wrong about the bit where it's because the games are coded "badly"). Because it's basically just SB with a couple of cores bolted on, there's no IPC improvement, which is where the real R&D money has to be spent to improve performance.

This is what happens when there's no competition in the marketplace. And believe me, Bulldozer and its derivatives are zero competition to Intel right now and for the forseable future.

Intel are just sitting on there laurels and laughing all the way to the bank.

While I agree with the no competition part, I just cannot understand your frustration about this particular chip. How could you be expecting an IPC improvement if these are the exact same SB cores? The "next generation" is Ivy Bridge, and not even that since Ivy is the tick, Sandy Bridge was the tock (and brought an impressive IPC increase over past gen), and so is SB-E. The name should have hinted it's the exact same architecture, it just has more cores. Intel has been doing the tick-tock strategy for how long now? SB was the tock, the architectural change, next thing is the tick, new process on old architecture (Ivy). SB-E is not even on a new process so how could you posibly think it was a new architecture?

Also I think you are not being reasonable with the timeframes, "resting on their laurels"? Of course they are relaxed, but to say as much as that they are sitting on their laurels... it's just not true since they started with the tick-tock. Have you been paying attention these last years (decade I'd say)? The days of 1 year cycle for each new architecture were over more than 10 years ago, now it's typically 2-3 years if things go perfectly and you are Intel, or just simply ask AMD, Via or hell even the quite successful ARM how easy it is to create a new arch every <insert random number> months. SB was introduced 10 months ago, expecting another new architecture this soon is delusional. 5 years and look what happened with Bulldozer, it's not easy.

I agree that Intel could advance faster if they took some capital risks, like the rest are doing, but why should they take any risk? Why abandon the tick-tock strategy that is working so well fr them? They are already 50%+ faster than competition and the difference grows with every tick-tock cycle. AMD just can't keep up at this pace, no one can really, so Intel is not objectively sitting on their laurels.

I understand your desire to get better and better CPUs (in all fronts, i.e. gaming) with every release, but I think it's not very realistic to expect huge improvements on every chip, at least when they belong to the same architecture. Like many people have said already, SB-E delivers where it was designed to deliver: in hevily threaded apps.

Sorry for the long post and sorry if it seems I'm picking at you, not at all my intention.

 

[n-ster]

You've said it right there (except you're wrong about the bit where it's because the games are coded "badly"). Because it's basically just SB with a couple of cores bolted on, there's no IPC improvement, which is where the real R&D money has to be spent to improve performance.

This is what happens when there's no competition in the marketplace. And believe me, Bulldozer and its derivatives are zero competition to Intel right now and for the forseable future.

Intel are just sitting on there laurels and laughing all the way to the bank.

Except coded badly is indeed part of it. Theoretically, if a game was perfectly multi-threaded, you would see 50% improvement on the 6 core/12thread, and the i7 2600K would be significantly better than the i5 2500K

 

[qubit]

Wouldn't you see an improvement over the 2600k/2700k if we had games capable of addressing 6-12 threads? That was my point about bad coded games.
To be honest I have a little disappointment...
I would have loved the 3960X to be an 8 core(16t), without the 2 fused off cores... that would have justified the price tag over the 3930K!

Ok, fair enough. I'm just a little gutted that the single threaded performance wasn't actually improved. That defines the core performance level of the processor, the multi cores simply "multiply" it up. Mind you, that's a dangerous statement to make, as perfect scaling never happens, especially as all the cores are seldom used to full capacity.

However, then Bene "picks" on me, lol, with this terribly well reasoned post and he's actually perfectly right. I was expecting the wrong thing at the wrong time - but at least I was in good company.

While I agree with the no competition part, I just cannot understand your frustration about this particular chip. How could you be expecting an IPC improvement if these are the exact same SB cores? The "next generation" is Ivy Bridge, and not even that since Ivy is the tick, Sandy Bridge was the tock (and brought an impressive IPC increase over past gen), and so is SB-E. The name should have hinted it's the exact same architecture, it just has more cores. Intel has been doing the tick-tock strategy for how long now? SB was the tock, the architectural change, next thing is the tick, new process on old architecture (Ivy). SB-E is not even on a new process so how could you posibly think it was a new architecture?

Also I think you are not being reasonable with the timeframes, "resting on their laurels"? Of course they are relaxed, but to say as much as that they are sitting on their laurels... it's just not true since they started with the tick-tock. Have you been paying attention these last years (decade I'd say)? The days of 1 year cycle for each new architecture were over more than 10 years ago, now it's typically 2-3 years if things go perfectly and you are Intel, or just simply ask AMD, Via or hell even the quite successful ARM how easy it is to create a new arch every <insert random number> months. SB was introduced 10 months ago, expecting another new architecture this soon is delusional. 5 years and look what happened with Bulldozer, it's not easy.

I agree that Intel could advance faster if they took some capital risks, like the rest are doing, but why should they take any risk? Why abandon the tick-tock strategy that is working so well fr them? They are already 50%+ faster than competition and the difference grows with every tick-tock cycle. AMD just can't keep up at this pace, no one can really, so Intel is not objectively sitting on their laurels.

I understand your desire to get better and better CPUs (in all fronts, i.e. gaming) with every release, but I think it's not very realistic to expect huge improvements on every chip, at least when they belong to the same architecture. Like many people have said already, SB-E delivers where it was designed to deliver: in hevily threaded apps.

Sorry for the long post and sorry if it seems I'm picking at you, not at all my intention.

Yes, as you're quite right about the release cycle, as SB was released less than a year ago. It's still true though that if Bulldozer had been any competition, then we would have seen some single threaded improvement and that's what I mean by resting on their laurels. But you're right, it's too small a time frame to see any architectural improvement other than small refinements, so I take the resting on laurels bit back.

By the looks of it, they've basically improved memory bandwidth to handle the extra cores. So, are we going to actually see an 8 core SB-E CPU next year then?

Except coded badly is indeed part of it. Theoretically, if a game was perfectly multi-threaded, you would see 50% improvement on the 6 core/12thread, and the i7 2600K would be significantly better than the i5 2500K

Yes you would see that scaling, but as I've explained above, I'd hoped single threaded performance would have been improved, which would speed up everything. Obviously, my expectations were unrealistic though.

 

[nt300]

So the question is will AMD make Piledriver more competative now that SB-E is not what we all thought it would be?

What does AMD need to do to better compete? FIX Branch Prediction, Pipeline Flushing, Cache Trashing, increase the Decode unit's width, resolve this scheduling issue? Can a B3 stepping fix this? AMD has a chance to compete now.

 

[n-ster]

So the question is will AMD make Piledriver more competative now that SB-E is not what we all thought it would be?

What does AMD need to do to better compete? FIX Branch Prediction, Pipeline Flushing, Cache Trashing, increase the Decode unit's width, resolve this scheduling issue? Can a B3 stepping fix this? AMD has a chance to compete now.

But it is EXACTLY what we thought it would be :/

 

[cadaveca]

So the question is will AMD make Piledriver more competative now that SB-E is not what we all thought it would be?

Who is this "we"?





I don't care to speculate on Bulldozer.


Frankly, the only disappointment for me is the lack of a 8-core/16 thread monster.

 

[ensabrenoir]

So the question is will AMD make Piledriver more competative now that SB-E is not what we all thought it would be?

What does AMD need to do to better compete? FIX Branch Prediction, Pipeline Flushing, Cache Trashing, increase the Decode unit's width, resolve this scheduling issue? Can a B3 stepping fix this? AMD has a chance to compete now.

Uh......no. sbe is the top dog period. Beats everything out there. Bd was over. Before it launched. If pd is done right .....naaaah sb would still take it. Not going to touch. Sbe or ib.. even 2yrs from now amd is 2yrs behind.

Hey ....did I miss the overclocking? 600 for a six core.....intels learning. Slowly.....but learning

 

[Super XP]

Who is this "we"?



I don't care to speculate on Bulldozer.

Frankly, the only disappointment for me is the lack of a 8-core/16 thread monster.

Me, I am one of those WE's. I guess it's difficult for Intel to make a fast CPU faster and yest the prices for the new SandyBridge E's stink.

 

[cadaveca]

Me, I am one of those WE's.

Of course, this is not surprising coming from you. You seemed to expect alot of Bulldozer, too, and we all know how well THAT turned out.

 

[Wile E]

Who is this "we"?





I don't care to speculate on Bulldozer.


Frankly, the only disappointment for me is the lack of a 8-core/16 thread monster.

Ditto. Prior to them releasing the lineup details, I thought an 8/16 beast was definitely gonna happen.

 

[Benetanegia]

Yeah, prior to reading reviews I had no idea the chip itself had 8 cores. It is a little disappointment that they didn't enable all of them. I guess yields are not good at all and they are saving them for Xeons. Something inside me still tells me it's a little trick, in order to have something else to release down the line and charge $1000+ again. It's not like they really need the 8 cores in order to leave both the competition and their own previous generation in the dust.

Maybe it's kind of better this way. While it would have been interesting to see a direct comparison between both 2 billion transistor behemoths (SB-E vs BD), it would have been a bloodbath.