anandtechIntel Core i7 4960X (Ivy Bridge E) Review

[Makaveli]

Possibly push it more. I just wanted to try the settings my 3960X ran at. Took the pic only a few minutes after first booting it up. What I settle on could be higher, or could be lower.

let us know what differences you spot in the overclocking, tweaking process, any lower temps etc.

Also congrats on 10k post I know your almost 100 over the goal but :thumbsup:

 

[CHADBOGA]

Whew! I just got back from Micro Center. Arrived at the store just before they opened the doors. There was a huge crowd waiting outside for the launch of these processors. As soon as the doors opened the crowd surged through causing some people to get knocked over in all of the chaos. They were yelling and screaming while pushing each other out of the way as they ran towards the CPU display cabinant. There was one lone salesman standing by the display. The sugring crowd nearly knocked him off balance while he opened the cabinant. He reaches in and pulls out the CPUs box by box. The CPUs get snached up just as quickly as he's pulling them out. I panic thinking that they would be out of 4960X CPUs by time I get close enough. With all of my might I leapt over the massive mob of people. Timing it just right to do a mid-air grab of a 4960X right as the salesman pulls it out.

How much were Micro Center selling the 4960x's for?

 

[AdamK47]

How much were Micro Center selling the 4960x's for?

$1049

 

[AdamK47]

let us know what differences you spot in the overclocking, tweaking process, any lower temps etc.

Also congrats on 10k post I know your almost 100 over the goal but :thumbsup:

I let it run at 4.5GHz last night, but an hour into LinX AVX testing I got a BSOD. Set it to 4.25GHz with the same 1.325V and started a test before going to bed. Woke up 8 hours later and it was still running. For now, 4.25GHz is my baseline and I'll work from there. Temps were 5 to 10 °C cooler than the 3960X which is a pleasent surprise.

 

[crashtech]

How much difference is there between a 4.5GHz 3960X and a 4.25GHz 4960X?

 

[AdamK47]

Haven't gotten to the benchmarking yet. Just doing the stability tests at the moment.

 

[Makaveli]

Haven't gotten to the benchmarking yet. Just doing the stability tests at the moment.

hey think you can run a cinebench 11.5 run at 4.2Ghz when your done with the stability testing.

i would like to compare it to the others, one of edgemeal charts has a comparison at 4.2 and we don't have Ivy-E in the list 🙂

* correction it was handbrake but I wouldn't mind seeing numbers for both apps at 4.2

 

[AdamK47]

I'll run benchmarks this weekend.

Still doing stress testing. Got the CPU back up to 4.5GHz. Need to use 1.40V at load though. Started LinX testing before going to bed. It's still going 9 hours later. I'm going to kick off another test using Prime95 AVX before going to work.

Replaced the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme with a Corsair H110. Found a way to get it to fit great in the HAF-X.

 

[AdamK47]

10 hours later and it's still running Prime95 AVX with 8192 problem size and 27GB of memory allocated. Looks like 4.5GHz at 1.400V is doable. Need to do some other stability testing.

 

[Makaveli]

10 hours later and it's still running Prime95 AVX with 8192 problem size and 27GB of memory allocated. Looks like 4.5GHz at 1.400V is doable. Need to do some other stability testing.

What temps are you seeing at 1.4v @ 4.5ghz?

 

[AdamK47]

The max readings in Core Temp showed low to mid 80s on the cores over the 10 hours. When I got home it was currently in the upper 70s while still running Prime95 AVX on all cores. The 3960X would be in the 80s constantly with the same test. This is worse case, so normal usage will be much lower.

 

[crashtech]

I'm glad you were able to get 4.5GHz. It was my suspicion that 4.25GHz would have only been close to parity with your old setup.

Are you at 45x100 now for testing, or something else?

 

[AdamK47]

You're probably right. 4.25GHz IB-E would probably be close to a 4.5GHz SB-E. I'm a 125MHz base clock. When I benchmarked with the 3960X at 4.5GHz, 125MHz x 36 was a little bit faster than 100MHz x 45 even though the memory on the 100MHz base clock was a tiny bit faster. A 125MHz base clock bumps the QPI to 5GHz.

 

[guskline]

AdamK47, how is the 4960X running now? What final clockspeed?

 

[AdamK47]

The 4960X is running great at 4.5GHz. There appears to be a bug in the ASRock Extreme11 BIOS when using any base clock other than 100MHz. Speed Step and the C-States cause immediate lockups on dynamic clock speed changes. SB-E didn't have this problem. That's ok though. It runs fine at 4.5GHz with 45 x 100MHz and the memory at 2400. Passed several hours of LinX and Prime95.

 

[guskline]

Impressive!