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[COOLALER] Intel Core i7 3930K Benchmarked -- Marginally faster than Gulftown

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ExarKun333 said:
Think about this, about 15 years ago many 'mainstream' CPUs were very expensive. I grabbed a look from PIIs, and after a 'price cut' the 333mhz model was $722, 300mhz was $525, and $375 for the lowly 266mhz.

That was in 1998, when that $722 was probably worth $1000+ of today's dollars. Sure times have changed and such, but it's not like $1000 is a HUGE amount.

A whole computer was between $1000-1500 not too long ago, now you can build one for 1/3 of that.
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Right... and? I don't get it. So you're saying it's alright to spend $400 more even if you don't get any performance increase in the end?
 
LOL_Wut_Axel said:
Right... and? I don't get it. So you're saying it's alright to spend $400 more even if you don't get any performance increase in the end?
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As long as it's within a persons means. They are the judge , not you.
I would spend hundreds and many hours tinkering with my car, street/strip drag racing. Sometimes for a 2% difference. I know there are enthusiasts here, who do that with cpu coolers. The importance factor. Its not the monetary amount, its not the effort expended. It's the satisfaction from the hobby at times.
 
notty22 said:
As long as it's within a persons means. They are the judge , not you.
I would spend hundreds and many hours tinkering with my car, street/strip drag racing. Sometimes for a 2% difference. I know there are enthusiasts here, who do that with cpu coolers. The importance factor. Its not the monetary amount, its not the effort expended. It's the satisfaction from the hobby at times.
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What satisfaction? At least you're getting a 2% difference when you tinker with your car. Comparing these two it's gonna be less than a 1% difference in performance. Apart from that, what else is there left to tinker with? Memory speeds and timings, the preset BCLK options perhaps. Not much else.

I have yet to hear an actual reason as to why, if you're OCing, you should buy the Core i7-3960X instead of the 3930K when they come out soon. And no, "just because I can" is not an actual reason. Perhaps people should just admit it's for the e-peen and nothing else instead of lying to themselves.
 
LOL_Wut_Axel said:
What satisfaction? At least you're getting a 2% difference when you tinker with your car. Comparing these two it's gonna be less than a 1% difference in performance. Apart from that, what else is there left to tinker with? Memory speeds and timings, the preset BCLK options perhaps. Not much else.

I have yet to hear an actual reason as to why, if you're OCing, you should buy the Core i7-3960X instead of the 3930K when they come out soon. And no, "just because I can" is not an actual reason. Perhaps people should just admit it's for the e-peen and nothing else instead of lying to themselves.
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There are bound to be lots of people who buy an Extreme Edition i7 a or a top-end Xeon and never tell anyone on the internet about it. The real question is why you have so hard to accept what these people do. Is it that they probably have more money than you?
 
lol123 said:
There are bound to be lots of people who buy an Extreme Edition i7 a or a top-end Xeon and never tell anyone on the internet about it. The real question is why you have so hard to accept what these people do. Is it that they probably have more money than you?
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bunnyfubbles said:
someone has some serious e-peen envy issues, we get it, your e-penis is tiny, move along
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Missing the point. At least you should actually read my statements.
 
LOL_Wut_Axel said:
Right... and? I don't get it. So you're saying it's alright to spend $400 more even if you don't get any performance increase in the end?
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I am not sure you understand much about enthusiast CPUs. If I drop $500-1000 on a good-quality water cooling setup, what CPU do I want to drop-in? That's right the best one! I want the best binned, highest multiplier, CPU money can buy. On regular air cooling, sure it may top out the same, but on a good cooling setup that might net you another 400mhz+ at the top end versus the bargain option.

This was especially true with the C2Qs when the FSB limited your overclocks, and the fixed multiplier (which the EE let you adjust to your choosing) meant you had more options.

I will not debate this any more. Stick with the budget stuff, that's fine. I don't drop $1000 on a CPU myself, but I can say I sure have thought about it. The only 'moron' is the guy who judges others for their choices that hurt no one.

Want the best? Pay like the rest.
 
LOL_Wut_Axel said:
Paying a premium for something "bleeding edge", especially when in reality it's not (see my comparison between the 3930K and the 3960X), is something only a moron does. How else can you explain a moron buying a Core i7 990X over a Core i7 980 when they both OC the same, deliver the exact same performance, yet one costs $400 less? You mean to be telling me the unneeded unlocked multiplier and "Extreme Edition" moniker are worth $400 extra? Unless you're using one of these for work, spending $1000 on them is simply stupid.
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EE aren't really made for wage slaves, though some do buy them. I've got one, but I didn't pay for it. 🙂

I think they are for a different brand of enthusiasts to whom $1k is nothing. I know of a few people that spend serious coin on their PC hobby; one of them has a Ford Explorer worth of SSD's and RAM new in box in his closet as "spares". To him $1k isn't even the equivalent of me buying a soda from a vending machine, so why not buy into the hype? I know I would if I had the coin to waste.
 
ExarKun333 said:
Long, meaningless rant
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Alright, go ahead and spend 50% more on the same thing. Don't get mad when people point it out, though.

Also, a $600 CPU isn't "budget stuff", but if you have the workload to use those 12 threads then it can definitely be worth it.
 
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The reality is that with the practice of binning going on at both Intel and AMD, a $600 CPU is never as good as a $1200 CPU even if their specifications are very similar. If nothing else, the latter will reach the same frequency at lower voltages which translates into better overclocking headroom. And that's just how it's supposed to be, both for the buyers and for the CPU manufacturers.

That doesn't preclude that there are SKUs that offer extremely high performance for a low price, like the i5-2500K and the i7-2600K. I'm looking at a 2500K for myself and wouldn't buy a i7-3960K even if I could afford one, but I'm not going to pretend that the CPU I bought is just as high-end as Intel's actual top offering.
 
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lol123 said:
The reality is that with the practice of binning going on at both Intel and AMD, a $600 CPU is never as good as a $1200 CPU even if their specifications are very similar. If nothing else, the latter will reach the same frequency at lower voltages which translates into better overclocking headroom. And that's just how it's supposed to be, both for the buyers and for the CPU manufacturers.

That doesn't preclude that there are SKUs that offer extremely high performance for a low price, like the i5-2500K and the i7-2600K. I'm looking at a 2500K for myself and wouldn't buy a i7-3960K even if I could afford one, but I'm not going to pretend that the CPU I bought is just as high-end as Intel's actual top offering.
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Except that's not how it works, even though it should be in theory. Most Core i7-980s get around the same maximum OCs as 990Xs and at the same voltages. Again, it's a rip-off. Like I said earlier, most differences from Intel when it comes to overclocking headroom depend on when you bought the processor. If you look back, the Core i5 760 that replaced the 750 on average got around 200MHz more at the same voltage, same for the 930 and 950 that replaced the 920. Then we saw the same going from the 980X to the 990X, and the 970 to the 980.
 
AdamK47 said:
I'd just like to go on record as stating that I will be puchasing the Core i7 3960X upon its release.
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Pentium 3 not cutting in Arma 3 anymore? 😀

I was reading somewhere (maybe TechReport) that X79 chipset is having issues with PCIe 3.0. I wonder if they'll release 1st boards with PCIe 2.0 support and delay PCIe 3.0 mobos for next year or delay SB-E into next year entirely.
 
lol123 said:
The reality is that with the practice of binning going on at both Intel and AMD, a $600 CPU is never as good as a $1200 CPU even if their specifications are very similar.
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Please tell us how you think that Intel or AMD are binning CPUs. Because in reality they just test if the CPU is within specs for the given bin and if it passes those it can be sold as such a model.

When the process matures, more and more CPUs pass the requirements for the highest bin, but now comes the horrible truth: Intel can't sell 90% CPUs as their high-end model. So do you think they're going to shred those other CPUs? Yeah me neither. They just sell them as whatever model they want, because after all if a CPU passes the requirements for Model X+3, it surely will work just fine as X+2.

The only additional guarantee buying a higher model CPU gives you, is that it'll work at the given specs, not the other way round. Now you still have some chances that the lower model CPU won't reach the same speed at the same voltages as the higher model, but every day the process gets more mature the chances for that get smaller and smaller. So yes those high end models are most of the time exactly the same chips - market segmentation at its finest (you can call it rip off or whatever you want, that's just how this works)
 
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Voo said:
Uh, yeah - thanks... where exactly does this contradict what I've said?
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That's ironic because nowhere did what you said contradict what I said, which leads to me to believe that you didn't understand what I wrote. A $600 CPU may very well be an exactly identical piece of silicon as a $1200 CPU but that was tested not be to be up to specifications to be sold as the $1200 model (in practice this would probably be the Xeon counterpart marketed toward corporate customers). We're in agreement on that, right?
 
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Again: The i7-990X is 66% more expensive than the i7-980, yet only performs 4% faster at stock.

They overclock identically. Unless things have changed, the highest overclocks on Gulftown have been from i7-980X, not i7-990X. There is no magical "binning" going on here. Obviously CPUs are binned, but at the point of the i7-980/990X, there's no discernable difference.
 
I think everyone agrees that there is no major difference between the i7-990X and the i7-980X and the i7-990X is really intended as a replacement rather than a higher-end model to exist alongside the i7-980X. If you are really referring to the i7-980, then the major difference is of course that the i7-990X has an unlocked multiplier. The real question is whether there is any difference (except the number of QPI links) between an i7-990X at $999 and a Xeon X5690 at $1663 (identical clock frequencies and amount of cache) and arguably that is that the Xeons are higher quality silicon, that can run the specified stock frequency at a lower voltage, as a result of binning. In fact, that's even reflected in the specified VID ranges (0.75V to 1.35V for the X5690 and 0.8V to 1.375V for the i7-990X).
 
oh my gosh.. u guys who are being so PETTY about the 1000 dollar cpu's crack me up.

Once again.. the people who can only dream about stuff like this.. trying to downgrade stuff like this, so they feel better buying the cheaper end.

:hmm:

<--- proud member of the $1000 cpu club... and ive had serveral.... not just 1.

more then overclocks.. when a guy pulls a screenie and u see a black label... ur jaw drops...

😉
 
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AdamK47 said:
3DMark 99 had the ability to save results to file. Somewhere I have a CD with the results from the systems I built from 99 to 02. I wish I could find it. It would be nice to reminisce and to compare those results with my current system.
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Wow, you really deserve respect for the care you take about recording stuff about your old systems. I wish I had been that attentive about my old PCs. 🙁
 
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