LGA2011 Core i7-3960X

[Shmee]

Looks interesting, but I will certainly wait for reviews on OCing and performance before deciding to upgrade. For now I am happy with my 980x. Still, if they can bring back better OC features, this may be my next upgrade. Time will tell.

 

[dma0991]

Sandy Bridge-E to ship without cooler

The upcoming Core i7 processor from Intel, the 3820, 3930K and the 3960X will all ship without a cooler in the box. That said, Intel has decided to offer own brand coolers for the platform, it's just that they won't come in the box with the CPU. We can't really see why anyone would buy an Intel cooler over a third party cooler as not even Intel's high-end heatpipe cooler for its current and past Extreme Edition models were all that great. Some of the third party cooler makers will have products ready at launch, but worst case scenario, we might be looking at a cooler shortage at launch.

On top of this, we're hearing that although the rated TDP is 130W these beasts are consuming closer to 180W and that's without even overclocking them. In fact, according to PSU design guidance we've seen, Intel is telling power supply makers to make sure their Sandy Bridge-E PSUs can cope with a peak current of 23A on the 12V2 rail and based on an 80 percent or better efficiency rating of the PSU.

On top of all that it looks like the quad core 3820 model has been delayed and will arrive later than the 3930K and 3960X, although we don't know exactly when Intel intends to release it to the market. Intel is currently working on the C1 stepping and this should be what ships in the end unless there are any unforeseen issues with the latest stepping. So in other words, good news all around…

Can I have my BD shipped without a stock cooler too? 😀

 

[Meghan54]

Ugh. What happened to the days of the godly i7 920/930? $199 at Micro Center? OC to 4ghz easily... sigh.

Right now, those have been replaced by the 2500k for $179....and $40 off a motherboard (and MC's mb prices are almost the exact same as Newegg's, for the most part, if not cheaper in some instances.)

 

[OCGuy]

I highly doubt AMD will launch a better chip the following quarter...who the hell would buy the first BDs then?

 

[tweakboy]

That is weird. Intel was talking about 50mb of cache on L4 ,,,,, or L3 not sure. I read this forgot where.

If that is the case the Ivy will bring with it possibly with 50mb cache ?

 

[(sic)Klown12]

I highly doubt AMD will launch a better chip the following quarter...who the hell would buy the first BDs then?

AMD has a history of releasing a higher binned CPU a couple of months after the initial release. They did this with Phenom II X4, with the 955 coming out not too long after the 940, and then the X6 1100T being right on the heels of the 1090T.

 

[greenhawk]

Sandy Bridge-E to ship without cooler

not too suprising on the 3820 side of things. Guessing quality is good if intel are not interested in limiting the CPUs for the slowest version. But on the marketing side, also not suprised intel are wanting people to pay extra for the higher priced units. Guess there has been too much talk of people getting it.

As to the cooler, depends on numbers. Not expecing enough people to jump on the high end to cause any major issue with cooler supply. Ofcourse, if the numbers of 180W peak are correct, then a cooler with a large mass of copper will be popular to accomidate longer turbo/temp over shooting.

 

[nyker96]

I think 1366 users should just pass the sandy-e upgrade and go straight to 6-8core ivy bridge, since i7 920s are still quite good.

although these cpus when introduced will be undisputed champions. there will be almost nothing to touch it not even BD. this of course is my guess. I'd think they are 600-1000 a piece if AMD can't put up anything close to them.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Here is a article meant to stimulate your minds and a IQ check at the same time.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusive-sandy-bridge-e-to-ship-without-cooler/13296.html#ixzz1V1J5nadt

Sorry missed it was already posted .

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=31267

AMD will launch their BD line soon (well, hopefully) and Intel is aparently baking these babies for 4Q11 / 1Q12. Also, AMD (according to some rumors) are preparing higher performance versions of BD for a 1Q12 launch. Gentlemen, start your engines

Core i7-3960X
6 cores with hyper-thread (12 threads) @ 3.3 / Turbo @ 3.9
15MB of cache
130W

Core i7-3930K
6 cores with hyper-thread (12 threads) @ 3.2 / Turbo @ 3.8
12MB of cache
130W

Your thoughts

I don't care for $500+ CPUs.

Bulldozer won't compete with these either, so it's irrelevant to mention it. Bulldozer is Performance market and <$350.

 

[Nemesis 1]

The reason its in the performance market is because AMD failed to hit the highend . You make it sound like AMD was aiming for a midrange part. The reason Zacata is faster than Atom is thats what intel intended. LOL

 

[RussianSensation]

Your thoughts

Great for people who do video rendering / encoding and need to speed up tasks which will benefit from 12 threads where time = $$$. But the platform cost and $500+ for a 6-core CPU is not cheap.

Personally, I am waiting until a faster IPC processor comes out (say in 2013) and more programs start to use 6-8 threads before upgrading to a 6/8-core processor. Also, I'd like to be able to buy it for $220-325 max. So for this generation, no 6-core SB-E for me.

Still, more choice is always great for the market.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

The reason its in the performance market is because AMD failed to hit the highend . You make it sound like AMD was aiming for a midrange part. The reason Zacata is faster than Atom is thats what intel intended. LOL

The Performance market is part of the high-end.

In any case, I doubt I'm gonna spend more than $250 for a CPU because the point of diminishing returns gets high at around that mark.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think 1366 users should just pass the sandy-e upgrade and go straight to 6-8core ivy bridge, since i7 920s are still quite good.

You mean IB 6-8 core offerings on LGA2011? I thought IB is a socket 1155 part only?

Unless BD smashes SB-E, I am pretty sure that's not how Intel is going to roll. They like to have 50-60&#37; profit margins on their parts, and even more so on their ultra-high end platforms. So I pretty much expect IB to be a 4-core part for the entire LGA1155 platform life. I don't see Intel fitting a 6 and esp. 8 core on such a small socket as the 1155 both in terms of ability on 22nm and marketing strategy.

 

[Rifter]

You mean IB 6-8 core offerings on LGA2011? I thought IB is a socket 1155 part only?

Unless BD smashes SB-E, I am pretty sure that's not how Intel is going to roll. They like to have 50-60% profit margins on their parts, and even more so on their ultra-high end platforms. So I pretty much expect IB to be a 4-core part for the entire LGA1155 platform life. I don't see Intel fitting a 6 and esp. 8 core on such a small socket as the 1155 both in terms of ability on 22nm and marketing strategy.

I agree, ill be shocked if we see 6-8 core ivy on 1155. The top tier IB will be on 2011.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

You mean IB 6-8 core offerings on LGA2011? I thought IB is a socket 1155 part only?

Unless BD smashes SB-E, I am pretty sure that's not how Intel is going to roll. They like to have 50-60&#37; profit margins on their parts, and even more so on their ultra-high end platforms. So I pretty much expect IB to be a 4-core part for the entire LGA1155 platform life. I don't see Intel fitting a 6 and esp. 8 core on such a small socket as the 1155 both in terms of ability on 22nm and marketing strategy.

Yep. What I'm hoping for, though, is that we're able to get a ~5% IPC increase over Sandy Bridge along with more overclock-ability, like in the past.

Core 2 65nm: ~3.2-3.6GHz
Core 2 45nm: ~3.6-4GHz
Nehalem 45nm: ~3.8-4.2GHz
Nehalem (Westmere) 32nm: ~4.2-4.5GHz
Sandy Bridge: ~4.5-4.7GHz

You get the point. If the average CPU goes from reaching 4.5GHz to 4.7GHz that's pretty cool. As always, better samples can get around 200-500MHz higher than the average CPU.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Sandy Bridge-E to ship without cooler

Can I have my BD shipped without a stock cooler too? 😀

I'm not sure what to make of that. That actually sounds bad, like the CPUs have power issues, and so Intel is going to rely on enthusiasts having good cooling to handle it versus doing it themselves (and possibly getting negative publicity if it performs poorly or a lot of fan noise).

Let's hope that its more Intel is pushing for a big performance improvement and not any problems.

I think 1366 users should just pass the sandy-e upgrade and go straight to 6-8core ivy bridge, since i7 920s are still quite good.

although these cpus when introduced will be undisputed champions. there will be almost nothing to touch it not even BD. this of course is my guess. I'd think they are 600-1000 a piece if AMD can't put up anything close to them.

I think Ivy Bridge is going to just be 4 core. Its replacing Sandy Bridge. I'd expect they'd be more likely to spend the extra die space on beefing up the GPU and/or adding cache to help with memory for the GPU. I think Intel's plan is to put more cores on their higher end platform. I'd expect the performance Ivy Bridge to drop the 4 core variant and move to 6 and 8 cores.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Yep. What I'm hoping for, though, is that we're able to get a ~5% IPC increase over Sandy Bridge along with more overclock-ability, like in the past.

Core 2 65nm: ~3.2-3.6GHz
Core 2 45nm: ~3.6-4GHz
Nehalem 45nm: ~3.8-4.2GHz
Nehalem (Westmere) 32nm: ~4.2-4.5GHz
Sandy Bridge: ~4.5-4.7GHz

You get the point. If the average CPU goes from reaching 4.5GHz to 4.7GHz that's pretty cool. As always, better samples can get around 200-500MHz higher than the average CPU.

Low balling are we . I would expect the average to be 5ghz. Given what Intel has told us. I have 2 k series SBs here both overclock to 5 ghz @ 1.39 . Even tho one hasn't been checked for stability because I haven't any need to run it at higher than 4.5 ghz . and for what I use it for thats silly.

 

[Nemesis 1]

I'm not sure what to make of that. That actually sounds bad, like the CPUs have power issues, and so Intel is going to rely on enthusiasts having good cooling to handle it versus doing it themselves (and possibly getting negative publicity if it performs poorly or a lot of fan noise).

Let's hope that its more Intel is pushing for a big performance improvement and not any problems.



I think Ivy Bridge is going to just be 4 core. Its replacing Sandy Bridge. I'd expect they'd be more likely to spend the extra die space on beefing up the GPU and/or adding cache to help with memory for the GPU. I think Intel's plan is to put more cores on their higher end platform. I'd expect the performance Ivy Bridge to drop the 4 core variant and move to 6 and 8 cores.

sounds bad, like the CPUs have power issues, and so Intel is going to rely on enthusiasts having good cooling to handle it versus doing it themselves (and possibly getting negative publicity if it performs poorly or a lot of fan noise


You bet it sounds bad . considering we have SBs right now that are sweet on power usage . Either SB-E is differant than SB or these numbers are lies. SB started shipping 4 qt last year . So Intels new stepping went south for SB-e . 2 extra cores - IGP . BD is about to be released so a article like this now proves to be most interesting. Than these are server cups . If those power numbers are true Intel fell back to sleep .

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Low balling are we . I would expect the average to be 5ghz. Given what Intel has told us. I have 2 k series SBs here both overclock to 5 ghz @ 1.39 . Even tho one hasn't been checked for stability because I haven't any need to run it at higher than 4.5 ghz . and for what I use it for thats silly.

Yeah, except most people don't want to degrade their CPUs so much that in three years they're paperweights. If you want to keep your Sandy Bridge CPU for a long time try to keep it under 1.4V for 24/7 use. The farther, the better.

The average over-clock for an unlocked Sandy Bridge Core i5 or Core i7 is 4.5-4.6GHz. Some rare samples of CPUs go 200-500MHz higher than average, so that's that.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Yeah, SB is a superb OCer at less than recommended max voltages. Right now, I'm running 4.6 at 1.32V without a single issue for anything I do at present. Anyone running at 1.4V is simply greedy and has no problem replacing their chip in a year. Which is fine. I figure I'll upgrade to IB when it appears, since evidently Intel will be nice enough to release it for LGA1155.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Yeah, SB is a superb OCer at less than recommended max voltages. Right now, I'm running 4.6 at 1.32V without a single issue for anything I do at present. Anyone running at 1.4V is simply greedy and has no problem replacing their chip in a year. Which is fine. I figure I'll upgrade to IB when it appears, since evidently Intel will be nice enough to release it for LGA1155.

At 1.32V you shouldn't have any issues for at least three years if your temps are decent, so I wouldn't worry much.

I'm saving up for a 2500K and an AsRock P67 Extreme4 Gen3. 😀