3DMark11
From the synthetic test results of 3DMark11, the new Core i7 3960X did not really help a lot of the performance. The score difference is merely a 100 points. In terms of cost/performance, it is not really that worthwhile if you are using a single graphics card.
In terms of SiSoft Sandra 2011 Arithmetic test, we can see a vast difference in performance. It registers a 42% improvement.
Likewise in CPU Multimedia test, we see a 53.8% performance jump in multimedia tests using Sandra 2011 multimedia test.
What about it’s memory performance using quad channel DDR3-1866 C9-9-9-24 ? From the chart, we can see that there is ample bandwidth, definitely it has broken the 30 mark, reaching for 42.6GB/s
As for Cinebench 11.5, the CPU score shoots up to 10.6, which is 54% faster than it’s predecessor.
Conclusion
This simple introduction gives you an idea about the performance of the new Intel Core i7 Sandy Bridge-E processor on the new Intel X79 chipset. This is the highest end processor to be released soon. As it is priced at a high of USD 990, it is too pricey for that performance jump unless you really need that data crunching power.
Although the new platform is powerful, you have to fork out more cash to purchase a better cooler to reach 4.5GHz-5GHz. Quad channel memory kits won’t be cheap either.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to cost vs performance. For me, I shall wait a while or consider the AMD platform as it offers better value.