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View Full Version : Hardwarecanucks Examines Intel's Sandy Bridge-E Core i7-3960X CPU


Lee Yuan Sheng
11-14-2011, 04:39 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/48210-intel-sandy-bridge-e-core-i7-3960x-cpu-review.html' target='_blank'>http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...cpu-review.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"The flagship Core i7-3690X Extreme Edition is a 32nm six-core/twelve-thread processor with a 3.3Ghz default clock, but which never ever dips below 3.6GHz and tops out at 3.9GHz in single and dual-threaded workloads. Accompanying these six cores is 15MB of L3 cache, the most of any desktop processor, and a new beefed up memory controller that features a quad-channel DDR3-1600 interface which is theoretically capable of 51.2GB/s of bandwidth."</em></p><p><em><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1321284733.usr15670.jpg" /></em></p><p>A Sandy Bridge 6 core CPU starting at 3.3 Ghz sounds impressively fast, but I am not sure many are willing to shell out the $990 list for it. I suppose it is only for the most hardcore users (or those whose work heavily depends on fast encoding of videos); for the rest of us, a nicely overclocked i5-2500K will do quite well for many things.</p>