Intel Core i7-4960X Reviews are In

[TangoWhiskey9]

Saw Anand's piece and he does not like the platform: AnandTech | Intel Core i7 4960X (Ivy Bridge E) Review

Tom's seems to think it's a good platform and calls it a salvation: Is Ivy Bridge-E An Enthusiast’s Salvation? - Intel Core i7-4960X Review: Ivy Bridge-E, Benchmarked

Wanted opinions from the STH crowd as I think we have many fewer 15 year old overclockers here.

 

[Aluminum]

Sit n wait

Saw Anand's piece and he does not like the platform: AnandTech | Intel Core i7 4960X (Ivy Bridge E) Review

Tom's seems to think it's a good platform and calls it a salvation: Is Ivy Bridge-E An Enthusiast̢۪s Salvation? - Intel Core i7-4960X Review: Ivy Bridge-E, Benchmarked

Wanted opinions from the STH crowd as I think we have many fewer 15 year old overclockers here.

Overpriced top model + no ECC support = no sale.

16xx series are the only single socket 2011s worth looking at, and top bins are almost always a suckers bet:

$1k epeen cpu + some tweaker $400 'gamer' 4x SLI motherboard
or
$500 barely slower cpu + $500 motherboard that includes SAS and 10GbE controllers

Which one makes sense for a home server that comes out of your own wallet?
The review sites always get the top bins due to intel's marketing dept but if you pay attention to what the sensible reviewers build out of non-gifted parts notice what they pick


If you have Sandy E5s you'd have to be crazy to upgrade, but for new systems if the pricing stays in line you get better idle power consumption and slightly higher IPC, win-win.

Unfortunately I suspect these will have a "new product" price premium for a little while.

 

[Patrick]

I tend to agree with Chris on here (we are actually very similar on how we view a lot of the new products.)

I do think the ~$500 segment is awesome.

Let's put it this way. I have plenty of processors sitting around. In my system, I have been using the i7-3930K. Right price, right features. You can overclock and get similar performance to the desktop parts. You have lots more RAM and PCIe lanes available. The only reason I am using the i7 is because the 1600 series was not available at that point.

 

[Biren78]

I voted - can I have a sticker?

 

[Scout255]

The only real advantage of this over a Xeon E5 is the ability to overclock. It would appear you can take these things to around 4.3-4.5ghz base clock with low end water cooling which is not possible with the Xeon.

WIth that said, you do lose the ECC abilities which is a major bummer.

Also, eventhough it is a 1K chip, that is about the same price as a E5-1660 (6 cores, 3.3 Ghz base w/ Xeon VS 6 Cores 3.5 Ghz w/ the I7). The one step down is a similar comparasin (6C / 3.4Ghz VS 6C 3.3 Ghz E5-1650 at around 500ish)

Then again, the V2 xeons may be introduced at different price brackets... who knows....

 

[Jeggs101]

Is the question i7-4960X or the sub $600 parts? I'd say the $1K 6-core is stupid. LGA2011 especially if you want high-end onboard devices is the way to go no doubt.

 

[MiniKnight]

The world is moving to tablets + convertibles, high-end workstations and servers. The low end desktop based on Haswell is dead.

 

[spazoid]

As Anand puts it, this is for people that need one of more of the following:
1) More than 4 cores,
2) More than 4 DIMM slots,
3) More than 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes

I just don't see why anyone would buy into the x79 platform at this point in time.

 

[TangoWhiskey9]

64GB of RAM!

I wish Intel let you use ECC/ Reg DIMMs on the X79 and with core i7. If I could overclock a i7 and use 8* 16GB Reg DIMMs that would find a nice niche.

 

[cactus]

Halo products make sense from a marketing standpoint, but X79 platform is never going to sell huge. Lifting the 32GB limit on 1150 would have been nice. 16x PCIe is plenty for a mid range video card and QDR card. I do wish there was some competition in the high end workstation market to bring down the xeon 2011 prices.