Intel Core i7 3960X (Sandy Bridge E) Review: Keeping the High End Alive
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 14, 2011 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i7
- Sandy Bridge
- Sandy Bridge E
Power Consumption
At idle, the 3960X's power consumption is barely discernible from the 2600K. Under load however, Sandy Bridge E can draw significantly more power. We measured 35% more power draw over a 2600K. The added power consumption makes sense. The chip has more cores and a larger cache, without introducing a more power efficient architecture or a new manufacturing process.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
163 Comments
View All Comments
Tchamber - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
I think it's funny that so many people hated on AMD for making a 2B transistor count CPU that ran at 125watts, but no one says anything about Intel making 2.27B, and a CPU that runs HOTTER than FX's 125watts. Seems to me there are Intel fanboys too :) I supposed I'm one too, I'm running a Core i7 970.joaopft - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link
These SB-E chips have been cobbled from the Xeon chips. Now Intel is cost-slashing on the enthusiast market? They must be insane! This core fused parts are an infamy to any enthusiast. Adding injury to infamy, SB-E's price/performance is below SB. Also, performance/watt numbers for this platform are not good at all. Intel is facing stiff competition from... Intel? No doubt it may be tempeded to kill the 2600K and the 2700K, when Ivy Bridge debuts.danacee - Monday, December 26, 2011 - link
I am really annoyed by the incredible short sightedness of Anands recent microarchitechture articles. The reviews here at time comes off as pretentious bile trying to forget the fact that the primary readers of this website are hardware enthusiast, not people in charge of the IT department budgets at illustrious companies!Would it really kill you to go into a bit more detail of X79 versus X58 era cpus and their per mhz scaling and power consumption? Because I can guarantee you NO ONE who owns an 1155 platform is giving x79 a second look, 90% of people upgrading to this platform are from the quad core X58, or even p35/x38/x48 era and you completely ignored us.