INTEL CORE i7 5960X

More threads than a David lynch mini-series and just as powerful

There sure is a lot of silicon given over to the graphical components of most of today’s processors. Intel’s standard Haswell architecture throws millions of transistors at its HD graphics component, and AMD’s latest Kaveri chips are only a couple of percentage points from being a complete half-and-half split between processor and graphics.
      For us enthusiast-type folk, though more used to strapping a big shiny graphics card to our motherboard than relying on weak-heart integrated GPUs – that’s a lot of redundant die space we’re paying for. it also sounds like an awful lot of space we could be shoving extra CPU cores into, doesn’t it?
      And that’s exactly what intel’s high-performance CPU range has been doing for the last few years. The Extreme line of intel’s processors represents the pinnacle of its desktop chips, cramming in more cores than any desktop chip available. For the most part, anyway.
      But despite shrinking in production process, even the Extreme range has been stuck fast at six cores for a long while. That’s despite AMD already banging the octo-core drum – albeit to little effect – and intel’s own server parts rocking six cores and 12 threads over four years ago.
      Finally though, intel has decided to up the ante on its Extreme consumer chips and is giving us a bona fied eight-core processor with the top end of its new Haswell-E processors. the core i7 5960X is that chip, and is the fist octo-core chip with intel’s powerful core architecture squeezed inside.
      Well…kinda. You could have actually gone super-extreme with the previous sandy Bridge E generation of Extreme chips and dropped a super-expensive eight-core Xeon directly into a standard X79 desktop motherboard.
      Anyway, the Xeon E5 -2687W was a 32nm mega-chip. it gave us our fist taste of eight proper intel cores in one chip back in 2012, and in doing so engendered the disappointment of last generation’s ivy Bridge E chips, still stalling on six cores.
      Two and a bit years later we’ve fially got the i7 5960X and its unlocked multiplier giving us the full desktop eight-core, 16-thread monty. It’s running on the latest intel Haswell core architecture, the new micro-architecture design for the 22nm production process fist displayed by the ivy Bridge processors. Haswell debuted over a year ago, and in the intervening time has frimly cemented its place in the top desktop Pcs around, especially after the recent Devil’s canyon refresh.
      Now, though, Haswell E is set to take our high-end desktops to the next level, offering unprecedented processing performance.

Sweet 16

      Let’s take a closer look at this new CPU, then. We already know it’s rocking eight intel cores, and because this top chip is taking advantage of Hyper-threading that translates into a full 16 threads of processing power. We couldn’t help but break into a great big geeky grin watching the cinebench test split over 16 chunks and chew through the benchmark faster than anything we’d seen before.
      It’s also completely unlocked as any good Extreme Edition CPU should be – and contains a full 40 Pci e 3.0 lanes. What’s more, there’s a huge 20MB of cache. the only real let-down when you take a fist look at the specs, then, is that operating frequency.
      With a baseclock of just 3GHz and a turbo speed of up to 3.5GHz, it looks a little off the pace when you compare it with the 3.6GHz/4GHz  confiuration of the last ivy Bridge-E processor. We’ve also just had intel itself releasing the i7 4790k processor with a baseclock of 4GHz, which also serves to make this brand new, hyper-expensive CPU look somewhat lethargic in the clockspeed department.
      But that’s a little unfair, really – being able to run all eight of those cores at a turbo of 3.5GHz is nothing to be sniffed at and the lower baseclock is likely a result of making sure intel can produce reliable yields of these 22nm CPU dies, with all eight cores running stably. With a chip requiring more functional physical cores in a die, there’s a greater chance of it dropping out of the manufacturing process with one of them functioning sub-optimally. Pulling the clockspeed back a touch, then, means intel has better odds of producing these expensive parts in a decent volume.
      As we’ve said, the new Haswell-E chips are all unlocked, and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to get a hefty performance boost by upping those clockspeeds in your motherboard of choice.
      And the new motherboards play a pivotal role in this new high-performance story too; the processors themselves are only one part of it. Haswell-E is a whole new computing platform, offering a genuinely different proposition over the standard quad-core setups and even over the last generation of Extreme intel platforms. Accompanying the new Haswell-E processors is the X99 platform and with that comes support for new storage interfaces and a brand new standard in system memory: DDr4.
      The new memory standard remains in the same quad-channel configuration as intel has used with the other lG a 2011-based platforms, but offers a considerably lower operating voltage than DDr3. Most quad-channel kits are running at 1.5v, but the modules we’ve been testing are more than happy running at serious speeds with just a 1.2v base. With the X99 chipset, DDr4 RAM also starts out with a 2,133MHz baseclock, which is a good deal quicker than the 1,866MHz of the ivy Bridge-E generation of processors.

Testing Times

      As a platform then, the new Haswell E setup can become the base for a desktop machine with more power in it than ever before possible. and that’s borne out by the benchmarks we’ve thrown at our test system this month.
      Running the core i7 5960X against the previous ivy Bridge-E champion-chip, the core i7 4960X, we’re seeing at least a 25 per cent boost in multi-threaded applications. We’ve never seen the X264 benchmark completed so quickly: we used to have time to go off and make a cup of tea while waiting for it to fiish.
      Compared with the latest Devil’s canyon i7 4790k we’re looking at a performance uplift of well over 50 percent. Of course you’d kind of hope for some extra performance considering the extra core count, but as the 5960X is also running almost a full 1GHz slower that’s still pretty impressive stuff.
      And when you start to level up the clockspeeds with a little judicious waving of the overclocking stick, the new Haswell-E chip really pulls away from either of the older processors. With all three CPUs running at their maximum overclock there’s a much bigger difference between their relative performance. Using the cinebench rendering benchmark, the core i7 4960X is now 38 per cent slower than the top core i7 Haswell-E and even running at a breakneck 4.7GHz the core i7 4790k is a staggering 85 per cent slower than the new king.
      So what did we manage to hit with our i7 5960X, then? it took a little work, but we were able to get a rock-solid system running with the asus X99 Deluxe motherboard at 4.375GHz. try as we might though, we couldn’t get it stable at anything higher. But we’re not professional overclockers, not by any stretch of the imagination, and we’re confient you’ll be able to fid some 5960Xs going quicker in the wild.

Even running at a Breakneck 4.7GHz the 4790k is 85% slower

      One of the really impressive things outside of the raw performance of the Haswell-E is the fact that it manages to do it all within such a comfortable power and thermal envelope. at stock speeds – thanks to that lowish baseclock – the i7 5960X runs almost 20°c cooler than the top i vy Bridge-E cPU with both at 100 per cent load. i t also operates with a peak platform power draw some 30 watts lower than the 4960X. that levels off when you start overclocking, where the Haswell-E starts to get a bit more power hungry at peak performance, but impressively it still manages to run cooler than the 4960X when both are at their maximum frequency.

Gaming Beast?

      For a productivity machine, then, chewing through raw image and video fies or doing any other form of brutal number-crunching, the core i7 5960X is the pinnacle of desktop processors. i t may be super-expensive, but the time it could save you rendering scenes and such might just prove worthwhile.
      But as the best setup for gaming? that’s a tougher ask. i n tel’s supporting materials talk about performance boosts from the extra multi-threading capabilities of the Haswell E octo-core, but when it comes to fiing our testing suite across its bows we’ve barely noticed any improvements over the standard Haswell platform.
      That wasn’t necessarily a big surprise when it comes to the Unreal Engine 3 likes of Bioshock, but we were hoping for a bit of multi-threaded lovin’ from Battlefild 4’s Frostbite 3 engine. the core i7 5960X does have a slight edge when you start to throw multiple GPUs into the mix, but certainly not enough of an edge to make a hardened gamer suddenly think the extra £500-600 was worthwhile for a new cPU.
      So, no, the i7 5960X isn’t the gaming messiah chip we might have been hoping for. But that isn’t necessarily it for the Haswell-E platform in terms of gaming, because there is another option. traditionally the lower end of the Extreme range has been a quad-core, offering not much else above the standard platform, but with Haswell-E that bottom chip is a hex-core cPU costing not much more than a 4790k. the i7 5820k could be a contender for the absolute best gaming cPU around – stay tuned for more on that one.
      As it is though, the 5960X is an outstanding processor. the last eight-core chip we saw in an i n tel desktop was a pretty middling Xeon that cost £1,500; this chip is around half the price and a good deal quicker too. You still have to pay through the nose for this sort of processing power, of course, but if you think you can make good use of those 16 threads, the i7 5960X is worth every penny.