The Sandy Bridge-E launch is tomorrow but benchmarks on the top of the range i7 3960X have shown up on a Chinese website leaking information about gaming performance of the new X79 based platform. However, for all you Sandy Bridge owners you may be slightly disappointed in a similar vain to Bulldozer. The 3960X is pitted against the much loved 2600K and comes out with a lack of credibility. As you can see below when it comes to gaming the 3960X is on equal footing with the 2600K but it can outpace the 2600K in applications that are more multi threaded, like Cinebench although it pays for that with much higher power consumption.
Although these benchmarks should be taken with a pinch of salt since they are a leak, a number of credible sources such as TechPowerUp and Softpedia have touted these as being reliable so it would seem there isn’t much benefit to Sandy Bridge owners in upgrading especially in the way of gaming performance, although comparisons with X58 would put the new X79 platform on much better ground. But in relative terms for the price/performance and power/performance ratios you get here Sandy Bridge still looks like the one to beat until Ivy Bridge next year.
