Chipset & Motherboards, Overclocking And Cooling
The Core i7 4960X continues to use the same packaging as the Haswell Fourth generation Core series processors do.
Both the six core processors use the packaging on the right while the quad core Core i7 4820K uses the packaging on the left. All three processors come without cooling solutions.
Intel does of course offer up its own certified cooling solution – the Intel TS13X. This is made by Asetek and is a 120mm AIO water cooler capable of taming the Core i7 4960X and other Ivy Bridge-E processors.
The chipset design is identical to the current X79 chipset because it is the X79 chipset. The PCIe 3.0 is genuine PCIe 3.0 this time but apart from that no major changes spring to mind.
The core ratio on the Ivy Bridge-E K series processors now allows you to go up to 63, previously 57. There is also real-time core overclocking and tuning enabled.
Intel point out programs that the six cores and 12 threads of the Core i7 4960X will be able to take advantage of.
Intel is working hard to push its Xtreme Tweaking Utility with Ivy Bridge-E and is teaming up to integrate the software into the HWBot overclocking community.
As I already mentioned the Core i7 4960X is compatible with current X79 motherboards from all the big vendors listed above. In theory all X79 motherboards will support the Intel Core i7 4960X processors but will require BIOS updates.
As you’d expect the Ivy Bridge-E CPUs continue the trend of supporting Intel’s XMP profiling and support version 1.3.
As you say it’s something that an everyday user doesn’t need and those who do buy them, will all be about willy waving. The price of the chip coupled with the archaic X79 chipset renders it redundant anyway.
I agree to an extent, the lack of SATA III and USB 3.0 isn’t ideal. But then PCIe goes through the CPU so thats up to date. Board vendors can add marvell/asmedia SATA III/USB 3.0 implementations so its not really redundant.
It is useable but for the price you’re expected to pay, it really requires a new chipset. Marvell & Asmedia chips are just stopgaps at best.
For the price you’re expected to pay it should come with a Butler who sets the new CPU up for you and provides you with free ice cold beer.
That being said, It could be a cheaper, more cost effective alternative to Intel’s Xeon’s.
Why use a $200 AMD cpu against a $1000 intel one? why not use a 9590? or even a 12 core socket G34 AMD cpu for similar price?
The FX-8350 at 4.8GHz is better than an FX-9590. Why? Because the FX-9590 is 4.7GHz base clock and 5GHz turbo. It only goes to 5GHz turbo on one module, maybe you’ll get two if you’re lucky. Most of the time when all four modules are used the clock speed is 4.7GHz. As far as the socket G34 goes they are industrial/business grade CPUs. Not meant for consumers, it would be a pointless venture. Plus we’ve already established that anything more than four cores is barely utilised except in productivity. So 12 cores at 2.3GHz (on the top of the line Opteron 12 core model) will probably fare worse than 8 cores at 4.8GHz IMO.