Overclocking
At stock we can see the Core i7 4960X uses 22nm technology, has a 130W TDP and is codename Ivy Bridge-E. The CPU runs at stock 3.6GHz, Turbos up to 4GHz and Intel speed-steps as low as 1.2GHz when idling to save power.
Overclocking for me is not about pushing a CPU as far as it can go but about pushing a CPU to a point where you’ve got the maximum sustainable overclock that balances clock speed, stability and voltages for a 24/7 usage scenario. For us we reached that point at 4.5GHz. We thought 1.375 volts at 4.6GHz was an achievable target but even at 1.425 volts 4.6GHz wasn’t playing ball, requiring 1.45 volts to be stable at 4.6GHz which is just too high in my opinion. We dropped back to 4.5GHz and dropped the voltage back to 1.4volts with high load line calibration to achieve what we think is the sweet-spot 24/7 overclock of 4.5GHz. You could probably get that voltage down to about 1.375-1.385 volts with a bit of tweaking and tuning in the advanced BIOS settings of high end motherboards like the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme but we didn’t have time for that.
We were able to achieve higher than 4.5GHz, up to 4.7GHz stable. However it required a scorching hot 1.5 volts which isn’t sustainable, even with our Corsair H100i things were getting too toasty for my liking. The Core i7 4960X certainly doesn’t overclock as high in raw GHz terms as its predecessor the Core i7 3960X. That said with higher IPCs on the Core i7 4960X it should give better performance at lower clocks.
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.