Intel Core i7-6950X Broadwell-E Processor Review

CPU Benchmarks – Ashes of the Singularity, Cinebench, Handbrake, WPrime and WinRAR

Ashes of the Singularity

The Ashes of the Singularity CPU benchmark provides an excellent indication of a processor’s multi-threaded performance and I’ve been reliably informed that the game is capable of utilising the i7-6950X’s 10-cores to their full potential. At stock settings, the CPU outperforms the i7-5960X by a small margin and manages to uphold a good lead over the i7-5820K. Once overclocked, the processor records the highest CPU frame-rate thus far and just edges the previous flagship while having a 100MHz deficit. Of course, clock speed isn’t everything and instructions per clock (IPC) improvements should be taken into account.

Cinebench R15

In Cinebench, the i7-6950X absolutely destroys the competition when running the multi-threaded benchmark and greatly benefits from the 10-core configuration. The default frequency is able to easily pull ahead of an overclocked i7-5960X and offers a fantastic performance boost. When overclocked to 4.3GHz, the i7-6950X’s multi-threaded capabilities almost defy belief and upon seeing the result, I couldn’t stop smiling. The 2212 score is mindblowing and exceeded my initial expectations. As you can see, this makes the processor in a league of its own. On the other hand, the number of cores inhibits the CPU’s single-threaded performance and mainstream options like the i7-6700K fare much better. Even the older i7-4770K attains a better score than Intel’s new flagship at stock. Saying that, the overclock improves the performance considerably.

Handbrake

The CPU’s extra 2-cores come in handy when transcoding a 4K video file and reduces the time taken to a large degree versus the i7-5960X. In many industries, time is money so this may be enough of a reason for certain people to consider the processor as a worthwhile investment. Clearly, the CPU is tailored towards intense video workloads and it’s possible to achieve much quicker rendering times.

WPrime

As expected, the i7-6950X excels during the WPrime Pi calculation benchmark and at stock values it’s able to defeat an overclocked i7-5960X. This is an impressive feat and emphasises the additional performance possible from Intel’s premium desktop processor. Also, the 4.3GHz overclock extends its lead even further and becomes the first product to complete the 32M task in under 3 seconds.

WinRAR

Once again, the CPU performs admirably and compression times are greatly reduced compared to Intel’s previous flagship. As you can see, the i7-6950X’s default setup matches an overclocked i7-5960X while manually configuring the processor to 4.3GHz results in some fairly impressive gains.