Intel’s Core i7 3960X is largely ahead of the 990X

Intel recently did some tests with their upcoming Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition and decided to release some of the scores from the testing to give us a taste of what’s coming.

Their test was done with the processor clocked at 3.3GHz with six core and twelve threads along 15MB of cache against Intel’s actual best, the Core i7 990X Extreme Edition, clocked at 3.46GHz, six hyperthreaded cores and 12MB of cache.

Some of the test include Cinebench 11.5 where the 3960X scored 13% better than the 990X, Pov Ray 3.7 resulted in 12% improvement while ProShow Gold 4.5 displayed 15% better performances.

Where the 3960X really shines is with 3Dmark 11 Physics, where the upcoming Intel processor scored 36% better than the 990X.

Gathering the numbers we can expect an improvement averaging around 15%.

However that’s not all, you may like to know that in the memory benchmarks it’s a real beast. If you thought the 3960X was eating the 990X in the previous tests, it’s ripping it to piece in this field.

With its improved memory controller and in Sandy 2011B, the 3960X scored 111% better in memory bandwidth performance test as well as 92% better in multimedia performance FP subtest thanks to the AVX influence.

With Bulldozer being some kind of failure for AMD and a disappointment for the fans, Intel’s upcoming processors may bury its rival very deep into the ground.

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