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SB-E Review

What is new is the addition of the "CPU Strap" - though it is called different things in different motherboard BIOSes. This is essentially a new multiplier added to the Sandy Bridge-E processor that allows the BCLK to be set higher than it could be on Sandy Bridge. If you have overclocked with SNB previously, you know that pushing beyond the 100 MHz BCLK was very difficult: if you could get 107-108 MHz you were doing very well. With the CPU Strap, you can now actually run at higher BCLK settings.
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The reviewer concerns me because he seems blissfully unaware of the damage you can do to your CPU when adjusting the BCLK on SNB CPU's. I wonder if the same will be true with these new SE-E chips?
 
Plenty of reviews around now but for me I can't see this being a big seller. Like AMD Bulldozer I'll be completely honest about Intel's latest offering, I just don't see this being much of a successor to the i7-900s since they truly blew away everything at the time. In reality they were better for a good few years until Intel bought out Sandy Bridge, with the 3900s they seem to only really take advantage when the 2 extra cores are used and then you've got the fact that Ivy Bridge is just around the corner, it seems a rather big waste to spend out on a 3900s setup.
 
6 cores (12 HT) + quad channel memory support along ith 40PCIe lanes and PCIe gen3. To me thats a huge improvment ;).

Oh and they clock well too ;)

Not had a great deal of time to play but initial results look good :).

Stable4800.jpg
 
Id love one of these chips, been waiting on them, but just to much $$$ for me right now :(, iv reached a point in my life where my 6 core 1055t @ 4ghz is 'fast enough' :eek: :eek: :eek: god whats happened to me :( , I just need to complete my work in fast enough time nowadays.
 
Hi there

We've had a play with the Extreme too and 4.80GHz seem stable speed, I think 5GHz is possible but difficult to achieve, a good chip and good cooling required to make it so.
 
Just had a look at the review over on Anandtech...

In my opinion, i7 3960X and i7 3930K is over-killl for gamers that don't really do video-encoding etc. The i7 3820 "would seem to be" the perfect match for gamers with 4 cores, but there doesn't seem to be a K-version with the unlocked multiplier...so that's a turn-off. If Intel ain't releasing a K-version for their quad-core chips, then they are seriously trolling.
 
The 3930K looked a decent chip until I saw that the multiplier was limited to 40x, that means that the £800 3960K is the only one really worth considering over a 2700K but 300% the cost for 50% extra performance is not good value.
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/intel-core-i7-3960x-sandy-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive/3 said:
With Sandy Bridge E, overclocking changes a bit. The clock generator is still integrated into the chipset, however you're now able to send a multiple of its frequency to the CPU if you so desire. The options available are 100MHz, 125MHz, 166MHz and 250MHz.
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Does that mean that if you set 125Mhz with a 40 multiplier then you get 5ghz with everything running in spec?
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Just had a look at the review over on Anandtech...

In my opinion, i7 3960X and i7 3930K is over-killl for gamers that don't really do video-encoding etc. The i7 3820 "would seem to be" the perfect match for gamers with 4 cores, but there doesn't seem to be a K-version with the unlocked multiplier...so that's a turn-off. If Intel ain't releasing a K-version for their quad-core chips, then they are seriously trolling.
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My understanding was that the X58 and now the X79 are not really for gamers? I mean an i5 2500K is generally more than enough for gaming.

What I can't understand is not including a cooler at all? I always thought it was nice to have a retail cooler at least so the CPU is useful with a 3rd party one.
 
beejjacobs said:
My understanding was that the X58 and now the X79 are not really for gamers? I mean an i5 2500K is generally more than enough for gaming.
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Yea, 2500K in more than enough for SLI/Crossfire of current multiple high-end cards in general, but there are people that play a lot of CPU demanding games that are thread-limited (using 3 cores or less), which every bit of the extra speed would be benefitual as the CPU can still bottleneck high-end graphic set-up (i.e. WOW, Crysis). And let's not forget there are some gamers that wany quad-channel memory (for whatever reason) and the full x16 speed when running SLI/Crossfire.
 
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