Sandy Bridge E processors out today...

[Brandon J.F.]

Who's buying? I'm really tempted to pick up the i7-3960X.

The Intel X79 platform for socket LGA2011 processors proved that it is clearly the new enthusiast desktop platform for Intel. The Intel Core i7-3960X processor did a great job of showing just how far ahead Intel is when it comes to processor performance. AMD's new 'Bulldozer' processor series doesn't stand a chance against Intel's new 'Sandy Bridge-E' processors. The Intel Core i7-3960X is hands down the fastest processor that we have ever tested and used before. It is without a doubt the exotic super car of processors and with its commanding $990 suggested retail price it reserved for the select few that are willing to pay to have the best money can buy.

The Intel Core i7-3960X was remarkably fast on multi-threaded benchmarks and that is very good news for power users that really tax their systems with workloads like video encoding and decoding.

Benchmark Results: The x264 HD benchmark is very CPU intensive and it showed the Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E processor running at 194.4 FPS on the first pass and 61.2 FPS on the second pass. The Intel Core i7-3960X really eats this benchmark up and if you do a ton of video editing this is clearly the processor architecture that you need!

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1773/1/

And I'm thinking about pairing it with this:

MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 3072MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127589

And this:

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10Q-32GBXL

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231490

[Mark George]

I will almost definitely pull the trigger in the next few days. Anandtech has a mostly positive review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/i...high-end-alive. I'm working on a first-gen i7 overclocked to 3.3 GHz. It's still pretty awesome, but I want MORE awesome!

[Brandon J.F.]

I will almost definitely pull the trigger in the next few days. Anandtech has a mostly positive review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/i...high-end-alive. I'm working on a first-gen i7 overclocked to 3.3 GHz. It's still pretty awesome, but I want MORE awesome!

Yeah, the reviews are quite good. It will overclock to at least 4.625GHz also. I can't wait to hear how this handles R3Ds! I'm in the market for "MORE awesome" as well :)

[Bruce Allen]

These should be great - but I was more interested in these (or their Xeon equivalents) when they were supposed to launch in July or so.

Now, I'm probably going to stick it out with my Sandy Bridge 4-core iMac... wait till next year to compare:
- 8 or 6-core Sandy Bridge Xeon (possibly two of them)
- overclocked 6-core Sandy Bridge
- overclocked 4-core Ivy Bridge

Along with:
- next-gen nVidia and AMD gfx cards

I quite likely might end up with just an Ivy Bridge 4-core... with two or three very fast graphics cards and very fast storage. Also need to decide between Mac and PC (and PC will hopefully have Thunderbolt by that point?).

2012 should be fun!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Brandon J.F.]

All good points Bruce. This is a tough call. I really want Thunderbolt support, but I don't want to wait til March or April (or later?) to get it. Any idea when the Sandy Bridge E Xeons are due out? They are going to be 8 cores. I am leaning towards jumping on this new chip and then upgrading to Ivy Bridge E late 2012 or early 2013. From what I've read, the Ivy Bridge E chips are likely going to be swappable with the Sandy Bridge E chips so upgrading will mean just buying the new chip. Granted that won't help me with Thunderbolt support, but still...

[Roberto Lequeux]

With 8 slot motherboards you can go with 4GB sticks and save, still end up with 32GB. Or double that if you felt the need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131801

[Bruce Allen]

All good points Bruce. This is a tough call. I really want Thunderbolt support, but I don't want to wait til March or April (or later?) to get it. Any idea when the Sandy Bridge E Xeons are due out? They are going to be 8 cores. I am leaning towards jumping on this new chip and then upgrading to Ivy Bridge E late 2012 or early 2013. From what I've read, the Ivy Bridge E chips are likely going to be swappable with the Sandy Bridge E chips so upgrading will mean just buying the new chip. Granted that won't help me with Thunderbolt support, but still...

Sounds like a good plan, Brandon!

Sandy Bridge Xeons should follow very soon but price/performance is never particularly good. Be interesting to see how well the 8-core ones perform but I'm guessing they're clocked a lot lower? Overclocked 6-core should rock.

Main reason I want Thunderbolt is I anticipate going from laptop to desktop a lot near the end of 2012 - and being able to unplug a fast GPU and Blackmagic video card from my desktop and take it with me for on-set DaVinci appeals to my penny-pinching sensibilities :)

That said, just having good old PCIe cards is still a great method and once you start counting the costs of Thunderbolt cables etc this is more cost-effective than it appears!

And Sandy Bridge E -> Ivy Bridge E sounds smart, yes! Very interested to see if Ivy Bridge E / Xeon schedule is similarly delayed or if it'll come out in 2012?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Tom Lowe]

Is there an 8-core version of this CPU coming out? I am not asking about Xenon.

[Brandon J.F.]

Is there an 8-core version of this CPU coming out? I am not asking about Xenon.

From what I've read the Xeon will be the only 8-core version.

[David Rasberry]

6 cores for $600 seems like a real good deal for the lower priced version. Build a pretty decent system for between $2k and $3k.