H.264 Transcoding – GraySky 5.0
Holy media transcoding power! It far outpaces any Extreme processors of the past. This can all be attributed to the processor’s AVX performance as well as a helping hand from the new X99 platform (and memory) supporting it.
7-Zip – CPU Compression Benchmark
Here, we can see more cores equals more performance. If you’re using your Core i7-5960X in a project that requires the type of crunching that file compression requires, you’ll be finished archiving your huge GB file long before the rest of the processors.
Games – Maximum Details
Using just a few game titles cranked all the way to max settings, the Core i7-5960X’s PCI Express performance was given a little testing to make sure there aren’t any driver or hardware anomalies. Okay, so maybe I just wanted to play a couple rounds. Is that wrong?
Temperatures and Overclocking
Stock cooling performance while under the new Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate, which is one of the first 360mm all in one units to hit the market, was 60 C on the highest core temp. Overclocked, temps topped out at 80+ C which isn’t bad.
We used two methods to see where the Core i7-5960X maxes out using a maximum 1.3 voltage limit we recommend to protect your $1K processor and keep our Water 3.0 Ultimate relatively quiet. That established, ASUS’ new Dual Intelligent Processor 5 program found 4.6 GHz at 1.29 volts to be acceptably stable. Manually tuned, I found the processor solid at 4.6 GHz using 1.3 volts as well. TPU voltage control was set to Extreme.
Reports from the battlefront are that this is par for the course. What did that do for performance? See for yourself…
Overclocked to 4.6 GHz, the Core i7-5960x improved the CineBench R15 rendering score noticeably. It’s pretty cool watching 16 threaded blocks cut through the benchmark so quickly.
Finally, the Core i7-5960X scores slightly better in 7-Zip. It’s evident that at some point, going from 3.5 GHz stock to 4.6 GHz overclocked levels off and doesn’t make a huge difference. Still, you get the idea of what to expect.
Final Thoughts
As usual, multi-core power reigns supreme, at least in CPU intensive tasks. The Intel Core i7-5960X is a content creation tool at heart, but there’s nothing wrong with using it to build a monster system for gaming as well. Professional content creators and coders will find it’s 8 core/16 thread processing power extremely useful in rendering, compiling, or transcoding. Your projects will get finished so much more quickly than ever before.
But this shouldn’t stop extreme enthusiasts who need the best of the best at any cost, from jumping all over Haswell-E and the X99 platform to get full speed PCI Express support for multiple graphics cards like NVIDIA Titan Zs or AMD R9 295 x2 video cards. The bottom line is that the platform can multitask better than ever, and takes on any task with ease. And from our benchmark results, it’s clearly, the fastest processor that Intel has ever produced for the enthusiast market.
The Intel Core i7-5960X only has one challenger of sorts, and that would be its Xeon cousins in the workstation/server line up. Unfortunately, AMD has nothing that will come close, which isn’t so great for the spirit of competition. Compared to the Xeon variants however, the Intel Core i7-5960X will only cost you $999 US, whereas the closest Xeon processors push $1200+ US at checkout. Although you do get optimizations and additional testing that makes a Xeon a better choice if you are in an environment where undisputed uptime and availability is crucial.
In the end, Intel’s Core i7-5960X has proven to be top dog in the desktop enthusiast market, and we can’t wait to see what the Intel X99 chipset brings us in terms of supporting features and capabilities. It may not be a platform for everyone, but it certainly is our choice for “High Performance” in the desktop market.
Pros
- Epic 8 core – 16 thread computing
- Improved thermal design works!
- Overclockable up to 4.6 GHz (so far)
- Best of class performance
Cons
- Premium performance at a premium cost
Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
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