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Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition - Sandy Bridge-E has Arrived

By Wong Chung Wee & Vijay Anand - 14 Nov 2011

Results - Far Cry 2 & Battlefield Bad Company 2

Results - Far Cry 2 & Battlefield Bad Company 2

The Sandy Bridge-E CPU came up tops in the Battlefield benchmark, but it was closely trailed by the AMD FX-8150, a surprising comeback from taking the backseat for most of the tests. However,on Far Cry 2, things returned back to normal for the AMD contingent as the Intel Sandy Bridge processors took the lead and was even outperforming the Core i7-3960X by  4.5%.

Of course we're purposely testing these game benchmarks at settings where the GPU isn't the bottleneck and to see if the CPU can scale any. More often than not, you would crank up the resolution or game quality settings to a level that's as playable as the graphics card can churn out decent frame rates. At those settings, you can be sure that as long as you've got a somewhat decent CPU, the GPU's capabilities matter a lot more than ever. As such, treat the findings on this page as a form of performance potential in games for different CPUs.

 

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8.5
  • Performance 8.5
  • Features 8.5
  • Value 7
The Good
Great performance for those who can wield its power
Easy to overclock
Frugal power consumption
Integrated 40-lane PCIe controller with Gen 3 support
The Bad
Very expensive
No bundled cooler
Quad-channel memory architecture offers little advantage to enthusiasts
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