Intel Core i7-4960X Ivy Bridge-E CPU Review

Cinebench

Cinebench is a popular multithreaded 3D rendering benchmark that gives a good indication of a processor’s real-world performance. We were only able to pull 994 points at stock, putting it over 100 points behind the included 3930K test system which is a strange result that probably comes from other differences between the two systems. Overclocking though puts us in a much better position at the top with a score of 1285. We were even able to beat out the 12 core Xeon which is quite impressive.

PCMark 8

PCMark 8, like 3DMark, is a full system test but puts more emphasis on the CPU and memory. Stock, our system scored a 4055, better than 88% of all results. This is fine and dandy but that means there are still 12% that are beating us, and that doesn’t sit well with an enthusiast. So we apply our overclock and watch our score shoot up 11.6%, putting us in the top 1% of all systems ever tested. That’s more like it.

Photoshop

To test real-world performance again, we turned to a Photoshop CS6 benchmark which tests a host of different features and gives an output on how long each test took. We added each test up to give us the total time it took to complete all tests. Our results were 167.3 seconds at stock and 130.3 seconds overclocked, giving us a 22% increase from our 25% overclock.

SiSoft Sandra

SiSoft Sandra is another suite capable of testing almost every part of a system. We again focused on the CPU with the processor arithmetic benchmark. Here our 4960X at stock (red) pulled 168.7 GIPS and 119 GFLOPS, putting it solidly ahead of any of the competition. Our overclock gave us a 17% and 20% increase respectively, stretching our lead even further.