Begin NSA intercept. Time: 21:30 09-02-13. Station: Medina/Lackland RSOC. San Antonio, TX. Source feed: Time Warner Cable, MKC-CPE-65-26-res.rr.com.

Hey, Jamaal, check this out. This computer nerd guy is doing another review of a CPU chip. Been doing them for over a decade, every time they come out with a new one, like clockwork. This has gotta be, like, number 150 or so. I don’t know how he does it.

What’s that? Now, don’t get all prissy on me for looking in on civilians. Everybody snuck a peek at that Nebraska cheerleader, even you. Things changed when Hanley got the commendation from Biden for that one. Besides, this guy’s review will be completely public in a few hours. What’s the harm?

This is about the latest high-end chip from Intel. World’s fastest or something like that. He hasn’t put any text in it yet, but all the pictures and speed graphs are in there. These reviews are totally formula, kinda rote. I’ve kinda been following this stuff, thinking about upgrading my gaming rig. Betcha I can tell you what he’d say about it just from what’s in there now.

Code name Key products Cores/ modules Threads Last-level cache size Process node (Nanometers) Estimated transistors (Millions) Die area (mm²) Gulftown Core i7-9xx 6 12 12 MB 32 1168 248 Sandy Bridge-E Core-i7-39xx 8 16 20 MB 32 2270 435 Ivy Bridge-E Core-i7-49xx 6 12 15 MB 22 1860 257 Vishera FX 4 8 8 MB 32 1200 315

Yeah, look, it’s Ivy Bridge-E. Basically a server chip with more cores and cache that’s been converted into an expensive desktop part. This one is a drop-in replacement for an older chip, Sandy Bridge-E—same socket, but built with a newer manufacturing method.

Hmm. Last time, they used an eight-core chip and disabled a couple of cores and some cache. This time, they’re showing a native six-core part with less cache. That’s weird. The chip size is way down, too. Even the transistor count. I wonder what Jenkins in IT thinks about that.

Dials extension.

Hey, Jenkins. This is Blanda up in observation. Quick question for your computer-geeky brain to answer for me. What do you think of a 22-nanometer Xeon chip that has fewer cores and less cache than the 32-nm one? Like six and 15MB versus eight and 20MB. Would they really do that?

Uh hum. Really. Lots cheaper? Hmm. Gotcha.

Seriously? Coming out soon? Haha, wow.

Ok, thanks, man. See you at the fantasy draft tomorrow night. Blandanna is going all the way this year!

Hangs up.

Ok, so get this. Jenkins says the guys down the hall from him have been testing a 22-nm Xeon chip—pre-release thing we can’t talk about—that has twice the everything inside of that Ivy Bridge-E. Man, some of those extreme builder dudes are gonna be pissed if they drop nearly a grand on one of those six-core chips and find out later about this other one. I guess Intel thinks people don’t need more than six cores in a desktop system. I see the logic, but wow. You’ve gotta think some of those guys would pay even more for the bragging rights.

Pretty sure the 4770K’s TDP is actually 84W, not 95W. Source: Intel.

Speaking of that, check out these prices. The psychology is almost as fascinating as whatever was happening with that rancher dude in Wyoming with the chickens and the laser pointer. Still can’t believe we got that on tape.

You can pay nearly $1K for the top dog, the Core i7-4960X, that tops out at 4GHz, or you can pay just over half that for the same basic thing with 3MB less cache and a 0.1GHz lower peak clock. And these things come unlocked, so you can set your own clock frequencies in the BIOS. Seriously, no one should buy the 4960X when the 4930K exists, but you know people will. I’d kill to know the sales breakdowns on those.

Well, that’s hyperbole. I might put out some feelers with our friends up in CORPINT, though. Kinda interesting.

Man, looking over that table, I just don’t see much difference between this new 4960X and the Core i7-3960X that came out two years ago. Both have six cores, twelve threads, 15MB last-level cache, and a 130W power envelope. The new chip’s base clock is like 300MHz higher, and its peak clock is 100MHz higher, but that’s about it. Intel even did a 3970X last year, with a 3.5GHz base and 4GHz peak, so we’re talking baby steps here.

The only other change I see in the table is that 1866MHz memory now has the official blessing. That’s nice, but the X79 already has quad memory channels. I wonder if it matters.

That last, “cheap” model, the 4820K, is priced below the top regular desktop CPU, the 4770K. The 4770K is a newer architecture, but it kinda has less of everything else, like cache, memory channels, and power headroom. I’ll betcha the 4770K is still faster for most stuff.

I guess the 4820K exists as kind of an entry point into the X79 platform. Get a load of those numbers. Four memory channels at almost 15 GB/s each, 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes coming straight off the CPU. That’s, like, more bandwidth than the NSA backbone.

Well, as far as Congress knows.

The X79 still looks nice on paper, but it is getting kinda old. No USB 3.0? Only two SATA 6Gbps ports? Kinda weaksauce for 2013, really—and those Haswell systems look awfully nice. In fact, let me give you Blanda’s big list of reasons to build an X79-based system and the percentage of people who fit each one:

Need more cores, cache, and memory bandwidth for a real application. (2%)

Need higher memory capacity for actual workloads. (4%)

Need more PCIe lanes for multi-GPU configs. (1%)

Thinks you need more PCIe lanes for multi-GPU configs. (12%)

Need more knobs for extreme overclocking. (5%)

Bragging rights, money > sense. (51%)

Clicked the wrong button on Falcon Northwest online store. (27%)

Really, people make less sense the more you know about them. Anybody who works here knows what I mean.

Our testing methods

This page is just boilerplate. He think he’s all fancy showing exactly how he tested everything, but nobody reads it. You should see the number of e-mails he gets—even from inside of chip companies, no joke—asking basic questions about the test setup.

The test systems were configured like so:

Processor

AMD FX-4350 AMD FX-6350 AMD

FX-8350

AMD A10-5800K AMD A10-6700 AMD A10-6800K Motherboard Asus

Crosshair V Formula MSI

FM2-A85XA-G65 North bridge 990FX A85

FCH South bridge SB950 Memory size 16 GB (2 DIMMs) 16 GB

(2 DIMMs) Memory type AMD

Performance Series DDR3 SDRAM AMD

Performance Edition DDR3 SDRAM Memory speed 1600 MT/s 1600 MT/s Memory timings 9-9-9-24

1T 9-9-9-24

1T Chipset drivers AMD

chipset 13.4 AMD

chipset 13.4 Audio Integrated SB950/ALC889 with Realtek 6.0.1.6873 drivers Integrated A85/ALC892 with Realtek 6.0.1.6873 drivers OpenCL

ICD AMD APP

1124.2 AMD APP

1124.2 IGP

drivers – Catalyst

13.5 beta 2

(Trinity) Catalyst 13.101 RC1 (Richland)

Processor

Core i3-3225 Core i5-3470 Core

i7-2600K Core i7-3770K Core i7-4770K Core i7-3970X Core

i7-4960X Motherboard Asus

P8Z77-V Pro Asus

Z87-Pro P9X79

Deluxe North bridge Z77

Express Z87

Express X79

Express South bridge Memory size 16 GB (2 DIMMs) 16 GB (2 DIMMs) 16 GB (4 DIMMs) Memory type Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 SDRAM Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 SDRAM Corsair Vengeance DDR3 SDRAM Memory speed 1600 MT/s 1600 MT/s 1600 MT/s 1866 MT/s Memory timings 9-9-9-24

1T 9-9-9-24

1T 9-9-9-24

1T 9-10-9-27

1T Chipset drivers INF

update 9.4.0.1017 iRST 12.5.0.1066 INF

update 9.4.0.1017 iRST 12.5.0.1066 INF

update 9.4.0.1017 iRST 12.5.0.1066 Audio Integrated Z77/ALC892 with Realtek 6.0.1.6873 drivers

Integrated Z87/ALC1150 with Realtek 6.0.1.6873 drivers Integrated X79/ALC898 with Realtek 6.0.1.6873 drivers OpenCL

ICD Intel SDK

for OpenCL 2013 Intel SDK

for OpenCL 2013 Intel SDK

for OpenCL 2013

They all shared the following common elements:

Hard drive Kingston

HyperX SH103S3 240GB SSD Discrete graphics XFX

Radeon HD 7950 Double Dissipation 3GB with Catalyst 13.5 beta 2 drivers OS Windows 8

Pro Power supply Corsair

AX650

Thanks to Corsair, XFX, Kingston, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, Intel, and AMD for helping to outfit our test rigs with some of the finest hardware available. Thanks to Intel and AMD for providing the processors, as well, of course.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

Some further notes on our testing methods:

The test systems’ Windows desktops were set at 1920×1080 in 32-bit color. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled in the graphics driver control panel.

We used a Yokogawa WT210 digital power meter to capture power use over a span of time. The meter reads power use at the wall socket, so it incorporates power use from the entire system—the CPU, motherboard, memory, graphics solution, hard drives, and anything else plugged into the power supply unit. (The monitor was plugged into a separate outlet.) We measured how each of our test systems used power across a set time period, during which time we encoded a video with x264.

After consulting with our readers, we’ve decided to enable Windows’ “Balanced” power profile for the bulk of our desktop processor tests, which means power-saving features like SpeedStep and Cool’n’Quiet are operating. (In the past, we only enabled these features for power consumption testing.) Our spot checks demonstrated to us that, typically, there’s no performance penalty for enabling these features on today’s CPUs. If there is a real-world penalty to enabling these features, well, we think that’s worthy of inclusion in our measurements, since the vast majority of desktop processors these days will spend their lives with these features enabled.

The tests and methods we employ are usually publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

Memory subsystem performance

Ok, let’s look over this guy’s results and see if there’s really anything interesting going on here.

Yeah, there’s the X79’s claim to fame: memory bandwidth. Looks like that bump up to 1866MHz memory paid off for the new Ivy Bridge-E chip, too. This thing more than doubles the throughput of the Haswell Core i7-4770K.

Heh, ouch. Ivy-E gets pwned by Haswell in L1 cache bandwidth, even with six cores to Haswell’s four. I believe Intel doubled the L1 cache’s throughput in Haswell because AVX2 needs the bandwidth. Having 50% more Sandy or Ivy Bridge cores doesn’t give you enough to keep up.

Yawns.

We have any more of that diet Bawls soda, Jamaal? I need something to wash down these ranch Corn Nuts.

Some quick synthetic math tests

Haha, yikes. The 4770K beats the new Ivy-E 4960X in a couple of these tests. You’ve gotta figure that’s AVX2 kicking in. Doubles the floating-point throughput in a lot of cases. The Ivy-E is never slow, but it’s kinda embarrassing to get caught by a quad-core with under half the memory bandwidth.

Crysis 3









So there’s a lot of stuff. This guy likes to show more than just frames per second when talking about game performance. He says there’s more to it than just averages. I think there’s probably something to that, since he found some problems with Radeons a while back that were apparently real issues. He’s kinda pretentious about it, though. I’m like, dude, it’s just a frigging video game. Get over yourself.

Anyhow, looks to me like these numbers put the 4960X in a good light, but it’s not really meaningfully faster than the quad-core Haswell or Ivy Bridge chips from the past couple of years.

The contrast with some of the recent AMD “APU” chips is kinda brutal. They all seem to do pretty OK with FPS averages, but these other numbers don’t look so good. There are some nasty spikes in the plot for that A10-6800K, too, which is kind of the point, I guess. You’re probably gonna feel those slowdowns.

Far Cry 3









Hey, Jamaal, you like Corn Nuts? These ranch ones are my favorite snack, hands down, but I kinda worry about whether I’m gonna split a tooth one of these days.

Tomb Raider









This is a pretty cool game, although I could only watch Lara bounce around on screen for so long before I had to schedule some “alone time” with Rachel. First time a video game ever had that effect on me. Took me two weeks to finish the main quest, but it was a good two weeks.

Looks like you could run Tomb Raider on a pocket calculator, though. That horrible purple latency curve for the A10-6800K that’s so much higher than everything else? Tops out at under 25 milliseconds. That’s like 40 FPS for the minimum.

Metro: Last Light

Seriously, just an FPS average, after all of that? Lame. He’s padding this thing out.

Productivity

Compiling code in GCC

TrueCrypt disk encryption

Dude, look, they’re gonna encrypt their stuff! Mwahahaha. Hahaha. Hah.

Heh. Man. Heh. Sniff.

They do keep trying, don’t they?

7-Zip file compression and decompression

SunSpider JavaScript performance

Video encoding

x264 video encoding

Handbrake video encoding

Image processing

The Panorama Factory photo stitching

picCOLOR image processing and analysis

Well, at least there’s an advantage to having those six cores in some of these programs. The 4960X also seems to be a little quicker than the 3970X. If I recall correctly, the Ivy core is supposed to be good for like four to six percent more oomph than Sandy, clock for clock.

3D rendering

LuxMark

Cinebench rendering

POV-Ray rendering

Finally, the 4960X puts the 4770k in the rear-view in the rendering tests. Guess those don’t support AVX2 yet, huh?

Scientific computing

MyriMatch proteomics

STARS Euler3d computational fluid dynamics

Here’s an actual reason, from Blanda’s big list, to get yourself a 4960X system: scientific computing, where more cores and memory bandwidth really matter.

Power consumption and efficiency





Oh man. I see some problems with this one. First of all, the idle power draw on their X79 motherboard, the Asus P9X79 Deluxe, is way too high. Have a look over here, and you’ll see the same basic setup on a Gigabyte board drawing 63W at idle. So that’s bogus. Also…

No way is that x264 encoding workload using all six cores and 12 threads fully. Check the plots. The encode takes the same amount of time, about 45 seconds, on the 4960X and on the quad-core Haswell 4770K. That’s gotta be why the delta between idle and load on the 4960X is only 60W. He picked the wrong workload for a six-core CPU.

This guy is usually pretty meticulous about how he tests. That’s gotta be giving him an OCD flare-up.

Hmm. Well, even with those problems, this looks like progress from the 3970X to the 4960X.

Overclocking

Oooh, so he got Ivy-E up to 4.7GHz. Gotta admit, I’d be more impressed if he hadn’t taken the 3960X to 4.8GHz way back when. Still, that’s six cores running as fast as his Canadian sidekick got the Haswell quad to go.

Ok, Jamaal, so I have a confession to make in this context. Please just hear me out, OK? I really have been following this stuff for a while, and I knew Ivy-E was coming. I really wanted to see how it would OC, since, like I said, I’m thinking about building myself a new gaming rig. So… the other day—I’ve kinda been monitoring this dude’s webcam to see how his overclocking tests were going.

It was just too easy. He’s running Windows 8, and you know everything Redmond has done for us, how easy they’ve made it. I just flipped it on in stealth mode, and he was none the wiser. I mean, it’s frigging amazing how trusting geeks are of that little light that says whether the camera is on or off. Like it’d be some kind of physical impossibility to turn up the CCD without the LED coming on.

Anyway, it was totally innocuous, just some guy in a lab listening to Mumford, singing horribly off key, and futzing around with BIOS options. Really, nothing that would raise any flags in oversight, if they weren’t already totally overwhelmed with the whole Snowden deal.

He starts out with a big tower cooler on the CPU, looked like maybe a Frio OCK, big momma, with the fan running full tilt. Sounded like a Dyson with tuberculosis. He gets it up to 4.7GHz at 1.35V, and under load, temps are topping out at around 81°C. The cooler is just barely keeping up with the heat load, but it’s stable.

Then he pulls the tower cooler and hooks up a water cooler—a nice one, Asetek design, dual fans and pretty beefy radiator, although not really any bigger than the twin fans and heatsink on the Frio. I dunno, maybe he thinks water is magic. He leaves the CPU running at the same settings, and lo and behold, the water cooler can’t quite cut it. The fans are cranking, the pump is going, but temps creep up under load until the system blue-screens.

Dude was totally better off with air cooling, because it turns out water is not magic.

At least, you know, the performance is nice at 4.7GHz, if you don’t mind the noise.