Intel Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition

An impressively quick processor that excels at multitasking, but its high price isn’t in line with its...

Benchmarks show that the i7-4960X is the most powerful processor around in multithreaded tasks and when running intensive applications because of its six cores, but it's marginally slower than Haswell in less demanding single-threaded tasks. Its mixed...

– Is the Ivy Bridge-E Extreme?Summarizing the Intel Core i7-4960X Ivy Bridge Extreme processor is like summarizing the Sandy Bridge Core i7-3960X and Haswell Core i7-4770K in to one thought. While it has a stronger core than Sandy Bridge, the Ivy...

Intel's Extreme Edition processors have always been the parts for the uncompromising power user. As such they carry with them a price tag that may or may not be out of reach for the rest of the market. For those who can and do use the processing power, memory bandwidth, and PCIe bandwidth, it's a win-win part that is a fast and efficient no compromise solution.

Ultimately, it is fair to say the Core i7-4960X is Intel’s fastest desktop processor ever. But because Haswell-based processors, which feature a newer, more advanced, microarchitecture have already landed, the Core i7-4960X is not the undisputed performance champion the Core i7-3960X was when it arrived.

If you want the fastest consumer processor that money can buy, Intel’s Core i7 4960X Extreme Edition processor is the chip to purchase. If you’re looking for strong performance in multi-threaded applications, the 4960X is a good choice, but its $435-cheaper (and largely identical) 4930K sibling will undoubtedly steal the show.

Drawing a tenuous analogy, the Intel Core i7-4960X is an expensive muscle car that stands at odds against the new-age Haswell hybrids. You know the Haswells make far more implicit sense, but there's nothing like quite like seeing the 12-thread chip demolish benchmarks, is there?

The maximum attainable overclock drops from the 5GHz region down to the 4.8GHz region while the sweet spot falls similarly from 4.7GHz to 4.5GHz. Of course with the higher IPC this means the Core i7 4960X at 4.5GHz is better than the Core i7 3960X at 4.7GHz for example, but let’s face it the difference is pretty small and certainly not enough to make the upgrade.

As we said at the start, the LGA2011 range so far hasn't been the biggest success Intel have ever had. It's too expensive for the amount of performance that the average user will require. However, if you need extraordinary amounts of power for...