Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E Processor Review

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance
benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and
DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests,
several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware. 3DMark
Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed
specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API
from Microsoft.

The Performance settings were used for testing, so a resolution of 1280×1024 was used.

Benchmark Results: The Intel Core i7-3960X beat all the other processors in 3DMark Vantage! All of the processors were tested on platforms using AMD Radeon HD 6950 video cards with Catalyst 11.10 drivers. You can see some pretty good scaling here as there is a 8550 3DMark difference (59%) between the Intel Core i7-3960X and the AMD FX-4100.

Benchmark Results: The differences seen on the GPU test were a little closer as it looks like we were becoming GPU limited by the Radeon HD 6950 at the top of the chart.

Benchmark Results: The CPU benchmark results in 3DMark Vantage are impressive looking as the Intel Core i7-3960 Sandy Bridge-E processor dominates all of the others in the chart by a good distance. This is also the first stock processor that we have ever had break the 40,000 point mark in this application. The Intel Core i7-3960X is more than twice as fast as the AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer processor!