Core i7-3960X: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

Core i7-3960X provides acceptable benchmark performance at 5.52% of a leader's which is a 96-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX.

Summary

Intel started Core i7-3960X sales 14 November 2011 at a recommended price of $861. This is a Sandy Bridge-E architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 6 cores and 12 threads, and is based on 32 nm manufacturing technology, with a max turbo frequency of 3900 MHz and an unlocked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA2011 processor with a TDP of 130 Watt and a maximum temperature of 67 °C. It supports DDR3 memory.

Primary details

Core i7-3960X processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking1164
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.40
Market segmentDesktop processor
SeriesCore i7 (Desktop)
Power efficiency3.87of 100.00 (Core Ultra 7 164U)
Architecture codenameSandy Bridge-E (2011−2013)
Release date14 November 2011 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$861of 17,906 (tray) (Xeon Platinum 8280L)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance per price, higher is better.

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores6 (Hexa-Core)
Threads12
Base clock speed3.3 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed3.9 GHzof 50 MHz (i486DX-50)
Bus rate5 GT/s
L1 cache64 KB (per core)of 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache256 KB (per core)
L3 cache15 MB (shared)of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X)
Chip lithography32 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size435 mm2
Maximum case temperature (TCase)67 °Cof 105 °C (Core i7-5950HQ)
Number of transistors2,270 millionof 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility-
Unlocked multiplier+

Compatibility

Information on Core i7-3960X compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketFCLGA2011
Power consumption (TDP)130 Wattof 3100 ‑ 4500 (Ryzen 7 7435H)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i7-3960X. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX
AES-NI+
AVX+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Turbo Boost Technology2.0
Hyper-Threading Technology+
Idle States+
Thermal Monitoring+
Smart Response+
Demand Based Switching-

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT-
EDB+
Identity Protection+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i7-3960X's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR3
Maximum memory size64 GBof 6 TiB (EPYC 9124)
Max memory channels4of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth51.2 GB/sof 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9124)

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version2.0of 5.0 (Core i9-12900K)
PCI Express lanes40of 128 (EPYC 7551P)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i7-3960X. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

i7-3960X 5.52

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

i7-3960X 8446

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

i7-3960X 668

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

i7-3960X 3218

Cinebench 10 32-bit single-core

Cinebench R10 is an ancient ray tracing benchmark for processors by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. Its single core version uses just one CPU thread to render a futuristic looking motorcycle.

i7-3960X 5014

Cinebench 10 32-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 10 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R10 using all the processor threads. Possible number of threads is limited by 16 in this version.

i7-3960X 27190

3DMark06 CPU

3DMark06 is a discontinued DirectX 9 benchmark suite from Futuremark. Its CPU part contains two scenarios, one dedicated to artificial intelligence pathfinding, another to game physics using PhysX package.

i7-3960X 8330

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 11.5 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R11.5 which uses all the processor threads. A maximum of 64 threads is supported in this version.

i7-3960X 11

Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.

i7-3960X 1158

Cinebench 15 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R15 (standing for Release 15) is a benchmark made by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version (sometimes called Single-Thread) only uses a single processor thread to render a room full of reflective spheres and light sources.

i7-3960X 159

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R11.5 is an old benchmark by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version loads a single thread with ray tracing to render a glossy room full of crystal spheres and light sources.

i7-3960X 1.52

TrueCrypt AES

TrueCrypt is a discontinued piece of software that was widely used for on-the-fly-encryption of disk partitions, now superseded by VeraCrypt. It contains several embedded performance tests, one of them being TrueCrypt AES, which measures data encryption speed using AES algorithm. Result is encryption speed in gigabytes per second.

i7-3960X 5.2

x264 encoding pass 2

x264 Pass 2 is a slower variant of x264 video compression that produces a variable bit rate output file, which results in better quality since the higher bit rate is used when it is needed more. Benchmark result is still measured in frames per second.  

i7-3960X 55

x264 encoding pass 1

x264 version 4.0 is a video encoding benchmark uses MPEG 4 x264 compression method to compress a sample HD (720p) video. Pass 1 is a faster variant that produces a constant bit rate output file. Its result is measured in frames per second, which means how many frames of the source video file were encoded per second.  

i7-3960X 173

WinRAR 4.0

WinRAR 4.0 is an outdated version of a popular file archiver. It contains an internal speed test, using 'Best' setting of RAR compression on large chunks of randomly generated data. Its results are measured in kilobytes per second.

i7-3960X 4205

3DMark Fire Strike Physics

i7-3960X 12460

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Core i7-3960X's performance relative to its closest rivals among desktop CPUs.


Core i7-3970X 101.09
Core i7-3960X 100

AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i7-3960X is Ryzen Embedded R2544, which is faster by 1% and higher by 3 positions in our ranking.

Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i7-3960X:

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i7-3960X, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i7-3960X in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 126 configurations using Core i7-3960X in our database.

All comparisons with Core i7-3960X

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


3.8 73 votes

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Questions & comments

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