Intel Core i7-4960X review

The Intel Core i7-4960X is a six-core Ivy Bridge-Enthusiast processor with a massive 15MB of level 3 cache memory. It’s designed for power users running complex multi-threaded programs such as Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. As is common with Core i7 processors, each physical core is split into two logical cores thanks to Hyper Threading, providing 12 logical cores in the case of the Core i7-4960X.

The Core i7-4960X runs at a base clock speed of 3.6GHz and can Turbo Boost to 4GHz under optimal thermal conditions. It uses the Ivy Bridge architecture and is a 22nm process, but it requires a motherboard with an LGA2011 processor socket and the X79 Express chipset, such as the Asus P9X79 Pro motherboard that we used during testing. Conveniently, if you’re upgrading to the Core i7-4960X from the Intel Core i7-3960X you’ll be able to swap them with nothing more than a BIOS update for your existing motherboard.

As it has six cores, the Core i7-4960X obviously excelled in the multitasking segment of our benchmark tests, scoring a mightily impressive 140. To put that into context, the Intel Core i5-4670K scored 115 in the same test and the Intel Core i7-4770K scored 125.

It’s a nice box, but then you’d expect that at this price – and its blue rather than the usual black for the more extreme chips

The Core i7-4960X also put in a sterling performance with an overall score of 124, compared to the Core i5-4670K’s 112 and the Core i7-4770K’s 115. However, we were less impressed with its video-editing and image-editing scores of 105 and 114 respectively. These are too similar to the much cheaper Core i7-4770K’s video- and image-editing scores of 100 and 114 respectively for our liking.

Naturally, the Core i7-4960X can be overclocked and doing so unleashes even greater performance. With a modest 4.6GHz overclock, it scored an incredible 160 in the multitasking segment of our benchmarks and 139 overall, which is a phenomenal score. However, we were again unimpressed by its video- and image-editing scores of 117 and 119 respectively, as the Core i7-4770K scored 115 and 128 respectively with same overclock applied.

Always nice to have a fancy wafer shot to add some colour to a dry review

Similarly, it’s more powerful than the Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-Enthusiast that it replaces, but not by a vast amount, as the Core i7-3960X scored 128 in the multitasking segment of our benchmarks at its native clock speed and 114 overall.

It’s clear that the Core i7-4960X is a powerful processor, especially if you’re running many applications at once or a single application that can utilise many cores simultaneously. It’s the most powerful Intel processor we’ve seen, but it’s not as powerful as its high price suggests it should be and many potential buyers would be better off buying a much cheaper Core i5-4670K or Core i7-4770K and overclocking it. If you need a very powerful processor for your music production or video-editing workstation regardless of expense, you should buy the Core i7-4960X. Otherwise you should buy an unlocked Haswell processor and overclock it.