Core i7 4960X processor review - Ivy Bridge-E

Ivy Bridge-E

Ivy Bridge-E, it's the all updated 22nm K+ metal gate core technology "enhanced" slash "enthusiast" version of what pretty much is similar to the Sandy Bridge-E architecture, you'll see few new features added and even some others stripped away. Simply put, you take all the good ingredients from Sandy Bridge-E and place it on a smaller die. Compared to the regular mainstream Sandy Bridge (and Ivy Bridge) processors add two more cores, a slightly increased L3 cache and add a pinch of quad-channel memory.
 

The Ivy Bridge-E die, 1.86 Billion transistors measuring 15 x17.1mm (257 mm²)

There is one exception to the rule, one Core i7 Sandy Bridge-E CPU will remain a quad-core processor, not six cores. There's also something else missing, though we doubt a little that you'd miss it in this enthusiast grade segment. Both Ivy- and Sandy Bridge-E do not have an on-die graphics processor built into the architecture. No biggy as we expect you to use a dedicated GPU anyways, but for the transcoding freaks that are dependant on QuickSync as a feature,  you might need to reconsider this processor purchase.
 

Above you can see the naked die of Ivy Bridge-E. In this first wave of Ivy Bridge-E processors Intel is going to release three Ivy Bridge-E class SKUs, namely the Core i7-4960X, the Core i7-4930K, and the Core i7-4820. Each will have different clock frequencies and a slightly changed L3 cache. The Core i7-4820 is a quad core processor, the other two are six-core processors. The processor will have six cores, turbo boost 2.0, Hyper-Threading, up-to 15MB of L3 smart cache, 4 channels of DDR3 1866, AVX, AES SSE 4.1 and 4.2 incstruction set. Below, an overview of the main specs per processor. 
 

From a naming point of view is that Intel chooses three different suffixes for the processors, we have an X model, a K model and a "normal" model. A little confusing, but it does make some sense:

• The “X” suffix is Intel’s Extreme Edition processors, this means the top-of-the-line unlocked processors.
• The “K” suffix denotes a slightly lower end processor yet with its multiplier unlocked.
• And the normal editions are pretty much mainstream without any enthusiast grade overclock options, meaning a locked multiplier.

The flagship Intel Ivy Bridge-E CPU is the Core i7-4960X packed with 6 cores and 12 threads and would feature a core clock of 3.6 GHz base and 4.0 GHz Turbo boost with 15 MB of L3 cache. This Extreme Edition CPU costs a whopping $1000 and boast a 130W TDP. Cache wise the L1 and L2 caches are 100% similar to Ivy Bridge:

• 32KB data and a 32KB instruction L1 cache per physical core.
• 256KB L2 cache per core.

The L3 cache then, The Core i7-4960X tested in this article has 15MB of L3 cache, meaning 2.5 MB per core (it's a single block of cache as it's shared).

Features

• MMX instructions
• SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
• SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
• SSE3 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSSE3 / Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSE4 / SSE4.1 + SSE4.2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 
• AES / Advanced Encryption Standard instructions
• AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions
• EM64T / Extended Memory 64 technology / Intel 64 
• NX / XD / Execute disable bit 
• HT / Hyper-Threading technology 
• TBT 2.0 / Turbo Boost technology 2.0 
• VT-x / Virtualization technology ? 
• VT-d / Virtualization for directed I/O

All three processors will have a 130W TDP, actually quite similar way back to the original six-core Gulftown based Core i7 980X.