Overclocking - the Core i7-3960X on MSI X79

Overclocking - the Core i7-3960X on MSI X79

Meet the spaghetti of wires, this was the initial engineering board by the way, where we used Corsair DIMMS.  In our actual review later on you are going to notice how freaking much more performance the overclock delivers. I mean really, it's even a little crazy to observe. In today's article we'll stick to that 3DMark overclocking session with the MARS II. Have a peek:

Now we tested the ASUS Mars II on a Core i7 980X (3800 MHz), that gave us 11000 points in the P score. By just switching to the Core i7-3960X / X79 platform we gain roughly 500 points.

However when the Core i7-3960X is overclocked to 5 GHz, we are nearing 12000 points already. 3DMark is massively GPU dependant though, let's take 3DMark Vantage from which we all know loves multi-GPU setups in combo with fast processors.

3DMark Vantage then. So again the same thesis, the ASUS Mars II on a Core i7 980X (3800 MHz) scores 33819 points. And on the Core i7-3960X / X79 platform we close in at nearly 40K points.

Once we overclock the Core i7-3960X to 5 GHz, we get 47K points (P mode) already. Coming from a Core i7 980X (3800 MHz) with its 33819 points, the difference obviously is gigantic. Look at that CPU score for a second, and yes, PHYSX is disabled and running over the CPU not the GPU, before anyone starts to wonder.

What's quite shocking is the combination of it all, the CPU overclock at 5 GHz and the dual-GPU based Mars II are drawing up-to 741 Watts. Wowzers. In a default setup these numbers are very decent by the way -- let me clearly state that.

But now that i got your juices flowing, let's continue with the regular review shall we ?