Intel has launched its first desktop 8-core desktop CPU - the Core i7-5960X. Based on the company's Haswell architecture, which was launched on its LGA1150 platform and in laptops last year, the CPU is part of a trio of new CPUs that use Intel's new LGA 2011-v3 socket. This isn't compatible with previous LGA 2011 CPUs, in part due to the fact that the CPUs are designed to work with new DDR4 memory and Intel's newly-released X99 motherboard chipset.
The Core i7-5960X features a 3GHz clock speed, 20MB of Level 3 cache and eight physical processor cores. The CPU also offers Hyper-threading, making the total thread count stand at 16. This can offer substantial performance benefits in tasks such as video editing and rendering.
The CPU can also dynamically adjust its clock speed to save power and also boost it up to 3.5GHz when under load for better performance. The other CPUs in the range include the Core i7-5930K and Core i7-5820K, which have default clock speeds of 3.5GHz and 3.3GHz respectively and retail for $583 and $389.
Each offers six CPU cores rather than eight, although these too feature Hyper-Threading, meaning they have 12 threads on hand. By comparison, its first 4GHz CPU, the Core i7-4790K only has four CPU cores and eight threads.
Below you can see the results of Maxon's Cinebench R15 rendering benchmark with a previous generation CPU, the Core i7-4930K, the current fastest mid-range CPU, the Core i7-4970K and the new 8-core Core i7-5960X.
The downside to the Core i7-5960X, apart from its $999 price tag, is that its 3GHz clock speed is comparatively low. The Core i7-4970K is 1GHz (1,000MHz) faster or in percentage terms 33%. As such, in programs that don't make use of lots of threads, the latter CPU is likely to be faster, making the Core i7-5960X quite specialized.
The Core i7-5960X and Core i7-5930K also offer 40 PCI-Express lanes, allowing PC builders to tap into increased bandwidth in multi-GPU setups using more than one graphics card, utilizing Nvidia's SLI or AMD's CrossFire. This can improve performance in games but also for GPU-dependant tasks such as digital currency mining, Folding or GPU-based rendering. Are you in the market for a new CPU and are considering the Core i7-5960X?
