Core i7-3960X: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
Core i7-3960X provides acceptable benchmark performance at 5.32% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.
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 ranking | 1170 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 0.37 | |
| Market segment | Desktop processor | |
| Series | Core i7 (Desktop) | |
| Power efficiency | 3.87 | of 100.00 (Core Ultra 7 164U) |
| Architecture codename | Sandy Bridge-E (2011−2013) | |
| Release date | 14 November 2011 (13 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $861 | of 17,906 (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 cores | 6 (Hexa-Core) | |
| Threads | 12 | |
| Base clock speed | 3.3 GHz | of 4.7 GHz (Ryzen 9 7900X) |
| Boost clock speed | 3.9 GHz | of 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS) |
| Bus rate | 5 GT/s | |
| L1 cache | 64 KB (per core) | of 80 KB (EPYC 9965) |
| L2 cache | 256 KB (per core) | |
| L3 cache | 15 MB (shared) | of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X) |
| Chip lithography | 32 nm | of 3 nm (Core Ultra 9 285K) |
| Die size | 435 mm2 | |
| Maximum case temperature (TCase) | 67 °C | of 105 °C (Core i7-5950HQ) |
| Number of transistors | 2,270 million | of 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 configuration | 1 | of 8 (Xeon Platinum 8454H) |
| Socket | FCLGA2011 | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 130 Watt | of 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 extensions | Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX | |
| AES-NI | + | |
| AVX | + | |
| Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) | + | |
| Turbo Boost Technology | 2.0 | |
| 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 types | DDR3 | |
| Maximum memory size | 64 GB | of 6 TiB (EPYC 9654) |
| Max memory channels | 4 | of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221) |
| Maximum memory bandwidth | 51.2 GB/s | of 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9654) |
Peripherals
Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.
| PCIe version | 2.0 | of 5.0 (EPYC 9655P) |
| PCI Express lanes | 40 | of 128 (EPYC 9655P) |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core
Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
3DMark Fire Strike Physics
Send your test results of Core i7-3960X.
AMD equivalent
According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i7-3960X is Ryzen Embedded R2544, which is nearly equal in speed 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 132 configurations using Core i7-3960X in our database.
