Intel Core i7-960: specs and benchmarks
Aggregated performance score
Summary
Intel started Core i7-960 sales on October 2009 at a recommended price of $316. This is a Bloomfield architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, and is based on 45 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3460 MHz and a locked multiplier.
Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA1366 processor with a TDP of 130 Watt. It supports DDR3 memory.
It provides poor benchmark performance at 2.18% of a leader's which is AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX.
General info
Core i7-960 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.
| Place in performance ranking | 1740 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Value for money | 1.01 | |
| Market segment | Desktop processor | |
| Series | Core i7 (Desktop) | |
| Architecture codename | Bloomfield (2008−2010) | |
| Release date | October 2009 (14 years old) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $316 | of 305 (Core i7-870) |
| Current price | $170 (0.5x MSRP) | of 17802 (Threadripper PRO 7995WX) |
Value for money
Performance per price, higher is better.
Technical specs
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 | 4 (Quad-Core) | |
| Threads | 8 | |
| Base clock speed | 3.2 GHz | of 4.7 (FX-9590) |
| Boost clock speed | 3.46 GHz | of 6.2 (Core i9-14900KS) |
| Bus support | 1333 MHz | |
| L1 cache | 64 KB (per core) | of 7475.2 (Apple M2 Pro 10-Core) |
| L2 cache | 256 KB (per core) | of 36864 (Apple M2 Max) |
| L3 cache | 8 MB (shared) | of 768 (EPYC 7373X) |
| Chip lithography | 45 nm | of 3 (Apple M3 Max 16-Core) |
| Die size | 263 mm2 | |
| Maximum core temperature | 68 °C | of 110 (Atom x7-E3950) |
| Number of transistors | 731 million | of 9900000 (Ryzen 5 7645HX) |
| 64 bit support | + | |
| Windows 11 compatibility | - | |
| Unlocked multiplier | No |
Compatibility
Information on Core i7-960 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 (Opteron 842) |
| Socket | FCLGA1366 | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 130 Watt | of 400 (Xeon Platinum 9282) |
Technologies and extensions
Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i7-960. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.
| Instruction set extensions | Intel® SSE4.2 | |
| AES-NI | - | |
| Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) | + | |
| Turbo Boost Technology | 1.0 | |
| Hyper-Threading Technology | + | |
| Idle States | + | |
| Thermal Monitoring | - | |
| Demand Based Switching | - | |
| PAE | 36 Bit | |
| Status | Discontinued |
Security technologies
Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.
| TXT | + | |
| EDB | + |
Virtualization technologies
Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.
| VT-x | + | |
| EPT | + |
Memory specs
Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i7-960's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.
| Supported memory types | DDR3 | |
| Maximum memory size | 24 GB | of 786 (Xeon E5-2670 v3) |
| Max memory channels | 3 | of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221) |
| Maximum memory bandwidth | 25.6 GB/s | of 460.8 (EPYC 9124) |
| ECC memory support | - |
Benchmark performance
Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i7-960. 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.
Benchmark coverage: 68%
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.
Benchmark coverage: 42%
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.
Benchmark coverage: 42%
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.
Benchmark coverage: 20%
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.
Benchmark coverage: 19%
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.
Benchmark coverage: 19%
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.
Benchmark coverage: 17%
3DMark Fire Strike Physics
Benchmark coverage: 4%
Send your test results of Core i7-960.
Relative perfomance
Overall Core i7-960 performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop CPUs.
AMD equivalent
According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i7-960 is FX-4150, which is nearly equal in speed and lower by 1 position in our ranking.
Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i7-960:
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 i7-960, according to our PC configuration statistics.
These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i7-960 in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 744 configurations based on Core i7-960 in our database.
