Conclusion

Having a closer look at the results we gathered while testing eight different games and two different benchmarks with two different presets, we see that the Intel Core i7-3960X, with our "low-preset" is on average 5 percent faster than the Core i7-3930K. Switching to our "high-preset" makes the Intel Core i7-3960X become 7 percent quicker than the Core i7-3930K. Overclocking the Intel Core i7-3960X to 4.5 GHz makes the performance with our "low-preset" go up by 22 percent and when it comes to the high-preset the increase in performance is 17 percent. Regarding the Core i7-3930K the situation is a little bit different: 20 percent gain with "low-preset" and 19 percent with "high-preset". Other than that a quick look at power consumption is also interesting. In this case we see that overclocking the Core i7-3960X to 4.5 GHz makes power consumption of our system go up by 40 percent. With the Core i7-3930K we see there is an additional 47 percent needed.

In the past we've been testing the same system equipped with one as well as two high-end single GPU graphics cards. Especially with one GPU and in case of our high-preset the graphics card is then going to be the limiting factor, meaning changing the CPU or even overclocking processors doesn't make for a decent performance difference. As soon as we're adding a second or even a third high-end graphics card, the bottleneck regarding graphics cards is open and overclocking CPU architecture as well as CPU clocks will make a difference even with the high preset.

Usually we add a recommendation at this point where we're talking about whether upgrading would make sense or not. In case of the CPUs tested here, there is simply no point in talking about this, since upgrading to a Core i7-3960X, if you already have a an i7-3930K is nonsense and a complete waste of money. If you've put some money aside, we highly recommend to wait for Intels upcoming i7-5000 Series CPUs.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 9 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 10 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 11 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 12 - Metro: Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 4	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - BattleField 3	Page 14 - Performance Index
Page 7 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 15 - Conclusion
Page 8 - Crysis 3