The Sandy Bridge Core i7 3960X Benchmarked Against Today's Six-Core / 12 Thread AMD/Intel CPUs

Complementing our recent AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Linux benchmarking, with recently having out the Intel Core i7 3960X Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition, here are benchmarks showing that previous $999 USD six-core / twelve-thread processor compared to today's Ryzen 5 3600X (and previous-generation Ryzen 5 2600X) as well as the Core i7 8700K.

As some Friday benchmarking fun, this article offers a fresh look at how the once high-end Core i7 3960X compared to today's AMD Ryzen 5 processors at six-cores / twelve-threads and also having in the similarly core/thread count Core i7 8700K.

Besides the Core i7 3960X having cost a great deal more ($999~1059 USD compared to the Ryzen 5 3600X at $250 USD), the i7-3960X has a 130 Watt TDP compared to the Zen 2 mid-range processor at 95 Watts. The i7-3960X carries a 3.3GHz base clock with 3.9GHz turbo frequency compared to the 3600X at 3.8GHz and boosting up to 4.4GHz.

The eight year old Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition setup was tested on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with Linux 5.0 alongside the Ryzen 5 2600X / Ryzen 5 3600X / Core i7 8700K systems. With my WattsUp Pro meters having been busy with more serious testing, this article is just looking at the raw performance difference for curiosity sake and sadly no performance-per-Watt.