System Overview & Testing Procedures
We will be testing the Core i7-5960X in our brand new X99 test bench.
This test bench is made up of the following components.
Processor: Intel Core i7-5960X
Video Card: MSI GTX 770 Gaming
Motherboard: EVGA X99 Micro
Memory: 32 GB Crucial DDR4 2133 MHz
Storage: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K
Power: Corsair AX860i
Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme
Case: HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station
We will also be comparing the processor to the previous generation processor the Core i7-4960X and the X79 chipset as well as the Core i7-4790K, which is the most powerful processor in Intel’s Haswell series. Those two systems are made up of the following components.
Processor: Intel Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
Video Card: MSI GTX 770 Gaming
Memory: 16GB Kingston 10th Anniversary
Storage: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K
Power: Corsair AX860i
Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme
Case: HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station
Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K
Video Card: MSI GTX 770 Gaming
Motherboard: ASUS Z97-A
Memory: 16GB Crucial Ballistix
Storage: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K
Power: Corsair AX860i
Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme
Case: HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station
For testing the processors the frequency will be set to auto and Intel Speedstep will be turned on.. The reason we do is because most people will have this setup on their own PC. This is the default mode if you do not go into the BIOS and change anything. So for our three processors the Core i7-5960X, Core i7-4960X and Core i7-4790K they will be running at 3.0-3.5 GHz, 3.6-4.0 GHz and 4.0-4.4 GHz respectively.
Now because the chips are running at different frequencies we are going to see a difference in test scores on single-threaded and multi-threaded benchmarks. The processor with the higher frequency will should perform better in single threaded tests, and the processor with more cores should perform better in multi-threaded tests. It is important that you understand that as many people just look at clock speed and don’t realize if you are using more cores you have better performance.
We will be running each processor through a battery of benchmarks. I have listed them below.
CPU Testing – Benchmarks
AIDA64
– CPU Queen
– CPU PhotoWorxx
– CPU ZLib
– CPU AES
– CPU Hash
X264 HD Benchmark 5.0
Sisoftware Sandra
– Processor Arithmetic
– Processor Multimedia
CINEBENCH R11.5 64-Bit
CPU Testing – Real World
Adobe Premier Pro CC – Encoding
Handbreak 0.9.9 – Encoding
POV-Ray 3.7 – Encoding
WinRAR Benchmark
Overall System Testing
PCMark 8
PCMark 7
Video & Gaming
3DMark
3DMark 11
Alien vs Predator
