Intel i7 5960X Review; Haswell-E Arrives

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Hardware Canucks tried the Intel i7 5960X; Haswell-E Arrives

A quote from the article:
Only 18 months ago, Intel's enthusiast platform was on the chopping block. While X79 and Sandy Bridge-E did well and Ivy Bridge-E was on the horizon, the desktop PC market was in a downturn and the continuity of interest for ultra-high-end platforms was in doubt. And yet here we are reviewing Haswell-E and Intel's first 8-core 16-thread enthusiast processor, the Core i7-5960X. So what happened? A resurgence in the desktop space has created a rapid succession of roadmap updates, adding processors like Devil's Canyon, the Pentium Anniversary Edition and a now full Haswell-E lineup.


While Intel may have been a bit cautious in bringing Haswell-E to the market, there's no denying that we have seen a relatively constant progression in terms of technology, if not performance. However, due in no small part to a lack of true competition from AMD, the actual speed of change has slowed down a bit. While the trademark tick / tock process is still very much alive we are no longer seeing massive performance uplifts from one generation to the next. Rather, Intel is focusing on both processing and TDP efficiency while also optimizing their instructions per clock ratio.

In many ways the original Haswell architecture moved things to another level in nearly every respect and Haswell-E alongside the upcoming server-oriented Haswell-EP will capitalize on its internal changes. Naturally, those original Haswell processors will remain around at lower price points since Haswell-E is supposed to offer something they can't: a ridiculous amount of parallel processing horsepower and a platform that's been designed for high end computing.
 Intel i7 5960X Review; Haswell-E Arrives @ Hardware Canucks