Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Sandy Bridge-E CPU
In our custom WinRAR x64 benchmark, we take a directory loaded with two hundred, 12.1 megapixel image files and compress them into a single archive using the default WinRAR compression scheme. The length of time it took each system to save the completed archive is represented in the graph below.
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The Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition put up the best scores in our custom WinRAR compression benchmark, besting every other platform by a considerable margin. Only 1 second separated the four X79-based motherboards we tested, but the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition / X79 combo finished the test a full 16 seconds faster than the Core i7-990X and 13 seconds faster than the Core i7-2700K. The FX-8150 lagged behind by about half a minute.
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Next up, we have some numbers from the SunSpoder JavaScript benchmark. According to the SunSpider website:
This benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other. Unlike many widely available JavaScript benchmarks, this test is:
Real World - This test mostly avoids microbenchmarks, and tries to focus on the kinds of actual problems developers solve with JavaScript today, and the problems they may want to tackle in the future as the language gets faster. This includes tests to generate a tagcloud from JSON input, a 3D raytracer, cryptography tests, code decompression, and many more examples. There are a few microbenchmarkish things, but they mostly represent real performance problems that developers have encountered.
Balanced - This test is balanced between different areas of the language and different types of code. It's not all math, all string processing, or all timing simple loops. In addition to having tests in many categories, the individual tests were balanced to take similar amounts of time on currently shipping versions of popular browsers.
Statistically Sound - One of the challenges of benchmarking is knowing how much noise you have in your measurements. This benchmark runs each test multiple times and determines an error range (technically, a 95% confidence interval). In addition, in comparison mode it tells you if you have enough data to determine if the difference is statistically significant.
All of the systems were testing using the latest version of Internet Explorer 9, with default browser settings, on a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
Clearly the Sandy Bridge architecture at work in the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition and Core i7-2700K offers the best performance here due to its high Turbo frequencies, as is evidenced by their similar, class-leading performance. The Core i7-990X finished about 25ms behind and the FX-8150 trailed by about 82ms.
