When we decided to put the test bench together for X79 we wanted a system that would not only perform well but also last the test of time given that X58 has been around for some 3 years now so we saw no reason to believe that its successor, X79 would not be able to do the same.
Our test bench was kindly sponsored by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them. Thanks also go to MSI who donated their NVIDIA GTX560Ti.
Our test bench was kindly sponsored by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them. Thanks also go to MSI who donated their NVIDIA GTX560Ti.
X79 Setup
Motherboard – MSI X79A GD65 (8D)]
Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition
Graphics Card: MSI GTX560Ti 2GB Twin Frozr II Edition @
RAM - 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Corsair TX750M 750W
Hard Drive – Hitachi SATA II 250GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Cooler – Corsair H100
Motherboard – MSI X79A GD65 (8D)]
Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition
Graphics Card: MSI GTX560Ti 2GB Twin Frozr II Edition @
RAM - 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Corsair TX750M 750W
Hard Drive – Hitachi SATA II 250GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Cooler – Corsair H100
X58 Setup Mainstream
Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.66GHz
Graphics Card: Inno3D GTX570 1GB @ 800/4000MHz - ForceWare 275.33
RAM - 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333MHz
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply - Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Hard Drive - OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Samsung F1 320GB
Cooler - Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.66GHz
Graphics Card: Inno3D GTX570 1GB @ 800/4000MHz - ForceWare 275.33
RAM - 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333MHz
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply - Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Hard Drive - OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Samsung F1 320GB
Cooler - Phanteks PH-TC14PE
X58 Setup Extreme
Intel Core i7 990X @ 3.46GHz
Graphics Card: Inno3D GTX570 1GB @ 800/4000MHz - ForceWare 275.33
RAM - 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333MHz
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply - Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Hard Drive - OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Samsung F1 320GB
Cooler - Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Intel Core i7 990X @ 3.46GHz
Graphics Card: Inno3D GTX570 1GB @ 800/4000MHz - ForceWare 275.33
RAM - 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333MHz
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply - Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Hard Drive - OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Samsung F1 320GB
Cooler - Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Z68 Setup
Intel Core i5 @ 3.3GHz
Graphics Card - Zotac GTX460 1GB
RAM - 4GB (2x2GB) Kingston Genesis DDR3 1600MHz
Motherboard - ASRock Extreme4 Gen3
Power Supply - OCZ Fatal1ty 750W
Cooler - Noctua NH-D14
Intel Core i5 @ 3.3GHz
Graphics Card - Zotac GTX460 1GB
RAM - 4GB (2x2GB) Kingston Genesis DDR3 1600MHz
Motherboard - ASRock Extreme4 Gen3
Power Supply - OCZ Fatal1ty 750W
Cooler - Noctua NH-D14
AMD Setup
AMD A8-3850 @ 2.9GHz
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-A75M-UD2H
RAM - Team Xtreem PC3 12800 DDR3 1600 7-7-7-21
HDD - Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7200RPM SATAIII
Power Supply - OCZ StealthXtream 2 600W
Cooler - CoolerMaster Hyper 212+
AMD A8-3850 @ 2.9GHz
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-A75M-UD2H
RAM - Team Xtreem PC3 12800 DDR3 1600 7-7-7-21
HDD - Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7200RPM SATAIII
Power Supply - OCZ StealthXtream 2 600W
Cooler - CoolerMaster Hyper 212+
Benchmarks
Cinebench 11.5 – CPU Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2011 – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 – Convert 145MB MP4 to avi
PCMark 7 – System Benchmark
3DMark 11 – Performance and Extreme preset Overall and Physics Score
Games – Crysis 2, DiRT3, Metro 2033
Other Software
Core Temp 0.99.5
LinX stress Test
CPUID HWMonitor
