Intel Core i7-5960X Review with ASUS X99 Deluxe

[Excalabur50]

Prices in Australia are 5820K $449, 5830K $679 and 5960X $1199 eye watering stuff then add $599 for the Rampage V, $579 for the Deluxe and $569 for the MSI Gaming 9 and add $305-$629 for ram and it becomes a real ring stinger......ouch!

 

[Tripp]

So far I have been eyeing up the 5820k, Asus deluxe an 16 gb of Corsair LPX, got a number of £746 for it all. It's really tempting to drop money on it haha

 

[Ciric]

Anyone wanna buy a kidney, so I can afford one of theese?
...well, gonna settle with my new bike.

 

[Master&Puppet]

So tempted.......trying to justify it to myself just on the bclk overclocking alone!

Have to say that the 5820K seems like a waste to me for a gamer. Chances of getting an overclock that barely reaches more than 4GHz probably means that, based on reviews I've seen so far, the extra frequency you can achieve on a 4790K is a better bet than the 2 more cores (and DDR4 isn't going to affect us lots).

You can get a 4970K with 16GB of 2400MHz RAM on a decent motherboard for ~£500 whereas a comparable 5820K build will set you back ~£700.

Having said that the 5930K needs to achieve some awesome clocks to justify that extra £150 over the 5820K (unless you REALLY need more PCIe lanes which I doubt). So maybe it's go big (5960X) or go z97?

But then hexcore chip for under £300, hell yea! Oh hell I don't know, just ignore me.

Thanks for the review TTL, love the in depth chat as always.

 

[Xrqute]

TTL what is UNCORE? you mention it but i didn't see you explain it in the write up? maybe you did in the vid which I'm about to watch.

Prices in Australia are 5820K $449, 5830K $679 and 5960X $1199 eye watering stuff then add $599 for the Rampage V, $579 for the Deluxe and $569 for the MSI Gaming 9 and add $305-$629 for ram and it becomes a real ring stinger......ouch!

I did a rough from scratch build quote for myself yesterday and looking at close to $6K for my tower. but that also includes cooling, new case, new 5x SSD's etc.

 

[Master&Puppet]

TTL what is UNCORE? you mention it but i didn't see you explain it in the write up? maybe you did in the vid which I'm about to watch.

Uncore clock controls the CPU cache frequency. Specifically the L3 common core cache which is the cache shared between all of the cores.

 

[Zoot]

Well I just discovered to use a hard drive that's >2TB, you actually need to use UEFI and the new GPT partition table instead of the MBR one. This was with putting a 4TB hard drive into my HTPC. Obviously that's not ultimately a problem because the AMD Kaveri board I'm using there has UEFI.

But... the 990FX motherboard in my main system is old enough NOT to have it. That means I've just gotten a justification to actually upgrade it, since I need a UEFI capable system for huge hard drives and if I'm to get a new motherboard I may as well just upgrade everything else too.

So maybe... a Haswell-E system is now becoming tempting. ^_^

 

[RamboOC]

Well I just discovered to use a hard drive that's >2TB, you actually need to use UEFI and the new GPT partition table instead of the MBR one. This was with putting a 4TB hard drive into my HTPC. Obviously that's not ultimately a problem because the AMD Kaveri board I'm using there has UEFI.

But... the 990FX motherboard in my main system is old enough NOT to have it. That means I've just gotten a justification to actually upgrade it, since I need a UEFI capable system for huge hard drives and if I'm to get a new motherboard I may as well just upgrade everything else too.

So maybe... a Haswell-E system is now becoming tempting. ^_^

Nope, i've had many boards with the old style bios that have an option to "enable support for <2TB drives".

Your 990FX Should definitely have it

I've even had am2+ boards that had the option

 

[Wraith]

Well I just discovered to use a hard drive that's >2TB, you actually need to use UEFI and the new GPT partition table instead of the MBR one. This was with putting a 4TB hard drive into my HTPC. Obviously that's not ultimately a problem because the AMD Kaveri board I'm using there has UEFI.

But... the 990FX motherboard in my main system is old enough NOT to have it. That means I've just gotten a justification to actually upgrade it, since I need a UEFI capable system for huge hard drives and if I'm to get a new motherboard I may as well just upgrade everything else too.

So maybe... a Haswell-E system is now becoming tempting. ^_^

Even my lowly board supports 4TB drives, are you also taking into account that with windows 7 you are limited to 2TB, unless you modify the GPT....

 

[Greenback]

I like the gains I would get with the upgrade, but the prices make it a positive fact I will not be upgrading for a while yet I do like the white asus MB though

 

[NeverBackDown]

The White asus board is damn near $400 for me in the US... Yep more than a 4790k or even a 5820k. Sad thing is thats where most boards are priced it seems.

 

[Zoot]

Nope, i've had many boards with the old style bios that have an option to "enable support for <2TB drives".

Even my lowly board supports 4TB drives, are you also taking into account that with windows 7 you are limited to 2TB, unless you modify the GPT....

Pretty much all boards have UEFI nowadays, even my ASRock AM1 board has it. That'll tell you how old my 990FX board is. Plus, Windows 7 works just fine installed to the new 4TB drive in my HTPC with access to all 4TB of it, however only with UEFI boot though.

Regarding GPT, you can use a GPT drive with a motherboard that has regular old BIOS, but booting from a GPT enabled drive with BIOS can be kind of messy. I don't know if Windows supports it, I think you can get grub to work if you're using Linux though. Really, you kind of need a UEFI motherboard to guarantee compatibility there.

Not only that, you need GPT for drives that are >2TB in size, otherwise you can only access the 1st 2TB of it, it's an inherent limitation of the MBR style partition table.

This is off-topic anyway (my fault ), start a new thread if you guys want.

DDR4 isn't going to affect us lots.

Actually if you remember the very early days of DDR3, the DDR3 vs DDR2 argument was the very same. DDR3 didn't really set the house on fire at the start. ^_^

 

[Permafrost]

the only thing stopping me from going over to X99 is the price of DDR4, it's almost the 2X the price of DDR3....

 

[paulstung]

I'm tempted but I don't think the misses would be so impressed. At least I'd have loads of room to stretch out in bed, once she leaves, the problem with that is the winter is near, and I like a cuddle in the cold.

New build, 5 8 brunette with green eyes, and with very soft hands, add to that she is a sports therapist, no contest really. The things she can do with those soft hands, what the hell am I sat here at this time of night for, I'm of to bed, goodnight guys....

 

[Xrqute]

Guys yes DDR4 is more expensive then DDR3 but you are getting a brand new platform and unparalleled performance along with it. It's like comparing apples and oranges, yea ok they are both fruit but they are not the same! Sames goes for ddr3 vs ddr4.

 

[barnsley]

Guys yes DDR4 is more expensive then DDR3 but you are getting a brand new platform and unparalleled performance along with it. It's like comparing apples and oranges, yea ok they are both fruit but they are not the same! Sames goes for ddr3 vs ddr4.

Is the average person REALLY going to gain a load of benefit from DDR4 though? Not for the price.

 

[Master&Puppet]

The benefit to be had with DDR4 is the bandwidth but games barely make use of RAM bandwidth at all. I bet that if you put a DDR3 1600MHz kit up against a DDR4 3300MHz kit in game you wouldn't see more than a couple of extra FPS in the minimums. Certainly not worth the extra cost at the moment. For any sensible gamer buying a platform simply for DDR4 is really quite pointless but the cost will come down when the next mainstream platform becomes available with DDR4.

If you are using professional software then yes it will make a noticeable difference.

 

[SieB]

The differences in price and performance between DDR3 and DDR4 seems the same as it was with DDR2 and DDR3. Prices for DDR3 were similar to what DDR4 is now, DDR4 is a bit more due to inflation and the higher mhz kits though.

Hopefully we get a big price drop on RAM again like we did in 2012 when 8gb DDR3 dropped to as low as £25-£30. I doubt DDR4 will drop that low though, especially the higher mhz kits.

 

[Dicehunter]

Is the average person REALLY going to gain a load of benefit from DDR4 though ?

For the everyday person who just does gaming and no real production type work it will be like dating an invisible person, You know they're there but not much else ^_^

 

[NeverBackDown]

DDR4 will become more of a FPS booster once game engines start going down the 64bit route and no longer using 32bit. It will allow for more ram to be used and it can be used more efficiently. Till then DDR4 is mainly for huge servers and heavy duty apps.