Intel Core i7-3960X vs Intel Core i7-5820K

Compare Intel Core X-series 6 core CPU vs Intel Core X-series 6 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Intel Core i7-5820K

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 250.00

$ 179.95 significantly less expensive

$ 429.95

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

3693 points

4081 points

10% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

4998 points

5494 points

9% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

3261 points

3634 points

11% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

3155 points

3527 points

11% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

69.62 points

95.66 points

37% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

3363 points

5383 points

60% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

665 points

1134 points

70% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

3209 points

5467 points

70% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

661 points

1180 points

78% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.3 GHz

Identical

3.3 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.9 GHz

8% slightly higher turbo speed

3.6 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

130 W

7% slightly lower TDP

140 W

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

42% many more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

64 GiB

Identical

64 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

464th of 1,089

428th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core X-series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 November

2014 August

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

DDR4-1600

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i7-3960X vs Core i7-5820K comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-5820K beats the Core i7-3960X in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-3960X in all gaming tests too.

Info from our database shows that they both have the same core count and the same number of threads. In terms of clock speed, the Core i7-3960X and Core i7-5820K are identical in this regard. Despite this, the Core i7-3960X has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i7-3960X CPU outputs less heat than a Core i7-5820K CPU because of its slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. Indeed, the Core i7-3960X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.