AMD Ryzen 5 1500X vs Intel Core i7-3960X

Ryzen 5 1500X vs Core i7-3960X benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-3960X performs better than the Ryzen 5 1500X. Despite this, the Ryzen 5 1500X has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-3960X has significantly more cores with 6 cores compared to the Ryzen 5 1500X that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Ryzen 5 1500X. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Ryzen 5 1500X has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-3960X. Despite this, the Core i7-3960X has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Ryzen 5 1500X CPU outputs less heat than a Core i7-3960X CPU because of its significantly 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 Ryzen 5 1500X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.