Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core Sandy Bridge-E CPU Review

A few weeks back, we took a look at the Core i7-3960X, Intel’s first desktop processor to feature the company’s Sandy Bridge-E microarchitecture. If you're unfamiliar with the chip, Sandy Bridge-E is the ‘tock’ in Intel’s tick-tock release schedule cadence that bridges the gap between first-gen Sandy Bridge-based processors and next year’s Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Sandy Bridge-E shares many of the same features of the original Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, but as the “E” denotes, SBE is a more extreme derivative, targeted at enthusiasts.

We briefly discussed the Core i7-3820 we’ll be showing you today in our Core i7-3960X coverage, but didn’t have a chip on hand for testing. The Core i7-3820 is based on the very same die as the higher-end Core i7-3960X, but two of its cores (and some cache) have been disabled...

Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core Sandy Bridge-E CPU Review