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

Test System Configuration Notes: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes / UEFI and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to the maximum officially supported frequency for the given platform. SSDs were then formatted, and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 was installed.

Intel Core i7-3820, Top and Bottom

When the Windows installation was complete, we updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, performed a disk clean-up, cleared temp and prefetch data, and ran the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems Intel and AMD - Head To Head

System 1: Intel Core i7-3690X (3.33GHz - Hex-Core) Intel Core i7-3690X (3.33GHz - Hex-Core) Asus P9X79 Deluxe (X79 Express Chipset) 4x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1600MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64

System 2: Intel Core i5-2700K (3.3GHz - Quad-Core) Asus P8Z68-A Pro (Z68 Express Chipset) 2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1333MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64

System 3: Intel Core i7-990X (3.43GHz Hex-Core) Gigabyte EX58-UD4 (X58 Express Chipset) 3x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1333MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64

System 4: AMD FX-8150 (3.6GHz Eight-Core) Asus CrossHair V Formula (AMD 990FX Chipset) 2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1866MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64

Futuremark's PCMark 7 is the latest version of the PCMark whole-system benchmarking suite. It has updated application performance measurements targeted for a Windows 7 environment and uses newer metrics to gauge relative performance. Below is what Futuremark says is incorporated in the base PCMark suite and the Entertainment, Creativity, and Productivity suites, the four modules we have benchmark scores for you here.

Futuremark PCMark 7 General Application and Multimedia Performance

The PCMark test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance during typical desktop usage. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system
Storage

• Windows Defender
• Importing pictures
• Gaming

Video Playback and transcoding
Graphics

• DirectX 9

Image manipulation
Web browsing and decrypting

The Entertainment test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in entertainment scenarios using mostly application workloads. Individual tests include recording, viewing, streaming and transcoding TV shows and movies, importing, organizing and browsing new music and several gaming related workloads. If the target system is not capable of running DirectX 10 workloads then those tests are skipped. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given an Entertainment test score.

The Creativity test contains a collection of workloads to measure the system performance in typical creativity scenarios. Individual tests include viewing, editing, transcoding and storing photos and videos. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Creativity test score.

The Productivity test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in typical productivity scenarios. Individual workloads include loading web pages and using home office applications. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Productivity test score.

The Intel Core i7-3820 offered performance slightly better than the Core i7-2700K according to PCMark 7, but it trailed the higher-end Core i7-3960X overall. In the Creativity and Productivity tests, however, where the additional cores and cache of the Core i7-3960X have less of an imact, the 3820 was actually able to pull ahead of Intel's current flagship, by the slimmest of margins.