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The Intel Core i7 6950X, bottom right, does illustrate a different design to the Haswell-E largely due to the different heatspreader design. That heatspreader is most likely soldered onto the die since it always has been for the HEDT platform, only the mainstream platform has used thermal paste since the Ivy Bridge generation.
In terms of dimensions the i7 6950X is no different to Haswell-E and will work with the same CPU coolers and motherboards. It's noticeably bigger than the Core i7 4790K, Core i7 5775C and Core i7 6700K (top left to right) which are the three flagship chips of Intel's last three mainstream architectures.
The LGA 2011-3 pin- arrangement used by the i7 5960X and 6950X (right) is identical, on close visual inspection. There are some differences in the centre-most area which now contains a more uniform and dense arrangement of transistors.
Intel didn't specify any notes or explanations for the physical changes on the underside but our guess would be more components are present to help smooth and stabilise the power delivery, we saw a similar thing between the Core i7 4770K and i7 4790K.
The i7 6950X transitions to a 14nm processor node from the 22nm with the i7 5960X, a “tick” in Intel's tick-tock development cycle. Perhaps this reduction in transistor size is why Intel has been able to increase the core count from 8 to 10 cores while still maintaining enthusiast-level clock speeds and overclockability.
The CPU's overall die layout, shown below, remains largely unchanged compared to Haswell-E which makes sense as a tick is a process node shrink not an architectural re-design. Intel didn't specify if the proportions and sizes of each of the key CPU components have changed since the previous generation.
A new feature that looks good on paper is Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0. Current Intel Turbo Boost technology that most people will be familiar with is version “2.0” and the i7 6950X also has this variation of Turbo Boost. The “up to 3.5GHz” figure specified for the i7 6950X derives from this Turbo Boost 2.0 behaviour, all other recent Intel processors (including all the ones being tested in this review) are Turbo Boost 2.0 compatible.
The new Turbo Boost 3.0 hasn't been very well elaborated on by Intel – there's not a detailed indication of how it works, what kind of maximum turbo frequency it can achieve and how this will vary by chip or number of cores being utilised. Nonetheless, our general interpretation is that it is like Nvidia's GPU Boost for Intel CPU, depending on various parameters (temperatures, power, voltage, core utilisation etc…) the CPU frequency will dynamically adjust.
Our brief experience with the Turbo Boost 3.0, which requires a driver to be installed (note: it is just a driver file, not software) was disappointing. The CPU would turbo no higher than 3.5GHz, under a variety of different single and multi-threaded workloads while the bulk of the Turbo frequency was spent at 3.4GHz. To us that seemed like standard Turbo behaviour which perhaps suggests that a BIOS or Operating System level setting is preventing Intel's Turbo Boost 3.0 from functioning.
