Intel Core i7 6950X Broadwell-E (10-core) CPU Review

1. Introduction2. Closer Look and New Features3. Overclocking Setup4. Test System and Methodology5. CPU Benchmarks6. Memory Benchmarks7. Gaming Benchmarks8. Power Consumption and Temperatures9. Conclusion10. View All Pages

Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.

Cinebench is a benchmark that scales the neatest of all benchmarks out there and reproduces consistent results.  The performance of the i7 6950X is quite simply mind-boggling, over 2000 points when overclocked and even at stock speeds an overclocked i7 5960X isn't capable of matching the i7 6950X.

Single threaded performance is less exciting – Broadwell falls behind Haswell's i7 4790K, due to a clock speed disadvantage, and Skylake's i7 6700K, due to both a clock speed and IPC disadvantage. Single threaded performance matches the i7 5775C when both are at 4.2GHz, as you might expect given that they share the same architecture.

WPrime

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions.

WPrime is a multi-threaded benchmarks that divides the workload equally across each thread. With 20 threads in its arsenal the i7 6950X dispatches of every other CPU in our testing with relative ease. It's more than twice as quick as an overclocked Core i7 6700K at calculating both 32 million and 1024 million digits of pi.

Handbrake

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.

Handbrake is able to take advantage of more cores and threads to increase the average frame-rate for video encoding or transcoding. The i7 6950X, with 20 threads, is able to transcode the same video file twice as quick as an i7 4790K. The gap isn't as wide as in WPrime because transcoding isn't just raw number crunching, nonetheless the i7 6950X is much quicker at dealing with video files.

Any person involved in content creation with video media could get a significant boost in productivity by moving away from Intel's mainstream platform. The improvement over the previous generation i7 5960X of 20 per cent is perhaps not enough to tempt Haswell-E owners to upgrade.

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