Intel has been an absolute performer and in the lead ever since its Core series CPUs launched. AMD has just not been able to keep up with Intel. AMD’s bulldozer was supposed to have been able to provide some competition but it barely keeps up with even Intel’s previous generation, therefore it isn’t astonishing that Sandy Bridge E, the architecture within this innovative Extreme Edition CPU, is the fastest thing ever known.

In the past few years, Intel had become complacent giving headaches to high end PC buyers. Intel had launched its previous set of Extreme Edition CPUs, the Bloomfield XE i7-9xx series in 2008 and the gulftown i7-9xx series in 2011. These series were set apart from the mainstream Core lineup by the use of their own socket and chipset. But with the Intel Core i7 3960X, everything has changed.

The Intel Core i7 3960X is the fastest consumer desktop CPU in Intel’s lineup. The 2.27 billion transistor chip has eight cores, but the latest models being released at the moment use only six of them. Each of these six cores can execute two threads and there is a 15 MB cache to keep them all occupied. The Intel Core i7 3960X nominal clock speed is 3.3 Ghz, but the speed increases to 3.6 Ghz on every core or 3.9 Ghz on a single core when Turbo Boost boots in to accelerate demanding applications. The TDP is 130W which is line with previous Extreme Edition parts. Perhaps Intel was aware that enthusiasts buy a CPU in this price range wouldn’t ever use a simple cooler and therefore, they have decided not to bundle one. Instead, for the first time, Intel’s offering an optional liquid cooling kit custom made by Asetek.

On the memory front, all of the four memory channels can be packed with 1600 MT’s modules, allowing for a whopping 51.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth. A number of X79 motherboards flaunt support for XMP (Xtreme Memory Profiles), which is a new Intel catchphrase that involves certifying motherboards and memory modules that make use of certain optimizations above and beyond DDR3 specifications. XMP squarely targets gamers and over-lockers, who will be looking to squeeze even more power out of their systems.

There is no onboard graphics subsystem, but anyone who is buying a CPU of this caliber would not want to pair it with anything below a top-range graphics card anyway. Rather than graphics, Intel has shifted the PCIe controller from the chipset to the CPU package.

With so many functions moving to the CPU, there isn’t much left for the chipset to do and the X79 Express is a mixed bag. All the usual boxes are checked: 14 USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HD Audui, additional PCIe lanes and SATA. One the downside, there is no USB 3.0 port and only two of the six SATA ports support the latest 6 Gbps standard.

In short, the Intel Core i7 3960X is one of the fastest CPUs of this generation. However, given its non-extreme i7 siblings’ capabilities, it is hard to find a scenario where this much power is even necessary.