Intel Core i7 4960X Extreme Edition Processor Review

Overclocking

At stock we can see the Core i7 4960X uses 22nm technology, has a 130W TDP and is codename Ivy Bridge-E. The CPU runs at stock 3.6GHz, Turbos up to 4GHz and Intel speed-steps as low as 1.2GHz when idling to save power.

Overclocking for me is not about pushing a CPU as far as it can go but about pushing a CPU to a point where you’ve got the maximum sustainable overclock that balances clock speed, stability and voltages for a 24/7 usage scenario. For us we reached that point at 4.5GHz. We thought 1.375 volts at 4.6GHz was an achievable target but even at 1.425 volts 4.6GHz wasn’t playing ball, requiring 1.45 volts to be stable at 4.6GHz which is just too high in my opinion. We dropped back to 4.5GHz and dropped the voltage back to 1.4volts with high load line calibration to achieve what we think is the sweet-spot 24/7 overclock of 4.5GHz. You could probably get that voltage down to about 1.375-1.385 volts with a bit of tweaking and tuning in the advanced BIOS settings of high end motherboards like the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme but we didn’t have time for that.

We were able to achieve higher than 4.5GHz, up to 4.7GHz stable. However it required a scorching hot 1.5 volts which isn’t sustainable, even with our Corsair H100i things were getting too toasty for my liking. The Core i7 4960X certainly doesn’t overclock as high in raw GHz terms as its predecessor the Core i7 3960X. That said with higher IPCs on the Core i7 4960X it should give better performance at lower clocks.