Reviews - Intel Core i7 3820

[HEXUS]

The £250 chip cut from Sandy Bridge-E cloth.

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[Tattysnuc]

Excellent review. Well done Hexus! Nice to see such a comprehensive review of the product so quick off the marks.

Definitely sticking with my 2600K setup until those dual cpu boards come out. Then we'll see....

[kalniel]

"we managed a stable speed of 4.75GHz" Wow.

Great chip for Skyrim methinks

[Lee H]

Great chip for Skyrim methinks

Until it gets an arrow in its knee that is

Nice little chip there, but I think I'll stick with my 2500K running at 5 GHz on my P8Z68-V PRO as it does me for gaming and a bit of audio stuff every now and again and maybe look at upgrading if the IB bring a good jump in performance when they appear.

[kingpotnoodle]

"we managed a stable speed of 4.75GHz" Wow.

Great chip for Skyrim methinks

Seeing as I'm playing Skyrim at 2560x1440 on a stock clocked 2600K I don't that really makes sense...

[bert7]

what a waste, why did intel bother, most people cant afford the 3930/3960 and this 3820 is no better than a 2600k. with IB just round the corner it would seem that intel are just playing with us and i think some of this is down to AMD's bulldozer, i think they panicked and developed these chips not knowing how good bulldozer was, as it turns out they did not need them and so they just chucked them on the market. why spend all that money on development when you rule the roost anyway. prats !

[Hoonigan]

Why spend all that money on development when you rule the roost anyway.

Because if they don't spend a lot of money on development, within 6 months they won't rule the roost.

[edvinasm]

what a waste, why did intel bother, most people cant afford the 3930/3960 and this 3820 is no better than a 2600k. with IB just round the corner it would seem that intel are just playing with us and i think some of this is down to AMD's bulldozer, i think they panicked and developed these chips not knowing how good bulldozer was, as it turns out they did not need them and so they just chucked them on the market. why spend all that money on development when you rule the roost anyway. prats !

They didn't bother. They came and delivered. Want LGA 2011 motherboard? Thinking of getting latest CPU but slightly low on funds atm? Can't wait? there you go, cheapo LGA 2011 CPU! All logical. It was crazy to think of LGA2011 in first place but hey, there are loads of kids (and I mean kids) that would shed that money to have the latest.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

what a waste, why did intel bother, most people cant afford the 3930/3960 and this 3820 is no better than a 2600k. with IB just round the corner it would seem that intel are just playing with us and i think some of this is down to AMD's bulldozer, i think they panicked and developed these chips not knowing how good bulldozer was, as it turns out they did not need them and so they just chucked them on the market. why spend all that money on development when you rule the roost anyway. prats !

Its based on the same chip as the six core socket 2011 Core i7. It will be used in servers.

In fact in many cases the socket 1155 Core i7 CPUs end up having higher IPC:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5276/i...ndy-bridge-e/3

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rk,3090-7.html

Remember the Core i7 3820 has more L3 cache and a higher base clockspeed than a Core i7 2600K. The extra 200MHZ base clockspeed is the reason it is ahead of the Core i7 2600K and certain cases it is behind it as IPC has not actually improved. In the US it is meant to be significantly cheaper than a Core i7 2600K but in the UK it is priced the same as a Core i7 2700K.

The CPU is a waste of time unless you want three of four graphics cards, but then some socket 1155 motherboards negate that advantage with the NF200 chip.

The only situattions where it might make sense is in very memory intensive operations.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

"we managed a stable speed of 4.75GHz" Wow.

Great chip for Skyrim methinks

Bagnaj97 has an Athlon II X3 at 4GHZ and an HD5850 1GB - Skyrim runs fine at 1920X1080!

TBH,the vast majority of games will run fine on a £60 to £100 CPU especially if you mod it.

I don't see where all this £160 to £300 CPU is a must for gaming milarky has come from recently. It makes the apparent cost of PC gaming much higher than it needs to be.

I have never paid over £110 for a CPU - seems to be working OK for me fine!

[kalniel]

Bagnaj97 has an Athlon II X3 at 4GHZ and an HD5850 1GB - Skyrim runs fine at 1920X1080!

I'm not talking about 'fine'

I don't see where all this £160 to £300 CPU is a must for gaming milarky has come from recently.

I'm not talking about 'must'

I have never paid over £110 for a CPU - seems to be working OK for me fine!

I'm not talking about 'OK'

If you want Skyrim to run the best it possibly can, this is the chip to get. Skyrim likes this architecture the most. Add amazing clockspeed and it likes it even more.

[shaithis]

I don't see where all this £160 to £300 CPU is a must for gaming milarky has come from recently. It makes the apparent cost of PC gaming much higher than it needs to be.

Unfortunately, it has been born (mainly) from bad console ports

I've had to overclock 2 P2-955 systems recently (both had to go past 4GHz) to get F1 2011 running smooth on PCs with 6950s @ 1080p

Then you have skyrim. The Call of Duty series. GTA series.

And you also have the odd game like BF3 which isn't a console port but can still thrash a CPU to bits in certain circumstances....as well as a handful of RTS titles (Civ5, Shogun 2)

Admittedly, the vast majority of games are happy with an i3 or x3 but certain titles are being CPU hogs

[Bagnaj97]

This chip is utterly pointless for 99% of gamers. If you're not running at silly resolutions (i.e. >1080p) or exotic hardware setups (>2 card SLI/xfire) then a 2500k will be more than enough, especially when overclocked. As Cat has already said, I've got an X3 at 4GHz and I can happily run Skyrim and Shogun 2 with the settings maxed out, I've not measured the FPS, but the games are smooth. The only gamers who will buy this are the ones with more money than sense. For other purposes perhaps this has a place; for gaming the benefits are marginal at best.

[kalniel]

As Cat has already said, I've got an X3 at 4GHz and I can happily run Skyrim and Shogun 2 with the settings maxed out, I've not measured the FPS, but the games are smooth. The only gamers who will buy this are the ones with more money than sense. For other purposes perhaps this has a place; for gaming the benefits are marginal at best.

Just because you are happy with 30fps in Skyrim cities it doesn't mean everyone else is, otherwise they wouldn't make enthusiast products like this. We get it, the Intel Sandy Bridge E isn't for you, that's not to say it isn't for other people.

If I was building a system for myself now, this chip would be being considered very heavily, and would probably make it.

[CK_1985]

Good review, decent chip, but for my money not quite fast enough or cheap enough to change my plan of waiting for Ivy Bridge for my long-overdue upgrade. Having said that, if I was desperate to build a new system right now I reckon this would be the one I'd go for.

[andyb123]

the 3820 is the "budget" choice for people that want a quad SLI / xfire capable motherboard

not upset that I ponied up for 3930k for £300 2 months ago though, ha!