Westmere-EP - X5660 Full Review

Update - 2020: X58 + AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Review: Click Here

Update - 2020: X58 + AMD Radeon Fury X Review: Click Here

Update - 2017: X58 + AMD Radeon Fury X Review: Click Here

Update - 2015: X58 + AMD Radeon Fury X Review: Click Here

 

OLD GTX 670 SI results below:

  Alright here are my Gaming Benchmarks. I will post more benchmarks as I complete them. I’m going to be comparing my X5660, L5639 and i7-960 benchmarks. If you would like to compare your scores please post them. I tried to remember some my i7-960 scores. 4Ghz-4.2Ghz is all most gamers will need anyways with Hex-cores. The X5660 will be a better choice if you stream games online in HD. It should be able to handle the load and specific settings in certain streaming programs for high end CPUs.

GTX 670 2GB 2-way SLI @ 966Mhz [Boost: 1228Mhz] [except 3DMark Cloud Gate and Vantage which was ran @ stock 915Mhz]

Note:Some of these test have been updated in the "DDR3- 1600Mhz vs 1900Mhz vs 2000M Mhz Performance % Comparisons" section.

3DMark Fire Strike and 3DMark 11 Results w/ 337.88 drivers



Fire Strike - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = 11462
3DMark 11 - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P16832

 

3DMark 11



This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P16449
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P15692
i7-960@4Ghz wasaround P12000-P13000

Looks like the GTX 670 2GB 2-Way SLI is pushing max with the Hex cores. The X5660 increased my Graphics [+174 points], Physics [+1,736 points] and Combined Score [+809 points]. If I could get both GPUs to run @1280Mhz I’m sure I could probably crack the 17000 mark. The benchmarks were smooth with Hex-CPUs. To the naked eye I couldn’t notice any difference. My GPUs are running on air so heat did become an issue.

3DMark Vantage


This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P47325
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P45164


Here is another minor difference in score.

3DMark Ice Storm



This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P197876
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = P173914
i7-960@4Ghz = P157635

 

Now we can see some bigger differences in the score and performance %. The X5660 scored 26% higher than the i7-960. The X5660 performed 14% better than the L5639. The X5660 performed pretty good with the GTX 670s @ 915Mhz.

3DMark Fire Strike



This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = 11205
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. = 10900
i7-960@4Ghz =9787

 

Using Hex cores definitely makes the benchmark much smoother. The X5660 offered a 14.4% increase over my i7-960@4Ghz andonly 2.7% over the L5639.

 

RealBench V2 Leaderboard

 

  I was on Twitter recently and notice a post from Asus. The post spoke about their “RealBench V2 Leaderboard”. I thought I’d give it a shot and compare it to the number 1 leader in the world. I did even better; I uploaded my score to Asus website. The number 1 ranked user is running an i7-3960X @ 5.3Ghz-DDR3-2400Mhz and a GTX 780 Ti. Here are the results and comparisons to my X5660.

i7-3930K @ 5.3Ghz-DDR3-2400Mhz + GTX 780 Ti = 111001[+26%]
Xeon X5660 @ 4.8Ghz-DDR3-1670Mhz + GTX 670 2GB Reference 2-Way SLI = 87926[0.0%]

   Being that my Gaming Rig is dated [6 year platform], it’s only 26% slower than the i7-3930K highly overclocked with faster RAM and faster Overclocked GPUs. According to Realbench v2 if I were to upgrade my build to the X79 platform with a highly 5.3Ghz OC CPU, faster 2400Mhz RAM and a pair of highly clocked GPUs, I would only gain 26% in performance. In my opinion this is definitely not worth the price of upgrading. I would come off cheaper by keeping my current platform, adding faster RAM and adding GPUs better than the GTX 670 2GB reference models. I’ll be sure to upload my results whenever I upgrade my GPUs. As of right now being within 26% is good enough for me to keep supporting my current platform.