Intel Core i7-2960XM Review

The Core i7-2960XM is one of Intel's high-end Laptop processors. It was released in 2011 with 4 cores and 8 threads. With base clock at 3.7GHz, max speed at 3.7GHz, and a 55W power rating. The Core i7-2960XM is based on the Sandy Bridge 32nm family and is part of the Core i7 series.

Now, we're asking ourselves whether or not the Intel Core i7-2960XM finally dethrones the Phenom II X4 X920 BE as the de facto ruler of the mainstream processors. Ultimately, it depends: the Core i7-2960XM doesn't reach the same single-core performance as AMD, but we're starting to see more games adopt multi-threaded CPUs, so that doesn't matter as much.

As the higher-priced version of the Core i7-2920XM, the Core i7-2960XM has higher base and Boost frequencies of 3.7 and 3.7 GHz, respectively. That's an increase in base frequency and a bump to boost clocks, but the real advantage should lay in the higher Package Power Tracking (PPT) envelope, which is a measurement of the maximum amount of power delivered to the socket. The Core i7-2920XM's PPT tops out at 55W, while the motherboard can pump up to 142W to the Core i7-2960XM at peak performance. That opens up much more aggressive boost behavior, on both single and multiple cores, that could widen the performance gap beyond what we see on the spec sheet.

But, like most humans, if you do things other than gaming, the Core i7-2960XM offers a better mixture of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. The Core i7-2960XM offers twice the threads of the price-comparable Phenom II X4 X920 BE, and it wields them to great effect in threaded workloads. As such, rendering and encoding remain a strong suit of the Core i7 chips, and Intel's improvements to AVX throughput have yielded impressive results.

What this all means is that the Intel Core i7-2960XM is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Core i7-2960XM.

One of the nice things about the Intel Core i7-2960XM processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the Intel Core i7-2960XM up for $1096 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The Intel Core i7-2960XM retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 55W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

Our look today at the Intel Core i7-2960XM showed that it is a very capable processor. A 4-core processor sounds like it would be really under-powered these days, but we were pleasantly surprised with a snappy and very capable system. Having just 4 cores had this processor coming in at the back of the pack for heavily threaded workloads, but it performed better than some of its more expensive siblings in lightly threaded workloads where it shined thanks to its high base clocks.

If extended overclocking and boost frequencies are trivial matters to you, Intel also offers the Core i7-2920XM at $1096. It’s still outfitted with 4-cores and 8-threads, but clocks in at a slower 3.5GHz and maxes out at only 3.5GHz.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Core i7 CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the high-end with its Core i7-2960XM processors, which the company is making available as of on September 2011.