Encoding Performance
The Core i7-3960X delivers the highest frame rate we have ever seen when encoding with HandBrake, as it averaged a whopping 158.9fps.
The x264 HD Benchmark 3.0 results have the Core i7-3960X performing 19% faster than the Core i7-2600K on the first pass and 46% faster for the second pass.
On our TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress test the Core i7-3960X took just 5 minutes and 32 seconds to complete the conversion. It is worth noting that the Core i7-3960X was so fast here the mechanical hard drive couldn't keep up. We went back and performed the same test using a 7200-RPM just for interest's sake and found that the Core i7-3960X was 30 seconds slower as the hard drive had to catch up. We didn't see this kind of impact on the Core i7-2600K as we were only able to shave a few seconds off when using the SSD.