I just ran across this review here which seems to show a clear advantage to the 3960x in Skyrim:
http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page7.html
20% faster than the 2600k
Would be nice to see Kyle and them do some of their own testing as well to see what advantages SB-E offers in CPU intensive titles like Skyrim
Comparing the 3960 to the 2500 really points out the weirdness for this game.
No more usable threads (Skyrim uses 2 threads, and that's basically it), the two processors are operating at the same clocks and have the same underlying architecture, yet the 3960 blows past the 2500 by more than 25%. That means the game is either desperately starving for:
- on-chip cache
- memory bandwidth
...as those are the only two things relevant to Skyrim different between the parts! I really wonder which it is...