Today Intel
announced what it called its fastest chip to date for PCs, the six-core
Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor, which is based on the Sandy Bridge
microarchitecture and designed for use in high-end desktops. The 3960X
and 3930K processors will be the first to require Intel's new X79
motherboard, which uses an LGA2011 socket.
The processor is targeted at enthusiasts such as gamers, who
usually are early adopters of the latest technologies. More cores and
faster clocks speed up PCs and are valued by gamers, who demand peak
performance when playing graphics intensive games.
The Core i7-3960X runs at a default clock speed of 3.3 GHz, cranking
up to 3.9 GHz per core depending on performance required. The chip has
15MB of cache and supports four channels of memory, also the most
available on Intel PC chips to date.
The chip is about 52 percent faster in video editing than the Core
i7-2600K chip, which is also based on Sandy Bridge and targeted at
enthusiasts. The memory performance is up to 114 percent better, Intel
said. The Core i7-3960X will succeed the Core i7-990X Extreme Edition, which was the fastest chip based on Intel's previous Westmere architecture.
Intel Core i7 3960X Processor Die Detail
The i7-3960X processor is priced at US$990 for 1,000 units. It will compete with the Advanced Micro Devices' eight-core (Bulldozer) FX-series processors, which started shipping last month and are also targeted at enthusiasts.
Intel and AMD are adding cores and ratcheting up clock speeds in an
effort to gain the chip performance crown. AMD in September demonstrated
its eight-core FX processor running at 8.429GHz in a system, which the
company claimed broke the world record.
Intel also introduced the six-core Core i7-3930K chip, which operates
at 3.2GHz and can be clocked up to 3.8GHz. The chip has 12MB of cache,
four memory channels, and is priced at US$555 in quantities of 1,000.
Of course, this means that the previously reigning king (Intel Core
i7-990X) will have to step down in price. For a quick reference of what
the new Sandy Bridge-E series will be competing against, at the top-end
within
Intel's family of desktop processors,
see the table below. Note that all of the processors listed below
support Hyper Threading, so they can simultaneously run twice the number
of threads as the number of cores they have.
Specifications: