Intel on Friday officially unveiled its latest enthusiast-level CPU family, Haswell-E. The high-end line includes a trio of unlocked Core i7 processors designed for Intel's new X99 chipset with support for hyperthreading, quad-channel DDR4 memory and up to four graphics cards.
The flagship CPU of the bunch is the Core i7-5960X, an eight-core / 16-thread chip clocked at 3.0GHz (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz). It features 256KB of L2 cache and a whopping 20MB of L3 cache shared across each core which comes out to 2.5MB per core. The chip also includes 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes.
It's built on Intel's 22nm manufacturing process and carriers a thermal load of 140 watts. Expect to pay right at $1,000 for the opportunity.
As is typically the case, Intel's high-end chip is accompanied by a couple of cheaper variants. In this case, it's the Core i7-5930K and the Core i7-5820K, both of which are six-core / 12 thread components. The former features 15MB of L3 cache, 40 PCI Express lanes and runs at a base clock of 3.5GHz (boosting up to 3.7GHz) at a price of $583.
The Core i7-5820K, meanwhile, checks in at $389 which nets you a six-core / 12 thread chip with 15MB of shared L3 cache but only 28 PCI Express lanes. It also checks in with a slightly slower base clock of 3.3GHz (Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz).
The good news for hardcore enthusiasts is that all of these chips are unlocked. What we'll likely see is most people opting for either the Core i7-5930K or the 5820K and seeing how high they can overclock them.
Chips should be in stock at your favorite retailers starting today.
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