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Intel Core i7 Extreme octa-core desktop chips aim for power-hungry users
Posted by Unknown on Monday, September 1, 2014 | 0 comments
INTEL HAS RELEASED its first octa-core desktop chips in another Core i7 range, named Core i7 Extreme Edition, claiming these offer much faster performance than its previous fourth-generation Haswell chips.
Previously codenamed Haswell-E, this Core i7 processor range is available now and is aimed primarily at gamers and power enthusiasts. However, Intel said that the chips are also likely to be used in entry-level workstations as well.
One of the noteworthy features of Intel's latest 22nm processor lineup is that they're the first desktop chips to have eight cores and are also the first to support DDR4 memory. Intel claimed that the Core i7 Extreme Edition range offers a performance boost of 20 percent for 4K video editing and 32 percent for 3D image rendering against the previous generation.
Intel said that the chips boast 2.6 billion transistors and thus offer up to 79 percent more multi-threaded compute performance than existing quad-core Haswell processors.
However, only one of the new chips actually has the full complement of eight cores, and this is the flagship and thus most powerful Core i7-5960X, which boasts a base clock speed of 3GHz and reaches 3.5GHz with Intel's Turbo Boost technology.
The Core i7-5960X is joined by the Core i7-5930K and Core i7-5820K that are each powered by six cores with base clock speeds of 3.5GHz (3.7GHz with Turbo) and 3.3GHz (3.6GHz), respectively.
All three chips also support Intel's Hyperthreading technology, along with four memory channels for 2133MHz DDR memory, and are 140W thermal design power (TDP) parts.
Intel experience engineer for EMEA Simon Lambden said in a press briefing that Core i7 Extreme Edition chips are also designed to fit a new motherboard socket design, the LGA 2011-v3, and this has been done to prevent unwise users from putting the wrong chip into a motherboard and blowing it up.
Intel hasn't announced UK pricing yet, but it has priced the top-end Core i7-5960X at $999 (around £600), the Core i7-5930K at $583 (£350) and Core i7-5820K at $389 (£230).
