The Core i7 Extreme Edition CPUs are as expensive as you'd expect

Aug 26, 2014 09:51 GMT  ·  By

Intel may not plan to actually release the Haswell-E line of central processing units before the end of the week, but that hasn't stopped important information from leaking to the public. Like, say, everything from the specs to the prices.

There are three CPUs in the Extreme Edition Haswell-E series: Intel Core i7 5960X 8C/16HT, Intel Core i7 5930K 6C/12HT, and Intel Core i7 5820K 6C/12HT.

The first in that list, Intel Core i7 5960X, has forty PCI Express 3.0 lanes, for x16 + x16 + x8 graphics card setups. It also has eight x86 processing cores clocked at up to 3.5 GHz frequency when Turbo Boost is on.

Intel had to stay within the bounds of the TDP you see, which is 140W. You can still overcome it if you like overclocking, but the normal clocks will always be a lot lower than 4-core and 6-core units.

Needless to say, the CPU has DDR4 support as well (quad-channel), as well as Hyper-Threading technology (16 logical cores instead of 8). The cache memory (L3) is of 20MB. All in all, we can understand why Intel would slap a price of $999 / €999 on this thing.

Second in the series is the Intel Core i7 5930K 6C/12HT, a six-core processor with the same PCI Express controller as on the 5960X, but with just 15 MB of L3 cache memory and 3.7 GHz max clocks.

Its price is of $583, which corresponds to €583 in European countries, no matter what exchange rates would have one believe.

That leaves the Intel Core i7 5820K, a six-core unit with 28-lane PCI Express support (x16 + x8 + x4) and a price of $389 / €389. It has a top clock of 3.6 GHz and 15 MB cache memory.

The Intel CPUs will be released on August 29 worldwide, though it remains to be seen if they sell all that well. The high-end always has a lot fewer buyers than all other levels, obviously. Also, the chips won't be the kind of things buyers of the AMD Radeon R9 285 and comparable graphics cards will look for.

Since this is the back-to-school season, mid-range and some performance-grade systems are likely to sell best, not top-tier ones. Then again, the world has been waiting for the Core i7 Extreme CPUs for quite a while, so it's not like Intel can afford to put them off at this point.

Intel presents Core i7 Haswell-E CPUs (10 Images)

Intel presents Core i7 Haswell-E CPUs
Intel presents Core i7 Haswell-E CPUsIntel presents Core i7 Haswell-E CPUs
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