Intel's Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition To Be A 10-Core Monster?

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅04.04.2016 17:29:09
In what might be a slight miscommunication between Intel's hardware launch and support divisions, it appears that limited specifications for the next-generation of Core i7 Extreme Edition have been inadvertently revealed. The information matches the November roadmap leak, but also includes cache quantity and clock speed.



The posting lists the Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition, a successor to the current Haswell-E Core i7-5960X EE, and likely flagship SKU for the High-End Desktop lineup refresh due later this year. The headline figure is that the CPU will consist of as many as 10 physical cores clocked at 3.5GHz and support 20 threads via hyperthreading, the highest yet on a consumer-class Intel CPU (even if it is part of their High End range). The listing also reveals the CPU will be equipped with a commensurately larger L3 Cache, 25MB in this case rather than 20MB as in the i7-5960X.

It's currently understood that the underlying architecture for the next-generation High End Desktop CPUs are based on the 14nm Broadwell-E microarchitecture, and will be supported by existing LGA2011v3 X99 motherboards (most of which requiring a BIOS update). It's also likely that motherboard vendors will begin refreshing their lineup in advance of Broadwell-E's release.

Standard workloads are unlikely to trouble that sort of multi-core performance, but it will be interesting to see if up-to-date applications (including games) beyond dedicated benchmarking can come close stretching this beast. Those in the market for CPUs a little less powerful should be able to pick up variants with smaller core counts (8 or 6 being most likely) and potentially higher core frequencies.

SOURCE: Intel Support Site


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