Intel, the leading manufacturer of microprocessors, has just unveiled details about its upcoming products. Codenamed Dunningtons, the new microprocessors will be released by the end of this year and they are expected to go with a bang. Intel's 6-cored processors, which are expected somewhere in Q3 of this year, have just received prices and core speeds.

The Dunningtons have been talked about ever since the end of 2007, which goes to show how highly expected Intel's next-generation processors are. The Dunnington platform is said to be based on Intel's Core microarchitecture and will be built using the 45nm manufacturing process. The processors are designed for server systems and are expected to be available to server builders before the Nehalem platform is released. The Dunningtons are said to be built with six Intel Core microarchitecture cores made up of three dual-core Penryn dies, sharing a 16MB L3 cache.

According to the Vr-Zone website, the Dunningtons will be shipped in seven flavors ranging from four to six cores and frequencies between 2.13 and 2.66 GHz. The model names are L7445, L7455, E7420, E7430, E7440, E7459, X7470. The high-end X7470 will have an estimated price tag of $2729 and the technical specs include a 6-core CPU running at 2.66 GHz on a 1066 MHz FSB and with 16MB of L3 cache. The low-end E7420 will have a price tag of $1177 and will provide users with a 4 core CPU running at 2.13 GHz and with a cache level lower than on any other Dunnington CPU.

At this point, Intel leads the market in the consumer area with its 45nm multi core Penryn platform, which was released in early 2008. AMD still falls short in offering the highest performance consumer-oriented CPUs but has a strong market share in the server area.