Likely to sell for about 240 Euro

Mar 20, 2010 11:22 GMT  ·  By

Even though it seems to be having trouble meeting the demand for its current set of central processing units, with the Gulftown being almost completely sold out in Europe, Intel is still working on further expanding its product lineup. Apparently, the currently highest-clocked dual-core that Intel has is not strong enough and, thus, efforts are already underway towards creating a stronger chip, known as the Core i5-680.

According to Fudzilla, the processor will have a core speed of 3.6GHz, but will reach it even while staying at a Thermal Design power (TDP) of 73W. The chip will be meant, obviously, for the high-end market and, like all recent chips based on the 32nm manufacturing process technology, will have an integrated graphics component. This component will have a frequency of 733MHz. The CPU will also support dual channel DDR3 1333.

According to the report, it will have a price point of roughly 240 Euro. This is a rather large sum to pay for a dual-core chip, but the current market conditions seem to be more awkward than one would think. Intel's six-core Gulftown, for instance, was designed as an enthusiast part with a matching price point of 900 Euro, but even it seems to have been sold out just days after it came out.

In addition to this model, the Santa Clara, California-based CPU maker is also supposedly gearing up to introduce a Core i7 chip. Known as the quad-core Core i7 870s, the processor will be a reiteration of the Core i7 870, only it will be designed with a lower frequency, so that it can reach a lower TDP rating. Specifically, the quad-core CPU will run at 2.67GHz (instead of 2.93GHz) and have a TDP of 82W (instead of 95W). This chip may end up more expensive than 400 Euro.

The prices mentioned in the report are only speculative. There is no actual information on the real tags or the availability of either model.