Intel Sandy Bridge-E CPUs Will Launch on November 14

The rumors regarding Intel's plans to launch the first high-performance desktop processors based on the Sandy Bridge-E architecture on November 15 seem to be wrong, as a recent report that just hit the Web suggests these CPUs will actually arrive one day sooner, on November 14.

Oddly enough, the processors won't be launched alongside Intel's own DX79SI and DX79TO LGA 2011 motherboards since these two solutions won't arrive until December of this year.

According to VR-Zone, this is the first time that Intel won't launch motherboard products together with a new processor series.

Intel will however release two new LGA 2011 coolers for its CPUs, one air cooler that is reportedly lighter than the one currently shipping with Extreme Edition chips, which will retail for $25-30 US (18.5-22 Euro), and a water-cooling solution that should come in just under $100 US (74 Euro).

Intel's initial Sandy Bridge-E processor lineup will include three chips, all of them belonging to the Core i7 product line.

The fastest of these CPUs is called the Core i7-3960X, the X at the end of its designation informing us that it belongs in the company's Extreme Edition line.

This Intel CPU packs six processing cores with HyperThreading support that have a base frequency of 3.30GHz and a maximum clock speed of 3.9GHz, which are backed by 15MB of Level 3 cache memory.

Next up, is the Core i7-3930K, which also includes six processing cores with Hyper-Threading support, but has a base operating clock of 3.2GHz, while the maximum frequency in Turbo mode is set at 3.80GHz.

Unlike its older brother, the Intel Core i7-3930K sports only 12MB of Level 3 cache memory.

Finally, the last chip to be released is the Core i7-3820, with 4 cores, 8 threads, 10 MB of L3 cache, a nominal clock speed of 3.60 GHz and a maximum Turbo speed of 3.90 GHz. This is the only Sandy Bridge-E processor to come with a locked multiplier.

All the processors sport a quad-channel DDR3 memory controller that can officially support memory speeds up to 1333MHz.