This is the highest-performance processor currently up for sale

Dec 7, 2012 09:10 GMT  ·  By

After months of hints, leaks and official announcements, the newest and greatest member of the Extreme Edition processor series from Intel is finally stepping forward.

Contrary to what some may believe, this is not a third-generation Ivy Bridge central processing units, based on the 22nm manufacturing process. Instead, it is a Sandy Bridge-E, 32nm chip.

That doesn't make it any weaker though. Despite being one manufacturing technology behind, it is easily the best consumer-grade chip on the market.

There are six cores available, although the Hyper Threading technology turns them into 12 logical cores.

The base operational frequency is of 3.5 GHz, which is already a lot by today's standards.

Nevertheless, the real wonder is the 4 GHz Turbo Boost frequency. It isn't the highest we've seen, but it definitely amounts to a lot on six cores.

Also, the performance per clock is higher than that of all other chips currently available, including AMD's 8-core Vishera.

That said, the new CPU has a cache memory of 15 MB and a maximum TDP (thermal design power) of 150W.

All in all, the Intel Extreme Edition Core i7-3970X is a powerful processor that will easily hold the fort until the Ivy Bridge-E collection arrives.

Some people may remember that the CPU started selling as far back as October (2012). The only difference now is that Chipzilla has made it all official.

Then again, its announcement was two-pronged. The company has also revealed the Intel Desktop Board DX79SR codenamed “Stormville,” with 8 memory slots, three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots and overclocking capabilities.

Verily, it seems as though Intel is actually trying to get prospective buyers interested in its new mainboard by pairing it with its best ever CPU. Whether or not the tactic works, sales won't be colossal, since they never are on the high-end segment.