14 DAY TRIAL // Intel didn't include unlocked chips in its product releases last month, because it is holding off the Devil's Canyon until June-July. Listings of some of the upcoming processors have already emerged though.
And in true high-end, overclockable fashion, the processors are more capable than any of their peers, by a fair deal.
And there aren't just Core i7 and Core i5 chips to look at, but even additions to the Pentium line of central processing units.
We'll start with the Pentium line first, since it's the “weakest” one. Plus that unlocked chips in this collection are pretty unheard of usually.
The Pentium G3258 costs under $100 / €100 and is meant to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Pentium brand itself.
A dual-core processor, it lacks hyper-threading (meaning that the OS sees just the two logical cores instead of four), but good clocks of 3.2 Ghz, with 3 MB L3 cache. The exact price of the thing is $80 / €80, but that's without VAT and shipping costs taken into consideration.
One step higher on the ladder is the Core i5-4690K, a quad-core processor with base speed of 3.5 GHz and Turbo Boost maximum of 3.9 GHz.
Of course, you can manually push the thing much higher than that if you know what you're doing, and have a deft hand at cooling. That's the whole point of the unlocked multiplier after all.
Alas, this chip, too, lacks Hyper-Threading, though at least the cache memory is respectable (6 MB).
That leaves the Core i7-4790K, a quad-core that does possess the technology (8 logical cores, or threads), plus 8 MB L3 cache and clocks of 4.1 GHz, 4.4 GHz in Turbo Boost state.
Devil's Canyon chips are all hand-picked CPUs that would otherwise be sold as normal, locked models if not for the higher voltage limits and higher-grade package. Intel has outfitted them with high-current LGA contact points and a better thermal interface material under the IHS (integrated heatspreader).
You might remember that this was a big blunder on Intel's part when it came to the previous generation of chips: poor quality thermal paste under the IHS, limiting overclocking headroom.
Anyway, the price of the Core i5-4690K CPU is of $250 / €250, while the price of the Core i7-4790K is $370 / €370. You should find them all on several online retailers, and maybe some chips besides these three. It's a bit early, but we doubt that buyers are going to complain.