14 DAY TRIAL // Following a series of rumors that have been making the rounds on the Internet for a while now, it appears that Intel's much-anticipated 6-core Gulftown processor. Designed for the enthusiast market, the new Core i7 CPU will be part of the company's 32nm-based line of processors. On that note, reviews of the new Core i7 980X have just went online at various hardware sites. This is clearly an indication that Intel will soon be announcing these new processors and make them available for enthusiast consumers.
Reviews of the new processors have surfaced on several websites, consequently providing details about the specifications and features that have been enabled in Intel's new processors. According to details, the new processor comes with a factory-set core frequency of 3.33GHz, the same as the previous Core i7 975 model, featuring a 4-core architecture. The CPU is featured with Intel's SMT (simultaneous multi-threading) technology, which means that the 6 cores will be seen as 12 threads, by the operating system.
In addition, the processor is also featured with 12MB of L3 cache, up from the 8MB of L3 cache available on the older, Bloomfield Core i7 975 model. There's an integrated memory controller, the addition of 7 new SSE4 instructions and dual QPI, with up to 25.6GB/s bandwidth.
The new processor is also part of the outfit's Tick-Tock strategy, with the “Ticks” representing the adoption of a new process technology, while the “Tocks” being focused on providing a new microarchitecture. This one fits in the “Tick” section, becoming Intel's first 32nm desktop CPU with 6 cores and 12 threads. In addition, the new model will be compatible with Intel's current high-end platform, X58, which was introduced back when the first Bloomfield processors were announced. Based on the X58 chipset, motherboards featuring this platform should work just fine with Gulftown, providing a BIOS update is applied.
Intel is yet to formally announce the product, but we are expecting it to become official within the next couple of hours, with a high chance for enthusiasts to quickly get one for their own system. Price wise, we are looking at a CPU that should be available for US$999, the same as the Bloomfield Core i7 975. We should note that the Core i7 975 and the 980X will also share the same power consumption specifications.