14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has started to make room in its product lineup for the recently launched LGA 2011 processors and just a few moments ago it has announced that by the end of the next year will halt shipments of a wide series of 900-series processors, including the six-core i7-990X.
The chip maker has announced its decision through a Product Change Notification (PCN) document and covers five Core i7-900 series processors using the LGA 1366 socket.
The chips in question are the box and tray versions of the Core i7-980, i7-960, i7-950, i7-930 as well as those of the Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition.
Customers can place orders for these chips until June 29 of 2012. The last shipments of tray CPUs will be sent out towards those who have placed orders on December 7, 2012, while boxed processors will be shipped as long as supplies last.
While definitely important, Intel’s decision was expected by most of us as the company is trying to direct the attention of its customers towards the recently launched Sandy Bridge-E processors that use the LGA 2011 socket.
Until the arrival of these chips back in mid-November, the Core i7 990X Extreme Edition was Intel’s fastest desktop processor.
The chip is based on the Gulftown architecture and features six processing cores as well as 12MB of Level 3 cache memory.
Its base operating frequency is set at 3.46GHz and the Turbo Boost technology allows the CPU to reach speeds of up to 3.73 when not all of its cores are utilized.
Outside of the high operating speeds and core count, the Core i7-990X also supports some of Intel's most advanced technologies, such as HyperThreading and the AES-NI instruction set, but lacks support for the newer features that were introduced in SNB-E such as a quad-channel memory controller and the AVX instruction set.