Awww, it's lead free
Now where am I supposed to get my recommended dose of lead from?
(Seriously there is barely any factory around where you can _still_ produce with lead)
Intel has released what it calls its "highest performance Extreme Edition processor," along with a new "Extreme Series Intel Desktop Board" into which to plop it. "Unlock and Unleash with Extreme Confidence," the company says in its announcement of the new enthusiast products, which include a "full complement of controls …
Dear intel,
It is wonderful you have a great, super-duper desktop processor especially when the real world is looking for super-duper server side processors and/or/exclusive-or(?) mobile processors.
And the flavoursome fashion of the moment seems to be ... (not intel?) but an exothermic desktop processor might help offset heating costs in the office no?
How do you edit and compress HD video fluently? You need serious CPU for that. And having it on desktop instead of server is better because then you can display the imagery without dragging it through the ethernet.
I could also imagine scientists and engineers finding good use for super-duper desktop CPU.
This seems ominously like evidence that there will be no Ivy-E for the LGA 2011 socket. Come on Intel, I NEED that 8 core (22nm) part! Ok, not really need per-say, but many enthusiasts bought into the 2011 socket anticipating such a part. A minor clock speed bump is not going to cut it. If Haswell comes out with no Ivy-E counterpart then 90% of X79 owners are going to feel like they've been shafted by Intel. I also see that "official" PCIe 3.0 support is still lacking (though it already works fine "unofficially" if your mobo vendor has been kind enough to enable the feature). I guess this is the price we pay for AMDs total lack of a competing product in this space. I can only pray that they get it together...
Intel are waiting for AMD before "upgrading" the core count. No point pushing the state of the art too fast or they'll have to think up something new. Feature/performance bumps at the top end tend to push prices down at the bottom end.
The last thing Intel want is someone popping desktop parts into servers and an 8 core desktop might look a little tempting.
Haswell due late Q1/early Q2 2013 (running on the new LGA1150 boards), Ivy-E is due Q3 2013 (expected to be running on X79 LGA2011 boards).
Problem is no-one is really experiencing CPU as a bottle-neck since C2Q came out 4 or 5 years ago and memory is hardly a problem anymore with how cheap it has got (16GB for ~£40).
FYI, the i7-3960X launched Q4'11 (http://ark.intel.com/products/63696). The current launch is in fact for the i7-3970X, specs are 3.5 GHz with "max turbo" 4.0 GHz and an increase in TDP to 150W (from the i7-3960X TDP of 130W).
Before you flame "haven't you seen the Send Corrections link at the bottom of the article" yes I have and yes I did and no the Reg hasn't issued a correction.
My 3930K and 32GB from December last year are still flying through things thanks. A large render in a few minutes that used to take a good hour or so on my previous C2D build.
And .wav to .mp3 LAME encoding in less than a second for your average 3 to 4 minute song...! Shame the CD rip itself still takes a few minutes.