Intel has added a new mighty chip to its arsenal, one that comes with 10-cores and promises to bring about a quantum leap in the way PCs have delivered in the higher echelons of the performance stakes so far.
The chip in question is the 14nm deca-core Broadwell-E Core i7-6950X that the company is showcasing at the ongoing Computex 2016 event. The chip is also aimed at hard-core gaming enthusiasts for which the chip accounts for 35 percent performance increment compared to the last gen Core i7-5960X based on the Haswell architecture.
That is not all as Intel also promises 25 percent better efficiency for 4K video editing with the new Core i7 6950X chip.
Other salient features of the new Core i7-5960X chip include 25MB of cache, a 3GHz base clock speed, support for 4-channel DDR4-2400 memory, and 40 PCI-E lanes. The chip also isn’t cheap either, priced at $1,569.
“As we start increasing cores, we start decreasing frequency in each of the SKUs. And the reason we do that is because when you increase cores, you’re increasing the power consumption and the thermal density in the package and something has to give to fit within that package and the thermal envelope,” Frank Soqui, Intel general manager for Enthusiast Desktop Products, said.
The base clock speed with the 6950X stands at 3GHz but gets enhanced to 3.5GHz thanks to Intel’s Turbo Boost Technology 3.0. It ensures applications are directed to the highest performing core, which means a huge performance increment for single-threaded experiences. The chip otherwise has two threads per core.
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Further, there are 40 PCIe lane connections to the CPU, which not only translates to extreme SSD storage and Thunderbolt 3 performance, multiple sub-systems can be attached to the PC without risking performance degradation.
“It will transform the way people play, work and create. Just as consumers are expanding what they do with their PCs, the Intel Core i7 processor Extreme Edition delivers a new level of capability, now with up to 10 cores of mind-blowing performance,” said Gregory Bryant, corporate vice president and general manager of the connected home and commercial client at Intel.
“It’s designed not just for multi-tasking, but for mega-tasking. Enthusiasts expect to push their systems to multiple compute-intensive applications at the same time. That’s exactly what we’ve delivered.”
Intel is also showcasing new 8-core i7 6900K, 6-core i7 6850K, and Core i7 6800K at the Computex show.
