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Mar 11

Intel Previews New ‘Gulftown’ Six-Core Processor

Posted in: Games, intel, Notebooks, processor, Today's Chili

Intel’s first 32-nanometer, six-core processor is ready for prime time. It’s clunky moniker aside, the chip called the Core i7-980X Extreme edition will offer some serious artillery for gamers and heavy multimedia users looking for a faster processor.

The chip is based on Intel’s platform codenamed “Gulftown” and will include features that improve on computing speed and power efficiency.

Intel launched the first of the Core i7 chips in November 2008. The family of Core i7 chips will be almost four to six times faster than the earlier platform, says Intel.

The first of the Core i7 chips were based on the 45-nm circuitry, a step ahead from the previous 65-nm generation. The latest chip takes it to the next level with a 32-nm process so Intel can pack in more computing power and manufacture the CPUs more cheaply.

The new Core i7 chips are based on a newly designed Intel microarchitecture called Nehalem, which includes major design changes in areas such as power management and integrated memory control.

The chips use “hyperthreading” technology, which gives the chips the ability to execute 12 threads simultaneously on six processing cores, greatly increasing their speed.

The Core i7-980X chip has 1.17 billion transistors with 12 megabytes of Level 3 cache. The processor uses the Intel X58 Express chipset and has a clock speed of 3.33 GHz, reports Extreme Tech, which offers some benchmarks. Intel is yet to announce the entire technical specifications of the chip.

The Core i7-980X chip will be available at the same price as the i7-975 chip released last year. The i7-975 chip can simultaneously process eight threads on four cores.Intel hasn’t said exactly when we will see the latest chips in high-end gaming desktops though it is expected to be in the next few weeks.

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Photo: Core i7 chip/Intel