This week at Computex in Taipei, the tech giant Intel had announced its next-generation Broadwell-E chip family and its very first deca-core unit for the commercial high-end desktop market – the highly anticipated, fully unlocked Core i7-6950X.
To develop it, the company had temporarily suspended its bi-annual Tick-Tock product cycle, characterised by developing a new chip manufacturing technology every second year, with architecture updates in-between.For the new processor, Intel has stuck with the same 14-nanometre die used in previous generations, but added enhancements to boost speeds and performance.
Users of this top-of-the-line chip will enjoy 10 cores, with 2 threads per core, 4-channel memory support, 25MB Smart Cache and Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 that can test the individual chip to identify which cores are physically fastest – a feature that could be useful for tasks that require speedy single-core operation.
The GM of Intel’s Enthusiast Desktop Group, Frank Soqui, said the new chip family is aimed mostly at power users who require exceptional performance and reliability while taking on many resource-heavy tasks at the same time.
”When we talk about mega-tasking we’re talking about simultaneously, compute intensive, multi-threaded workloads that are aligned in a purpose”, said Soqui, explaining the difference between multi- and mega-tasking.
Based on the company’s own benchmark tests, the i7-6950X is up to 25 percent faster at 4K gaming and video editing, live streaming on Twitch at 1080p and many other resource-heavy tasks as compared to chips of the Haswell-E family.
To get a hold of the 10-core behemoth, users will have to fork out a rather staggering $1,723, which is more than $700 higher than the $999 the company usually charges for its premium CPUs.
Considering the extent of the upgrade and the record-busting price, the product is likely to be used only by the most dedicated of tech aficionados, overclockers and perhaps early adopters of VR technology.