Friday February 10, 2012 2:49 PM AEST

Atomic MPC > News > Build > CPUs, Motherboards & RAM > Intel bolsters its Core i7 line up

Intel bolsters its Core i7 line up

Top of the range chip added to the top of Intel's range...

Intel very quietly released a new addition to its Core i7 range with the launch of the 960, based on the 'Bloomfield' core.

The 45nm 3.2GHz quad-core processor can be bumped up to 3.46GHz thanks to Turbo Boost and boasts an 8MB L3-cache and a 4.8GT/s Quick Path Interconnect link inside a 130W power envelope.

Apart from the increased speed it's a fairly run of the mill LGA 1366 socket chip, although because it's not an Extreme Edition part, the multipliers are locked, unlike the similarly rated Core i7 965 Extreme.

Those hoping to pick up the Core i7 960 best swing by their bank first, thanks to the hefty $US562 price tag.

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11 Comments

thesorehead Oct 22, 2009 1:11 PM	Ahh, the ol' Early Adopter We-Can charge.
Argotha Oct 22, 2009 1:56 PM	Apart from trichanel ram and x16 crossfire/sli on the chipsent, and faster clocks on the processors, what has x58 and core i7 got going for it? as far as i can see you might as well get a core i5 and oc it to 4.1
nesquick Oct 22, 2009 2:04 PM	or better an i7 860.
seab4ss Oct 22, 2009 2:09 PM	I have had a i7 920 since January running at 3.3ghz (cost me $450 for the cpu), i wasnt gonna wait until September for an i5 or i7 8xx. "Apart from trichanel ram and x16 crossfire/sli on the chipsent, and faster clocks on the processors, what has x58 and core i7 got going for it?" I think you just listed what it has going for it.
Argotha Oct 22, 2009 2:14 PM	Is trichanel ram actually faster in real life? when the lucid 200 chip is realeased we will have 16x crossfire on p55 and faster processors can be matched with the oced i5's though if you were upgrading at the begining of the year i can understand, ie nothing in comparison. but now...
Mudg3 Oct 22, 2009 4:01 PM	You have no hyper threading for starters. OC's generate alot more heat. Lucid 200 chip will suck.
somemadcaaant Oct 22, 2009 4:48 PM	Sir, I concur.
Ezekill Oct 22, 2009 5:45 PM	I'm with nessie. I was hanging out for a 920, but then along came skt 1156. So my new build will be an 860 on an Asus mobo and some nice 5800 series gfx. All reviews I've read point to minimal (around 10%) fps losses over X58. Should be quite an improvement over my current Q6600/HD 2600 pro set up .
Rory K Oct 23, 2009 11:28 AM	Mudg3: The 860 and 870 have hyperthreading, I'm pretty sure it's still cooler when OCed to same clockspeed, and HOW DARE YOU KNOCK LUCID HYDRA!!! :)
scootre Oct 26, 2009 8:16 PM	The US$562... is that wholesale or street? With the Aussie dollar as it is right now, that price converts rather nicely.
Anrky Oct 29, 2009 3:54 AM	the i5, can only run sli/xfire in 8x/8x rather than x58's 16x/16x which means x58 will have massive performance increases when using high end graphics cards(gtx295's, 5870's) in sli/xfire due to the cap, if you want to build the best use x58

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Atomic Magazine

Issue: 133 | February, 2012

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

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