Intel's high-end desktop (HEDT) processor line will reportedly be moving from Haswell-E to Broadwell-E soon, and with the move Intel will offer their highest consumer core count to date, according to a post at XFastest which WCCFtech reported on yesterday.
Image credit: VR-Zone
While it had been thought that Broadwell-E would feature the same core counts as Haswell-E (as seen on the leaked slide above), according to the report the upcoming flagship Core i7-6950X will be a massive 10 core, 20 thread part built using Intel's 14 nm process. Broadwell-E is expected to provide an upgrade to those running on Intel's current enthusiast X99 platform before Skylake-E arrives with an all-new chipset.
WCCFtech offered this chart in their report, outlining the differences between the HEDT generations (and providing a glimpse of the future Skylake-E variant):
Intel HEDT generations compared (Credit: WCCFtech)
It isn't all that surprising that one of Intel's LGA2011-v3 processors would arrive on desktops with 10 cores as these are closely related to the Xeon server processors, and Haswell based Xeon CPUs are already available with up to 18 cores, though priced far beyond what even the extreme builder would probably find reasonable (not to mention being far less suited to a desktop build based on motherboard compatibility). The projected $999 price tag for the Extreme Edition part with 10 cores would mark not only the first time an Intel desktop processor reached the core-count milestone, but it would also mark the lowest price to attain one of the company's 10-core parts to date (Xeon or otherwise).
They need a 6 core laptop
They need a 6 core laptop SKU, non Ultrabook with no windows 10 OS ONLY please! AMD please get a 8 core Zen laptop SKU non 15 watt part. System76/other Linux laptop OEMs please start offering Non Intel based laptops that run Linux based OSs. More OS choices would be better, and more SOC/APU choices also from other x86 makers! More choices is best. Ultrabooks(TM) and Thin and Light laptops SUCK!
you suck
you suck
I’ll buy if these still hit
I’ll buy if these still hit 4.5GHz+
I thought I saw a timeline
I thought I saw a timeline this summer that showed Intel planning on going from the current Haswell-E to Skylake-E in Q3 2016, which seemed like a while between hardware updates but maybe the low volume of the enthusiast segment didn’t warrant it moving any faster.
Now that it looks like they’re not skipping it, I’m very interested in watching and reading the reviews of Broadwell-E when it comes out, and seeing how well the efficiency of its low-power-optimized architecture scales to handle higher workloads.
The Broadwell EP Server line
The Broadwell EP Server line is supposed to hit 22 cores on the top end. Still using 2.5MB of L3 per core, thats 55MB of L3 on the top end SKU which is likely to be again the 2699.
I’m hoping the more common 2690 jumps from 12 to 16 cores, but the specifics are not yet in the wild.