If you’ve been hearing rumours about how Intel’s new Broadwell-E chip will sport 10 cores, we’re glad to tell you that said rumours are true. Today, Intel has officially revealed the brand new Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition, the Core i7-6950X, at COMPUTEX, and judging from the look of things, this baby is impressive.
So let’s start with the basics. The Core i7-6950X is the first 10-core desktop CPU that has a base clock speed of 3GHz. Said clock speed can be boosted up to 3.5GHz via Intel’s new Turbo Boost 3.0 technology. The Core i7 6950X, coupled with Intel’s own Hyper-Threading technology, means that the CPU is capable of running 20 simultaneous work threads.
In terms of raw performance, Intel claims that the i7-6950X is twice as fast as the quad-core i7-6700K for 3D rendering. Intel also boasts that the i7-6950X is 65% faster than the i7-6700K when it comes to editing 4K videos. As for gaming, the i7-6950X is 25% faster than the last-gen i7-5960X for 4K gaming while encoding and broadcasting a 1080p Twitch Stream.
While the i7-6950X takes up most of the spotlight, there will be other Broadwell-E chips of course. There is the 8-core Core i7-6900K, the 6-core i7-6850K and the 6-core i7-6800K. All of these chips will support the Intel X99 chipset, so if you’re already have such a motherboard, you can upgrade your current proccessor with the Broadwell-E without needing an overhaul. That said, if you’re aiming to get the i7-6950X, be prepared to spend top dollar for it as the chip costs USD 1,569 (RM 6,473). Once you factor in GST, it’s likely that the i7-6950 will have a local price that breaches the RM 7k mark.