Core i7
After considerable speculation regarding how Intel would brand the Gulftown, the 32nm Core i7

being prepared for LGA1366 in 1Q10, it has been revealed by a Chinese website that it will

take the Core i7 980X name.



For those who don’t recall the full details on the Gulftown, let us quickly recap. Gulftown is

the codename for six core (hexa core) CPU being released as a member of Intel’s 32nm Westmere

family of processors beginning some time in March. Gulftown chips are very similar in

performance to Bloomfield Core i7s like the 950, but they overclock better, run cooler, offer

higher frequencies, add two more cores, and add a few extensions which really help encryption

performance. In other words, think “Core i7, but 52% more (10% of the time).”

While we’ve known about the impending arrival of the Gulftown since March, the whole industry

has flip-flopped back and forth on the finer details and the product’s branding, but the

matter is settled: It’s the 3.33GHz Core i7 980X.



It bears reinforcement that the 980X is a member of Intel’s Extreme Edition family, which

means the chip will retail for no less than the price of your firstborn male, or $999.

According to Chinese pricing (7999 yuan), the USD price is a stunning and equally probable

$1171.

In sum, the Core i7 980X has six cores; runs 3.33GHz (up to 3.6GHz on turbo); will melt your

credit card; drops into X58 boards; and offers little over existing quad i7s for users who

rarely dabble in multi-threaded work. But damn if we don’t want one.