Turns out price cuts weren't the only thing being served up by Intel today. In addition to slashing the cost of its high-end Core i7 970 and Core i7 960 processors, the chip giant is taking the time to unleash another extreme solution in the form of the Core i7 990X.
The $999 chip - presumably the last from the benchmark-busting Gulftown line - takes its place at the top of Intel's desktop range and usurps the previous champ, Core i7 980X.
Having fluttered in and out of retail in recent months, the official launch of the chip should come as no surprise, nor indeed should the processor's specification. As expected, the Core i7 990X takes over from its predecessor with a 1x bump in multiplier - raising the core speed from 3.33GHz to 3.46GHz.
The minor speed gain could of course be easily achieved by overclocking a 980X, but Intel's $999 parts are partly about bragging rights and there's simply nothing quicker than the 990X on the market. In keeping with the high-end Gulftown range, the new 32nm hyper-threaded chip provides six cores (twelve threads), 12MB of L3 cache and Turbo Boost technology.
It's a mighty-fine chip, a new king in fact, but a wee bit preposterous now that hexa-core Core i7 970 can be had for under £450.
