VR-Zone has released preliminary info about Sandy Bridge-E pricing. There doesn't seem to be any surprises though; the report states that SB-E will adopt exactly the same price points as what Intel's current LGA 1366 socketed i7 CPUs use. Below is a table of the CPUs and their specs:

  Nehalem/Westmere Sandy Bridge-E
Model i7-960 i7-980 i7-990X i7-3820 i7-3930K i7-3960X
Cores/Thread Count 4/8 6/12 6/12 4/8 6/12 6/12
Frequency 3.2GHz 3.33GHz 3.46GHz 3.6GHz 3.2GHz 3.3GHz
Max Turbo 3.46GHz 3.6GHz 3.73GHz 3.9GHz 3.8GHz 3.9GHz
L3 Cache 8MB 12MB 12MB 10MB 12MB 15MB
Unlocked Multiplier No No Yes No Yes Yes
Price $294 $583 $999 $294 $583

$999

As the table shows, the price points are indentical. This is what we expected back in April in our article about SB-E, and Intel has kept pretty much the same price points since the introduction of Nehalem in late 2008. However, Intel will not be including CPU coolers in the retail package anymore, which marginally reduces their expenses. Considering that SB-E is mainly aimed at enthusiasts and the enterprise market, it makes sense as most users will rely on third party coolers anyway due to better cooling performance and/or quieter operation. Note that the CPU pricing does not imply that the platform costs will be identical to X58; it's possible that Intel will be charging more for the X79 chipset, but that shouldn't make a dramatical difference. 

VR-Zone says that this info has come from one of their most reliable sources and overall VR-Zone has been a fairly reliable source of information lately, but as with any unofficial data, the info should be taken with grain of salt. 

Source: VR-Zone

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  • Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    It is certainly possible that we will see 8-core CPUs under the i7 brand at a later date. Right now, it looks like 8-core parts will be limited to Xeons at the launch. Maybe Intel is having poor yields, thus they cannot release an 8-core part with a reasonable price tag. It looks like Intel is trying to stay under the $999 tag for i7 CPUs. 8-core chips will most likely end up costing a lot more (probs close to $1500) at the launch.

    We will see what is Intel's approach soon. If all parts are 8-core chips with cores disabled, then an 8-core i7 in the future sounds plausible.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    Quad channel will be significant in scientific number crunching software. It also allows you to get away with using cheaper, slower DIMMs (like in basically all OEM systems).

    MrS
  • Filiprino - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    What's the difference between 3930K and 3960X apart from the 100Mhz and 3MB of L3 cache difference? $416 don't justify that.
  • DanNeely - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Have you ever seen an Intel Extreme part that wasn't intended primarily to fleece corporate buyers/noobs?

    In theory you get the absolute best binned parts; which might matter if you're chasing a record with LN2; otherwise forget they even exist.
  • intel_is_so_gay - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    Yepp. X means it's fully unlocked so if you want to do some weird liquid nitrogen overclocking, you can. K is only partially unlocked.
  • Filiprino - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    Yes, that's true. But on Nehalem you got 2 extra cores and full unlocking. They released the full locked 6 cores later.
    Now they are releasing at the same time two 6 cores units, one partially locked (before it was full locked) and one fully unlocked. Given the memory architecture, if being fully unlocked means you are capable to also configure a BLCK without affecting the rest of the system, then it's almost useless unless you are going sith LN2 for overclocking and trying to break records.

    Here I'm seeing the pressure Intel is thinking will have when AMD releases Bulldozer.
  • pattycake0147 - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    There also is an increase from 12 MB cache to 15 MB cache. Again minimal increase in performance for a large increase in price.
  • maroon1 - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link

    Both 6 models are full unlocked

    The one that is partially unlocked is the quad core model (i7 3820)
  • RussianSensation - Monday, August 15, 2011 - link

    For power users, the i7-3930K @ $583 looks like a sweet toy. That prob will overclock just as good as the flagship $999 model and the 3mb cache is unlikely to have a huge difference in performance.

    So essentially, Intel is going to offer a FAR faster chip in the i7-3930K vs. $999 990X. Looks like a winner to me for workstation/power users.

    Now that i7-3820 chip, looks like a completely waste of $ without unlocked multiplier.
  • maroon1 - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link

    Actually you can change the BLCK frequency from 100Mhz to 250MHz
    http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusive-intel-s-futu...

    In other words, even with locked multi you can still overclock any SB-E

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