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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  • javier_machuk - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    the way i see it, the cheaper model got pricier... with the i7 920 at least you could OC. If this SB-E with 4 cores can't be OC at all then that's a mayor step back, also there's the deal of the cooler (even if it was a crappy one, it is still better than no cooler)
  • m.amitava - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    Point to think I must say. You can't OC the 3820 and it doesn't ship with a stock cooler. So why would somebody go out and buy an aftermarket cooler for a processor which will run at stock anyway?
  • Ytterbium - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - link

    I think the i7 965 didn't come with a cooler either, so this isn't new, I'm glad there not putting one in TBH.

    It's sad the top end chip isn't much better than the 990X from a clockspeed poitn of view, I hope it is ~20% better clock for clock.

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