A performance enthusiast always wants to know what is coming next.  This morning HardwareLuxx published a rather interesting and official looking Intel slide detailing information about the upcoming enthusiast platform, Ivy Bridge-E.  While we cannot confirm the legitimacy of the slide, it does follow several patterns we had been assuming for a while.

Firstly the launch date is a little surprising.  Initially we have all been discussing October/November, but this slide puts the launch squarely at the beginning of September, between the 4th and the 11th.  This is around the same date as IDF San Francisco, held on the 10-12^th September. 

As with previous launches, there will be a strict NDA date for media to publish results and demonstrations.  Judging by what is written there does not seem to be much room for an upgrade to new chipsets, meaning that X79 is still the platform of choice at this time.  I would not mind seeing an X89 with a full set of SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0 in the near future.

Alongside release details, CPU-World has posted information on the processor SKUs which are expected to be released.  The top SKU is to be an i7-4960X, featuring 6 cores (12 threads) at 3.6 GHz which turbos up to 4 GHz and a total of 15MB L3 cache.  This is going to be our top end SKU, which normally retails for $999-$1099.  Below this is the i7-4930K, also 6 cores (12 threads) but set at 3.4 GHz with turbo up to 3.9 GHz and 12MB L3 cache.  The final SKU should be the more interesting – the i7-4820K.  The –K moniker suggests this part is unlocked, but unfortunately it is only a quad core (8 threads) part with 10MB L3 cache. 

One of the main benefits of Nehalem but a big issue with Sandy Bridge-E was the lack of a cheap overclocking SKU – while the i7-920 had big success, the i7-3820 eventually came along but it was not enough.  This Ivy Bridge-E low end SKU is going to be directly compared with the i7-4770K Haswell SKU, and the only thing going for it is the quad channel memory support, as it loses at IPC.  All three IVB-E CPUs should come in at 130W TDP, and as an overclocker I am hoping that the Ivy Bridge overheating issues are sorted with the IVB-E processors.

Source: HardwareLUXX, CPU-World