Intel Core I7-990X Extreme Edition Is New Hexacore Flagship

Intel has released its latest high-end processor, the Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition, packing six 3.46GHz cores and 12 processing threads. Capable of being overclocked to 3.73GHz using Intel's Turbo Boost technology (and likely higher again, when the aftermarket modders get their hands on the chip), the Core i7-990X Extreme Edition comes with unlocked multipliers so that tweaking the speed is more straightforward.

There's also 12MB of cache, which can by dynamically assigned to each core, and three DDR3 channels for 1066MHz memory. Intel is recommending that the Core i7-990X Extreme Edition be paired with its X58 Express Chipset, and so you won't get integrated graphics, but that seems something that the power users likely to eye this new flagship processor won't be too concerned about.