Intel has unveiled its new line of high-end CPUs for gamers

Intel on Friday officially unveiled its latest enthusiast-level CPU family, Haswell-E. The high-end line includes a trio of unlocked Core i7 processors designed for Intel’s new X99 chipset with support for hyperthreading, quad-channel DDR4 memory and up to four graphics cards. The flagship CPU of the bunch is the Core i7-5960X, an eight-core / 16-thread chip clocked at 3.0GHz (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz). It features 256KB of L2 cache and a whopping 20MB of L3 cache shared across each core which comes out to 2.5MB per core. The chip also includes 40 PCI Express 3.0 lane

Much of the talk about upcoming PCs revolves around the next generation of processors from Intel. Codenamed Broadwell, those chips include the next generation of Core i-series CPUs, expected in products next year, and a new line for slim, low-power devices, called Core M, expected in late-2014 products. But before we get to any of that, Intel’s current generation of Haswell CPUs, also known as fourth-generation Core i-series chips, has one more trick up its sleeve. The Haswell-E line is a collection of high-end Core i7 CPUs for desktop computers, including the new Alienware Area 51, also announced today. Haswell-E is Intel’s first eight-core desktop processor (a six-core version will also be available). It pairs with Intel’s new X99 motherboard chipset, which supports newer DDR4 RAM and up to four graphics cards. The flagship CPU in the line is the Core i7-5960X, a 3.0GHz eight-core/16-thread chip that can turbo up to 3.5GHz. Also available will be the Core i7-5930K and the Core i7-5820K, both of which are six-core/12-thread chips.