6-core i9 i7 Extreme (Gulftown) processors detailed in leaked spec sheet.
2 cores? What is this, 2005? 4 cores? Still yesterday’s news. 6-cores? Now we’re talkin’. In the mad race to the top of the processor heap, once achieving the fastest clock speed came and went with manufacturers moving their focus from speed to cores, the processor scene was upped multiple notches. What started as dual core and then progressed to quad-core would ultimately lead to the next logical advancement — 6-core. Such is the beast that lives within the upcoming Gulftown processors.
One puzzling move to make light of is that the Gulftown 6-core processors were originally slated to drop with core i9 nomenclature. That naming scheme however appears to have been dropped in favor of core i7 Extreme. Meh, in the end it doesn’t really matter. All we enthusiasts care about is the performance that will ooze from every silicon wafer and circuit on the 32nm chip.
To leave off, just fill your head with the wonderful thoughts that a 12 core (physical) and 24 core (logical — hypertrheading) processor will be capable of. Isn’t technology grand?
Shocker! 6 cores are better than 4 with the up and coming top dog Core i7 chips performing roughly 50% faster on complex, optimized programs. I can already see you drooling, thinking out loud: “The Core i7 is just becoming mainstream and we’re already talking about it’s replacement?” Such is the world we live in folks, it never stops. But apart from constantly evolving “top dogs”, I have to say that the Core i9 power advantage is compelling to shell out extra for it. It won’t come cheap, though prices haven’t been officially loosed just yet. Another strike against the newcomer is it’s insatiable thirst for those cute little electrons — 130W continuous to be exact. It may not sound like much, but compared to the Core i7′s 95W power draw, 130 seems veracious. Even still, 6 cores of fury all packed into one small sliver of silicon is uber cool…
