Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition microprocessor family

i7-980x is the first Core I7 Extreme processor built on enhanced Nehalem microarchitecture. Prior to official launch the microprocessor was previewed during Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on March 10th 2010, and then reviewed by many hardware review sites on March 11th. The i7-980X runs at the same frequency as Core i7-975, but has larger number of cores - 6 as opposed to 4 in i7-975, and has 50% larger size of level 3 cache. Like other members of Core i7 family, the 980X includes HyperThreading feature, which allows each CPU core to act as two logical processors. With 12 logical processors and 3.33 GHz core frequency, the i7-980X performs extremely well in media applications, such as audio and video encoding, and 3D rendering. In these types of applications you can expect 30% - 45% boost over the i7-975. Business and game applications do not use all available 980X's cores, therefore the CPU has much smaller performance advantage over the i7-975 - from 0% and up to 5% in some applications.