Specifications of upcoming Core i7-970

As was reported by other hardware news sites in February and March, Intel plans new six-core Core i7-970 microprocessor in the third quarter of this year. Much like the Core i7 Extreme i7-980X, the i7-970 will be based on Westmere micro-architecture, feature 256 KB/core L2 and 12 MB L3 caches, and have HyperThreading and TurboBoost technologies enabled. The CPU will operate at 3.2 GHz, which is slower by 133 MHz than the i7-980X, but the same frequency the as the fastest at this moment non-extreme Core i7-960 CPU. The first production S-spec of the i7-970 is SLBVF. OEM processors will have part number AT80613005490AD, and boxed ones will have part number BX80613I7970.

For differences between the upcoming I7-970, i7-980X and the Core i7-960 please see the table below.

Model	Micro-architecture	Technology	Frequency	Cores	L2 cache	L3 cache	QPI
I7-960	Nehalem	45nm	3.2 GHz	4	1 MB	8 MB	4.8 GT/s
I7-970	Westmere	32nm	3.2 GHz	6	1.5 MB	12 MB	4.8 GT/s
I7-980X	Westmere	32nm	3.33 GHz	6	1.5 MB	12 MB	6.4 GT/s

Update (July 26): Fixed QPI