Intel Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition listed in support docs

[HEXUS]

But this 10-core CPU hasn't been released yet. List confirms some key specifications.

Read more.

[ALIAKSANDR]

Well I am about this can only dream of.

[SlickR]

Think the cost is offset by the smaller process node and at this point the maturity of it, so they can add cores but not increase the price.
Otherwise who's going to be the market for such an expensive CPU? Even $1000 is extremely expensive, something like $1200 or more would be way too much.

Also considering most applications and games aren't optimized for more than 4 cores is another issue. Sure there are some who can take advantage of unlimited amount of cores, but overall those apps are rare.

[kalniel]

Think the cost is offset by the smaller process node and at this point the maturity of it, so they can add cores but not increase the price.

They can.. but they won't.

[Sharpethunder]

now its time to start to plan my new system

[Worms]

Is there a huge improvement to be able to stream games like League of Legends or CS:GO with a hexacore compared to an i-7 with 4 cores and 8 threads (4770k)?

[jigger]

With a £1000+ CPU I would hope so.

[MRFS]

I took careful note that the block diagram above
omits the DMI version, so I checked at Intel's website:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/performance-chipsets/x99-chipset-diagram.html

DMI 2.0 x4

PCIe 2.0 oscillates at 5 GHz, and
it uses the 8b/10b legacy frame
(10 bits per byte).

5G / 10 bits per byte = 500 MB/second

Thus, that DMI link is limited
to x4 lanes @ 500 MB/second = 2.0 GB/second.

That's rather ridiculous, given the
sheer amount of horsepower available
from 10 such cores and 10 hyper-threads
(20 threads total).

Gee, with all of those idle cores,
one would think that Intel would
increase the size of the DMI link
WAAAY beyond DMI 3.0, which only
doubles DMI 2.0.

(I must be dreaming -- again.)

[Tunnah]

This is stupidly priced, ridiculous for desktop and a complete waste of money.

God DAMN I want one so much

[Valantar]

Is there a huge improvement to be able to stream games like League of Legends or CS:GO with a hexacore compared to an i-7 with 4 cores and 8 threads (4770k)?

No. Most games are not very well threaded (many barely utilize more than a single thread), and gain far more performance from added frequency than more cores. Of course, for streaming in particular, this depends on the software and hardware used to encode the stream, but processes like this should be hardware accelerated, and at most use one or two threads.


I find it kind of funny that Hexus is illustrating an article reporting on a rumored 10-core CPU with an architecture presentation slide explicitly stating "8 and 6 Core options."

[kalniel]

I find it kind of funny that Hexus is illustrating an article reporting on a rumored 10-core CPU with an architecture presentation slide explicitly stating "8 and 6 Core options."

I was thinking exactly the same thing!

Regarding threading, there's actually little incentive for Intel to encourage use of lots of cores for gaming - the want to sell desktop processors with fewer cores for that sort of thing, and if more cores was the best solution then AMD would have a nice route in Very much looking to see what Zen+DX12 brings to the table.. if I can wait that long

[Nifl]

No. Most games are not very well threaded (many barely utilize more than a single thread), and gain far more performance from added frequency than more cores. Of course, for streaming in particular, this depends on the software and hardware used to encode the stream, but processes like this should be hardware accelerated, and at most use one or two threads.

Lots of AAA titles actually use four or more cores these days. While usually only 2-4 cores are fully utilized, having the extra cores still helps a lot. And I seriously doubt any of the top streamers or any streamer that wants decent quality uses hardware acceleration for encoding, because the quality is dog poop. So having four cores just to encode the video allows for better quality at the same bitrates.
This will change if the hardware-encoders get way better, or if it gets impossible to encode video in real-time on the CPU (4k h265).