Intel"s Extreme Edition processor line is over a decade old now, starting way back in 2003 with the single-core Pentium 4 EE 3.4GHz. Although there have been a few noteworthy releases during that time, others have offered no significant benefits over more affordable parts that cost half as much.
Case in point, last time around Ivy Bridge-E brought a beefier L3 cache but its supporting X79 chipset offered nothing over the Z87 and was later eclipsed by the Z97. So, how does Haswell-E attempts to rectify this?
For starters, the chip we"ll be looking at boasts eight cores, a massive 20MB smart cache and support for the latest DDR4 memory. Intel"s latest Extreme Edition package is also accompanied by a new 9-series chipset, the X99, which supports more SATA 6Gb/s ports (10 rather than just two) and finally brings native USB 3.0 support to the company"s flagship platform.
Read: Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E Review
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