The Core i7-980X will essentially replace Intel's current performance king, the 45nm Core i7-975 Extreme Edition. While the Core i7-975 will still be available, the new six-core processor will be offered at the same $999 price point--that's six cores for the price of four! But how much of a difference can two extra cores make?
At a glance, the Core i7-975 and the Core i7-980X are identical. Both sport a base clock speed of 3.33GHz, report a TDP rated at 130W, and support three channels of DDR3-1066 memory. But two additional cores means that the processor has 12 threads for an application to work with, versus four cores and 8 threads in the i7-975.
