Late last year when nosotros reviewed the new Sandy Bridge-E processors, nosotros mentioned a more affordable version called the Core i7-3820 was coming. Although information virtually the chip had been revealed, the processor has nonetheless to hitting shelves and is at present expected to go far later in Feb. Fortunately, sample units are beingness passed around alee of full general availability, then we don't have to wait to see how it stacks up.

The i7-3820 is particularly intriguing considering of its sub-$300 retail price -- far less than other chips in the series. For instance, the Cadre i7-3960X has an MSRP of $999 and sells for more like $i,049, while the i7-3930K has an MSRP of $583 and is fetching $599 at due east-tail. Both are vi-core CPUs operating over 3GHz with massive 15MB and 12MB L3 caches.

At roughly half the price of the 3930K, we expected Intel to butcher the i7-3820, and while that's partially true, the 3820 remains an impressive specimen with four cores operating at three.6GHz, a 10MB L3 cache and HyperThreading support. Compared to the similarly priced i7-2600K, the 3820 offers additional L3 cache, support for PCI Express 3.0, quad-channel retentivity and a platform that will take as much equally 32GB of system memory.

Although LGA2011 features some new tricks absent on LGA1155, we're disappointed in the chipset support. The X79 is rather lackluster and has nix new to offer over Z68. All the same, the raw power of SB-E is its strongest selling bespeak and we're swell to see how the affordable variant performs and how information technology compares to the very popular Core i7-2600K.

Some take anticipated the i7-3820 will exist in somewhat of an awkward position in terms of pricing. Although processors control a similar rate, the platform behind the i7-3820 is considerably pricier than the 2600K'south. Whereas Z68 motherboards can exist had for less than $100, basic X79 boards starting time at $200, and near cost around $230.

Additionally, the i7-3820 supports quad-aqueduct memory meaning users volition be compelled to purchase four modules rather than only ii. Core i7-3820 owners might pay upwardly to $200 more for the aforementioned performance equally folks who opt for the i7-2600K, which doesn't make sense unless you need the actress PCI Limited bandwidth or the larger retentivity capacity -- or and so it appears on paper. Let's see what the tests have to say.