VR-Zone

Heres a treat for all hard core enthusiasts - an engineering sample of the upcoming Xeon E5 (Sandy Bridge-EP 8 Cores, 16 Threads) was spotted by our team working on a ASUS ROG Rampage IV GENE motherboard, which was housed inside a small Thermaltake mATX lanparty box. This pretty much confirms internet rumors that have been going around for quite some time that the 8-core server part will work on regular 1P desktop boards, although not officially sanctioned or validated by Intel.

A supermassive (and real, not pseudo) 8-cores 16 threads in action on a mATX 1P socket

Xeon E5-2670 (2.6GHz, 20MB Smart Cache, a 115W TDP which is easily handled by most decent X79 boards), this is an apparently rather dated ES C0 sample, but nonetheless an excellent working proof of concept that the uber expensive i7-3960X won't be the top of the line option for desktop 1P systems

Things we hope will happen when the Xeon E5/SNB-EP comes out:

1. Unlocked SKUs and adjustable multipliers all the way to 57X

2. Usable BCLK straps (125MHz is enough actually) and PCIe clock speeds up to or beyond 107MHz

3. IMC support for 2400MHz+ low latency memory CL1

4. No irritating cold bug like the SNB-Es of today so that world record frequency and linpack Gflops power records can be smashed

5. Overclockable 2P motherboard, preferably ROG :)