Intel's 4th Generation of Core processors in the i-prefixed family launched around this time last year; Haswell has been out for a while now and sees regular inclusion in our mid-range and high-end PC build lists , but wasn't initially recommended as an upgrade for owners of Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs. This remains true, and while awaiting the launch of 14nm Haswell Successor "Broadwell," it looks like Intel is putting out a second SKU listing of Haswell processors.

$330 - Intel Core i7-4790 4GHz 8MB

$236 - Intel Core i5-4690 3.9GHz 6MB

$215 - Intel Core i5-4590 3.7GHz 6MB

$167 - Intel Core i3-4360 3.7GHz 4MB

$155 - Intel Core i3-4350 3.6GHz 4MB

$133 - Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz 3MB

The retailer also listed new SKUs in the Pentium and Celeron lines, which are more useful for mainstream or ultra-budget builds:

$91 - Intel Pentium G3440 3.3GHz 3MB

$71 - Intel Pentium G3240 3.1GHz 3MB

$60 - Intel Celeron G1850 2.9GHz 2MB

$48 - Intel Celeron G1840 2.8GHz 2MB

Of the CPUs listed, the i7-4790 and i5-4690 are likely the most interesting SKUs; we're unsure if these are meant to be 'replacing' any of the current CPUs, but the prices are certainly in-line with the leading 4670/4670K and 4770/4770K.

Unfortunately, we don't really know a whole lot more about them in terms of specifications. We know that the speeds average about 100MHz faster than the current processors, we know the cache size (or some of it - and it's about the same across the board), that they'll be LGA1150, and we now know the price. There are not going to be any architecture changes or revelations here, so it's really just the 100MHz booster that's likely to be most noteworthy. My speculation is that these CPUs are meant to retain sales as we progress to Broadwell, which may drop slightly later in the year than we're used to for Intel's CPUs.

It typically takes about 18 months for a full cycle of CPU development, design-to-box, with a variable number of months for fabrication (dependent upon the fab and manufacturer). For Intel, we've previously been told that the fabrication lifecycle is approximately 6 months before they're boxed and shipped (includes validation). We should have seen Broadwell by Q2-Q3 originally, but it's been looking more like a 4Q14 launch lately; this in mind, I'm fairly positive that the new HW chips are primarily a marketing move to retain sales volume going forward.

The impending X99 (Haswell-E) platform will be the first to exhibit DDR4 support in the consumer-available market. Broadwell-D and subsequent BW BGA platforms will support DDR3, meaning we aren't waiting around for the DDR4 drop, but Broadwell-EP and -EX ( Enterprise solutions; Xeon) will be fully-enabled for DDR4.

- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.