A month is left until CES 2014 and Intel's plans for the year 2014 are already leaking on the web which include details on their upcoming platforms such as HEDT Haswell-E, Broadwell, Haswell refresh and several of Atom based chips for the booming mobile market.

Images are courtesy of VR-Zone!

Intel Haswell-E Engineering Sample With 8 Cores and 3 GHz Clock Speed Spotted

Chinese portal of VR-Zone posted an exclusive picture of the first Haswell-E engineering sample which will feature 8 cores and a clock speed of 3 GHz. Based on the 22nm Haswell architecture, Intel's Haswell-E processor stacked in the X or Extreme series would be the chip giant's first chip to feature 8 native core with 16 threads which will put them in the same line with AMD's 8 Core processors which have been available since the arrival of Bulldozer in 2011.

Intel would be shipping two unlocked processors at launch which will include an X series Extreme edition and K Series Unlocked edition chips. We will suppose that Intel brands their Haswell-E processors as the Core i7-5*** series in which case the X series would be denoted as Core i7-5960X and K series part would be called the Core i7-5930K. These aren't confirmed names but Intel has kept this style of series branding for a while and we suspect they will continue the trend with their Haswell-E and Broadwell generation of processors uptill 2015.

Model Intel Core i7-5960X Intel Core i7-5930K Intel Core i7-4960X Intel Core i7-4930K Platform Haswell-E Haswell-E Ivy Bridge-E Ivy Bridge-E Process 22nm 22nm 22nm 22nm Cores/Threads 8/16 6-8/12-16 6/12 6/12 Cache 20 MB L3 15 MB L3 15 MB L3 12 MB L3 Core Clock 3 GHz ES TBA 3.3 GHz 3.3 GHz Socket LGA 2011-13 LGA 2011-13 LGA 2011 LGA 2011 TDP 140W 130W-140W 130W 130W Memory DDR4-2133 MHz DDR4-2133 MHz DDR3-1600 MHz DDR3-1600 MHz Chipset X99 X99 X79 X79

Intel Haswell-E HEDT Platform Features:

Intel has detailed 6-8 cores for their Haswell-E processors that would be equipped with massive 20 MB of L3 smart cache and just like Haswell, would feature an integrated voltage regulator “FVIR” and the flagship part would ship with TDPs around 140W which is impressive since that’s 10W under what we get on the Core i7-3970X which has 6 cores compared to the Haswell-E beast that would feature 8 cores and 20 MB of L3 cache. Intel is aiming for an 55% IPC improvement over quad cores with their flagship Haswell-E processors.

Just like Haswell and Ivy Bridge-E before it, Haswell-E would retain the great overclocking features that would ship with the “K” series and “Extreme Edition” processors. Both the memory and processor can be overclocked beyond limits with unlocked turbo limits, unlocked core ratios in 80/100 increments, programmable iVR voltage, support for XMP mode, unlocked memory controller and voltage limits, native support for memory upto 2667 MHz, Unlocked PCH and PLL voltage controls and more.

A single Haswell-E processor would 2 x16 and 3 x8 Gen 3 PCI-e support with 40 lanes and would be directly connected to the DDR4 memory controller and the Wellsburg X99 chipset. The feature set would remain the with technologies such as SSE4, AVX, VT, AESNI under its belt. Unlike the Haswell processor which come with 4th gen HD graphics core, the Haswell-E platform wouldn't feature built-in graphics but someone buying such an costly processors will definitely go for a discrete GPU for graphics.

Intel’s Haswell-E is officially the first HEDT platform to feature support for DDR4 memory which is great news for enthusiasts who want to upgrade from the DDR3 memories which have reached their max overclock speeds. The new DDR4 memory modules consume only 1.2 V of power compared to 1.65/1.5V standard with DDR3. The can feature upto 16 banks of memory and require a 288-Pin DIMM connectors which would be available on the new X99 chipset motherboards. The DDR4 memory controller offers Quad channel memory support.

From previously leaked roadmaps, Haswell-E is expected to launch in Q4 2014 but we think it would be pushed to early 2015. For performance, its still a bit early to say how well these processors would do against their older predecessors but performance gains should be noticeable with DDR4 memory and an improved architecture design.