There is a rumor going around that Intel is getting ready to kill its "Extreme Edition" branding that it uses for certain high-end desktop (HEDT) processors. It was put out there by Francois Piednoel, a former Intel chip architect who worked at the company for two decades, who called the decision a "big mistake." Maybe it would be, but Intel is not axing the Extreme Edition brand.

The #ExtremeEdition Brand is about to get killed. What a big mistake.July 9, 2018

We reached out to Intel for clarification in hopes it would shed some light on its branding strategy, and if the reports were true. Intel told us in no uncertain terms that those reports are "inaccurate."

"There is no change to the branding of the Intel Core Extreme Edition processor and Intel Core X-series processor family," Intel said.

Read more: Intel Core i7-9700K review

The most recent Extreme Edition processor is the Core i9-7980XE, a beastly 18-core/36-thread with a 2.6GHz base clock, 4.2GHz boost clock, and 24.75MB of L3 cache. It's the top processor in Intel's Core X-series, and one of only a few Core i9 parts.

Intel has been using its Extreme Edition branding for over a decade. If you have been computing that long, you might remember the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 from 2005 and Pentium Extreme Edition 965 from 2001. A couple of more recent Extreme Edition CPUs include the Core i7-4960X and Core i7-5960X.

It will be interesting to see where takes the Extreme Edition branding from here, especially with AMD reasserting itself into the HEDT space with Threadripper.