Intel’s new 10-core desktop CPU is the most powerful consumer CPU to date

In the new age of “Megatasking,” PC users are demanding enough raw power to simultaneously run multiple CPU-intensive apps at high speeds. Intel’s answer is the new Core i7- 6950X Extreme Edition or Broadwell E- gaming chip, the “Extreme Edition” of its flagship i7 chip family. With 10 cores, each running at up to 3.5GHz and priced at $1,732, it is the most powerful chip you can buy from Intel right now.

Intel boasts that the 6950X features an onboard cache of 25MB, a thermal design power (TDP) of 140 watts, and, most importantly, a 20 to 25 percent improvement over the previous Haswell-E generation of chips.

According to PCWorld , the 6950X features a base clock of3GHz, but has boost mode that speeds up to 3.5GHz. Slight variations in the chip’s capacitance or in how the various layers line up, however, can affect the maximum clock speed of a particular chip, states Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research. Intel’s Turbo Boost Max 3.0 uses these variations to your advantage. The new technology tests each individual core on the chip and figures out which one can be safely pushed beyond its normal limits, essentially allowing the chip to be overclocked up to 3.8 GHz.

This allows the chip to render 4K video 25 percent faster than the previous generation of CPU, as well as render 3D content 35 percent faster. But what does this mean for gamers? The Broadwell-E chip can handle scenarios where the chip is being asked to process 4K games at 60 frames per second, encode that gameplay at 1080p resolution, and live-stream it at the same time.

While Intel does offer less-expensive variants like the eight-core 6900X for $1,089 and six-core 6850X and 6800X models, the company has gone all-out with the 6950X 10-core processor, offering it for $1,723 for good reason. With virtual reality on the horizon, the PC gaming hardware market is expected to grow from $24.5 billion in 2015 to $30 billion by 2018, according to Job Peddie Research. As the arena in which these chips are used expands, Intel’s Broadwell E- gaming chip creates a new standard for the megatasking desktop experience.

Sources: Gizmodo and PCWorld