Intel has just released its new Sandy Bridge-E platform. With six- and eight-core processors, eight DIMM slots, and multiple PCIe 3.0 slots, it’s Nehalem’s true heir and the answer to complaints that Sandy Bridge, while awesome, just isn’t enthusiast enough. (Check out our official benchmarks here).
I’ve gotten my hands on the Sandy Bridge-E flagship CPU: the Core i7-3960X, a $1,000, six-core beast at 3.3GHz. Oh, and a motherboard and cooler to go with it. I’ve rustled up a passel of RAM, a titanic GPU, a quiet case, and a speedy SSD. I’m going to see whether X79 has what it takes to wrest the enthusiast crown from X58, and whether it can do so quietly.