First Intel Sandy Bridge E CPU Has Only 6 Cores, Enthusiasts Disapprove
Intel didn't really cause mixed feelings among its followers the same way AMD did, but it still offered a reason for them to be less than enthusiastic by not being as enthusiastic as them, so to speak.
Intel recently 'disappointed' the more enthusiastic of its followers by revealing that its first Sandy Bridge-CPU would not have eight cores.
That is to say, not all eight of them would be enabled and, instead, 'only' six would be up and ready to breeze through even the most hardcore of games and applications.
A short list of reasons was compiled in order to explain to those hardcore overclockers and gamers why this is going to happen.
The TDP (thermal design power) is the most obvious of them, since the E chips are very big beasts (relatively speaking) and have a lot of cache memory.
Desktops nowadays try to stay at 120W or under, while an eight-core chip, with a clock speed higher than 3 GHz (to justify the upgrade form old CPUs to new ones) would demand about 150W.
The other major reason is how operating systems don't really know what to do with chips that have so many cores (they can barely put six of them to work, let alone eight).
In other words, Intel is making the same argument AMD used to assure prospective buyers that the FX Bulldozer chips will gain performance when Windows 8 appears.
All in all, the first Sandy Bridge-E CPUs will, in the end, have 'only' six cores because the company wouldn't have been able to jam more than that number, working at 3.3 GHz, into the 130W limit.
After all, since enthusiasts won't really be susceptible to the wiles of eight-core units if said chips don't have at least 3 GHz from the get go.
Intel should get around to enabling all eight cores at the next CPU stepping (with 20 MB L3 cache memory instead of 15).
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