And the award for most pointless product of 2011 goes to ...

I don't understand why they even consider to release a replacement for the also very pointless/expensive Core i7 970. LGA1366 is being replaced in a few months, there's already the 980X which can be found on sites like Ebay for roughly the same price. Oh well, I guess it's worth a few boints ...

Intel Core i7-980 will officially be on sale from June 26th onwards replacing the current Core i7-970 processor launched nearly a year back. Nothing has changed (still a 6-core Gulftown with 12MB cache on LGA1366 package) except a speed bump from 3.2GHz to 3.33GHz (25X multiplier). While every enthusiast is eagerly waiting for Sandy Bridge E with X79 chipset to arrive in a few months time, it is unclear if demand for such a processor for the old X58 chipset still exists. Anyway, Intel isn't killing off LGA1366 platform just yet or at least not till Waimea Bay comes along. The box part is BX80613I7980 and is expected to be priced at US$583. The good thing from having a newer/faster processor on board is probably, price cut on the older models.