Intel Core i7-970 hexa-core starts hitting stores

Whuh? More than 800€ for this mainstream 'locked' Gulftown. Seriously, I advise ANYONE to cough up another 150€ and go for the 980X ... maybe that's what Intel is trying to do as well.

Without an official word, bragging or otherwise, Intel has begun to ship its second hexa-core processor, the non-Extreme Edition Core i7-970 - a 32nm Gulftown chip which doesn't have an unlocked multiplier like the i7-980X, and has a stock frequency of 3.20 GHz.

The new 6-core (LGA 1366) CPU features 12 threads, 12MB of L3 cache, an integrated triple-channel DDR3 memory controller, a TDP of 130W, and can be found in its boxed version, in the UK, priced at £705.52 / $1,089.16 .