Sandy Bridge-E and X79 available for (pre-)order

[siopao1984]

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Sandy Bridge-E and X79 available for (pre-)order by VR-Zone.com

With just over two weeks to the launch, Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processors are starting to appear in listings with online retailers around the globe. What's even more interesting is that you can pick up X79 boards – at least in some countries – today, with several models being available for pre-order, including Intel's own two models.



Let's start with the CPU's, although we have a feeling that the prices are a little bit off, as the Core i7-3930K is listed for a steep 5,800 RMB (US$912/S$1,135) in China, £481.19 (US$776/S$695) in the UK and for between 5,000 and 6,000 SEK (US$784-940/S$975-1,169) in Sweden, a CPU that should in fact retail for around US$583 unless Intel's rumoured list price is going to be a lot higher than anticipated. It's worth taking into account things like VAT here, but that only makes the cheapest prices end up somewhere close to Intel's expected list price.



The Core i7-3960X is listed at 7,800 RMB (US$1,226/S$1,525) in China, £854.39 (US$1,379/S$1,715) in the UK and between 8,800 and 11,000 SEK (US$1,380-1,725/S$1,715-2,145) in Sweden which means that the Core i7-3960X is at least in most cases a lot closer to the rumoured list price which we're still expecting to be over US$999 which has been Intel's standard price point for its Extreme Edition models in the past.



We only found the quad core Core i7-3820 listed in China for 3,500 RMB (US$550/S$685), a CPU which should be retailing closer to US$300. We're hearing rumours that the Core i7-3820 has been delayed further and it shouldn't arrive until the middle of Q1 next year now. As for the Core i7-3930K and 3960X, we're hearing that Intel will offer a very limited amount of CPU's in the tens of thousands, although we can't disclose the exact figure we've been told. The reason for this is that the current consumer SKU's are C2 stepping chips and Intel is already working on a C3 stepping, but we're hearing that the ones worth having will be the D stepping models which should have all the kinks worked out, but they're not likely to arrive until much later next year.

[siopao1984]

As for the motherboards, well, we found a Chinese listing for MSI's X79A-GD65 8D model (that's the one with eight DIMMs if you need to ask) for 2,999 RMB (US$472/S$587). A different online retailer in China has the Asus R.O.G. Rampage IV Extreme listed for a massive RMB 5,999 (US$945/S$1,175) which is more than the Core i7-3930K CPU. We find that price a little bit hard to swallow, although the board is at least in stock if we can trust the online retailer in question.



In Europe we found three ASRock boards available for pre order, namely the X79 Extreme4 for €192.40 (US$272/S$33, the X79 Extreme4-M – so far the only mATX X79 board we're aware of - €178.86 (US$253/S$314) and the X79 Extreme7 for €264.72 (US$375/S$465). Interestingly, Intel's own boards are also listed for pre-order; something you wouldn't expect considering that Intel is quite tough on its partners if they are too early with pre-orders for their own products. As such, Intel's DX79SI goes for €266.33 (US$377/S$46 which is the high-end model, whereas the DX79TO is listed for around 1,800 SEK (US$285/S$355) in Sweden.



We're already seeing some manufacturers dumping the price of their X58 boards and you can pick up – if you're brave – one of Foxconn's Flaming Blade GTI X58 boards for as little as €69.90 (US$99/S$125) in Europe from several retailers. We just can't help but feel that Sandy Bridge-E will be a phenomenal flop for Intel, as so far there's very little that indicates that there will be any real performance advantage for high-end consumers over Sandy Bridge. The cost is also outside of a lot of people's reach, more so than the LGA-1366 platform ever was. As we mentioned, there will be a fairly limited supply of CPUs initially and the new stepping's should sort out various errata's. On top of that there will be a re-spin of the X79 chipset at some point in the future – unless Intel changes its mind – which should include the additional SCU SATA ports, although it'll most likely not have the SAS ports that were once part of the platform.

[odee2004]

kamahal pud oi. Two to four times more expensive than the 2nd gen sandy. tsk tsk