Although the LGA 1366 socket is relatively old by Intel’s standards it is still in demand for its high end performance offerings. Intel as a result of this has brought in a new processor to fill the price point in between its i7 970 and i7 980X processor, which is where the i7 980 will fit in.
The processor is a non-x variant of the 1366 core i7 processors meaning it will have a locked multiplier at 25. However, it will offer a frequency of up to 3.6GHz with the Intel Turbo Mode enabled. The chip as expected provides 6 cores with 12 threads as Intel’s hyper threading technology is supported on this processor.
Compared to the 980X which runs at 6.4GT/s the 980 uses a slower QPI speed of 4.8GT/s. The processor also like the 980X has 12MB of shared L3 cache. The price of this processor will be $583 and considering the 980X costs around $1000 it seems much better value for money since the only drawbacks of this in comparison to the 980X is a lower QPI speed and a locked multiplier.
