Ivy Bridge-E due for late 2013

Intel’s high end enthusiast platforms often arrives well after the mainstream platform from the same architecture. For example we saw Sandy Bridge-E arrive nearly a year after Sandy Bridge launched. Ivy Bridge-E, Sandy Bridge-E’s successor, will arrive in Q3 of 2013.

Given the potential July to September time frame, the Ivy Bridge-E platform will arrive up to a year and a half after Ivy Bridge’s initial launch. By the time Ivy Bridge-E launches we expect Haswell to have already hit the market. The result means Haswell will probably pack better power efficiency and core per core performance than Ivy Bridge-E, but Ivy Bridge-E should have the advantage of 6 or 8 cores and 12 or 16 threads versus Haswell’s 4 cores and 8 threads.

Interestingly for current X79 motherboard owners, it is expected that Ivy Bridge-E will retain compatibility with the current generation of X79 LGA 2011 motherboards with a simple BIOS update, like we saw with the Sandy Bridge-Ivy Bridge compatibility. Although expect Intel to add a new chipset for the Ivy Bridge-E platform launch.

The roadmap also confirms that Intel’s i7 3970X processor will make an entry into the market for Q4 of 2012, which is good news for anyone who doesn’t want to hang around for Ivy Bridge-E but needs a Sandy Bridge-E chip capable of better things than the current offerings.

Source