Intel Core i7-975 Extreme

The Intel Core i7-975 Extreme is a 45nm, desktop quad-core “Bloomfield Extreme Edition” microprocessor engineered for the most demanding multi-threaded games and multimedia applications. Released on May 31st of 2009 as a successor to the 3.2GHz Core i7-965 XE (11-17-08) and the 2.66GHz-3.06GHz 'Bloomfield' cores, the Core i7-975 XE boasts an enhanced 3.33GHz core speed. Like its predecessors, the i7-975 relies on Nehalem MicroArchitecture with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology to deliver 8 simultaneous processing threads. Additional notable features of the i7-975 XE include an Intel QuickPath Interconnect interface (replaces FSB) for enhanced data cache per core, 'Turbo Boost' technology, and Intel Virtualization technology. A major drawback to the Intel Core i7-975 Extreme is its lack of support for error-correcting memory, which some critics suggest makes the i7 not ideal for gaming performance.