Already, Intel Broadwell CPUs have been delayed over and over again, which had a direct effect on the release date of the High-End Broadwell-E part. These CPUs were pushed further and further into the future over and over again, but finally, it looks like there is an actual launch date shaping up.

The most recent rumors regarding a possible launch date of Intel upcoming Broadwell-E CPUs comes from XFastest. The guys there are known to communicate confidential information and it's quite often they're correct. According to them, there will be four different Broadwell-E processors: the Core i7-6950X (10 cores / 20 threads), Core i7-6900K (8 cores / 16 threads), Core i7-6850K (6 cores / 12 threads) and the Core i7-6800K (6 cores / 12 threads). It's interesting to see than Intel is going to offer more choice on the core count. This allows high-end system builders to diversify their configurations even more. Apart from that the flagship model really offers an additional benefit with its 10 cores.

What's also great to read is that the Broadwell-E should be compatible with X99 and Socket LGA 2011-3. It's most likely that motherboard vendors will have to issue BIOS updates to support the different micro code of the Broadwell-E CPU and then even the very first X99 motherboards will be compatible with all Broadwell-E processors. Apart from this, we assume there will be no changes on the bus architecture in general, meaning Broadwell-E, like Haswell-E will support up to 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes and quad-channel memory. We also do not expecting to see Intel raise the TDP limit and therefore 140 Watts should be what the upcoming 10 core, 20 thread CPU will require at most.

Last but not the least, the guys over at XFastest are claiming that the upcoming Broadwell-E CPUs should hit the market during the second quarter 2016. We're really hoping that Intel can make the launch possible by that date. These days it seems that the chip giant is having quite a hard time to keep the yield high, especially on its high-end parts. The Core i7-6700K for example is virtually not available, which implies just that.



Source: XFastest.com.