Intel's processor development follows a regular "tick-tock" cycle. The "tick" is the refinement of an existing architecture; the "tock" is a new architecture. Proceeding at a roughly yearly pace, the "tick-tock" model brought us the 45nm Nehalem architecture processors (the original Core-i3, -i5, and -i7 CPUs) as a "tock", and the subsequent 32nm Westmere processors as the "tick" part of the cycle. Now, Intel introduces their new Sandy Bridge architecture as the latest "tock", and Benchmark Reviews checks out the new Sandy Bridge-based Core i7-2600K. This unlocked, 3.4GHz, Hyper-Threading, quad-core CPU is the top of the Sandy Bridge line, and we'll see how it performs against the best AMD processors and Intel's own as well.



Link: Benchmark Reviews