A rumor from this summer has been confirmed, as Intel quietly updated its Core i7 chip range with a new flagship offering, the 3.2GHz i7 960. Based on the Bloomfield core, the chip can be overclocked to 3.46GHz when the Turbo Boost feature shuts down one or more cores. The 45nm chip otherwise has an 8MB L3 cache, a 4.8GTps (gigatransfers per second) Quick Path interface and a peak 130W power use.

As it's not an Extreme Edition chip, the multipliers on the LGA 1366 socket 960 are locked, unlike with the older but more expensive 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme. The new chip will be priced at $562 in 1,000-quantity batches, or roughly half the price of the Extreme version PC makers have yet to unveil systems using the faster design. [via TheInquirer]