Intel's next-gen Gulftown six-core processors have been said to arrive come Q2 of next year, but word has come in that the first in the series, the Core i7 980X will hit the market sooner, sometime in March apparently (possibly during CeBIT). This would mean Intel is first to get a six-core desktop processor to market, beating out AMD with its Thuban processors.

A bit about the i7 980X; it's of course 32nm based in an LGA1366 package, has six cores, twelve threads, 12MB of L3 cache, a 130W TDP and 6.4 GT/s QPI. The chip will be able to drop straight into existing X58 motherboards, albeit with a BIOS update (of which ASUS is already quick to prepare for with eight Gulftown-ready motherboards announced).

The cost of the Core i7 980X is expected to be about $999 at launch, so if you want one of these monsters, best start savin' now.