Introduction

As soon as we hear that Extreme Edition label at the end of an Intel processor we know two things; one it's the flagship processor for the company; second it's going to cost a bucketload of money. This is a formula that has been tried and true since the introduction of the Extreme Edition series processors.

They've always been kind of a funny one. Value has never been the focus of these chips. Instead it's all just about the performance side of things and while often you can get similar performance for what is often half the price, there just seems to be something about owning an Extreme Edition CPU from the folks at Intel.

Once you go down the path of an Extreme Edition CPU everything in your system tends to go down that path. SSDs in RAID, multiple video cards, more memory than your computer will know what to do with and a power supply that can probably power over half the electrical devices in your house. It's a slippery slope in where you're the winner and your credit card is the loser.

The latest Intel processor to get the Extreme Edition tag is the recently released Core i7 3970X EE designed to take over from the already very powerful and very expensive 3960X which graced us with its presence back in November of last year.

What's the difference between the two? Well we'll find that out and a few other things as we take a closer look at it.