Intel's high end X79 chipset is going to sell for a saucy $73 when it becomes available in November. Intel's Z68 remains the runner up chipset with $48 while the old X58 is out of the focus.

Since X58 stayed in operation much longer than many expected Intel has decided that X79 is a better codename considering that Sandy Bridge E successor probably won’t ship before earliest Q4 2012.

The $73 price tag is not exactly cheap for a USB 2.0 only chipset but Intel is winning to give you 10 SATA 6Gb/s ports, PCIe 2.0 for graphics and PCIe 3.0 dedicated for storage. Not what top gamers had in mind but what can you do. Naturally the chipset supports 1Gbit internet as well as an SCSI controller.

If you look at the spec deep enough, you will realize that this is a workstation chipset and CPU that will just get launched as an extreme PC part that likes overclocking.

Even with the quad-core Core i7 3820 that works at 3.6GHz you can get to 3.9GHz with turbo and with top Core i7 extreme 3960X a six core 3.3GHz clocked Sandy Bridge E CPU, you can get to 3.9GHz with turbo, and this probably means some serious performance.