Codenamed Haswell, this will be Intel’s fourth Core generation. Haswell should debut in Q2 2013 to replace current generation Ivy Bridge processors and it looks like Haswell will start at $184 for tray and $195 for boxed desktop parts.
The most affordable Haswell replaces the current Core i5 3470, a 3.2GHz quad-core with a turbo clock of 3.6GHz at 77W TDP. Of course, Haswell parts should end up better spec’d and faster but we don’t know the exact numbers just yet.
At first glimpse it looks like Haswell is coming to the desktop space only as a quad core processor, as so far we only seen it replacing quad-core Core i5 chips and not the dual-core Core i3 market segment at launch. This can change if necessary but we believe that Intel is drifting from dual-cores to quad-cores in this market segment, leaving duals to the more TDP sensitive notebook market.
We hope to see the Haswell in action just a few weeks from now as Intel prepares for its biggest event this year called IDF, scheduled to kick off on September 11th 2012.