[citation][nom]Chainzsaw[/nom]For $1000 I would expect this CPU to be a native Octocore + HT. Does anyone know why this isn't Octocore? Is it because a special BIOS would be needed? Thermals (although I would assume with the latest cooling options this wouldn't be an issue)?Even though I would never buy one, or could even afford one, it would be a sweet CPU with CF or SLI though.[/citation]
I mentioned this in the 3960x review, but I don't think there's any TDP headroom left for an octa core at 32nm while maintaining the higher clocks expected of i7's. When you look at the eight core Xeons they're all clocked significantly lower, the highest being clocked at 3.1GHz with a 150W TDP.
This makes sense, given the different target markets for the two lineups. The Xeons put more emphasis on wide execution, and the workloads tend to benefit much more from absolute thread count as opposed to absolute clocks. While thread count is still important for the LGA 2011 i7's, it's ultimately targeted at consumer/semipro applications which still tend to favor higher clocks (this is quickly changing though). It's basically a balance between Xeon and LGA1155 i7's. I would certainly like to see an octa-core i7, but like I said in that initial 3960x review, it probably won't be possible until Ivy Bridge-E.