Dunnington-based Xeon 7400 - four- and six-core goodness

Intel has officially launched its new Dunnington-based Xeon 7400 processor. This processor takes the number of cores in a single package beyond four.

The Xeon 7400 CPU will launch at 2.66GHz and be available in four or six cores. The catch - will be priced between $856 and $2,729!

The Dunnington CPUs are based on Penryn 45nm architecture and will feature 16MB of L3 cache, and will be compatible with current Tigerton Socket 604 motherboards. The processors are business-class pieces of silicon and not aimed at the consumer market (Intel currently has no plans to release a mainstream six-core CPU). The 7400-series will be Intel's first monolithic CPU that puts more than two cores on a single piece of silicon.

Intel claims that the 7400-series outperforms the 7300-series by 43% when benchmarked with the TPC-E database test that simulates a large number of database transaction. The 7400-series delivers this level of performance while consuming 10% less power than the 7300-series.

Here's a rundown of the CPUs: