Early adopters of LGA2011 "Sandy Bridge-E" platforms can take a breather, their rigs won't turn obsolete for a long time, according to an X-bit Labs report. "Ivy Bridge-E", a hypothetical successor of Sandy Bridge-E, which is an Ivy Bridge take on the LGA2011-HEDT platform won't take shape anytime soon, at least not till the second half of 2013. The likely explanation for this is the disturbance the delay in LGA1155 "Ivy Bridge" chips to the OEM channels caused to Intel's roadmaps.

Intel will be introducing its very first processors built on the 22 nm fab process, which make use of new semiconductor technologies such as space-optimized 3D-transistors. Swelling inventories of current-generation processors, coupled with fab issues caused the launches of Ivy Bridge to go off by several weeks, and this has taken a toll on the launch schedule of "Ivy Bridge-E". Instead, Intel could launch Core i7-3980X Extreme Edition a little later. This chip will be based on the existing Sandy Bridge-E silicon, it remains to be seen if the chip is a speed-bump over i7-3960X, or if Intel enables cores 7 and 8, and the remaining 5 MB L3 cache on the silicon, turning it to an eight-core Goliath.