Intel Core i7 875K 

This is an amazing price difference as the Core i7-875K costs a whopping 41% less than the Core i7-870.

The only real big news here is that the processor has become unlocked for easier overclocking and that the price has been slashed for the flasgship LGA 1156 processor.

Intel Turbo Boost Technology is very interesting technology and it's impressive to see the core go from 1.2GHz to 3.6GHz depending on the work load that is taking place on a processor like the 875K.

They dropped the price from $580 on the Core i7-870 to $342 on the Core i7-875K.

Here is a CPU-Z v1.54 screen shot of the Intel Core i7 875 K processor to see what we are going to be overclocking.

With the resolution dropped down to 800 x 600 some performance differences can be seen, but who plays games at 800 x 600?

The technology and general performance of the processor remains the same.

The Core i7 875K is just over half a frame per second quicker in our HD video encoding benchmark, for instance.

In order to reach the highest overall clock frequency we had to drop the memory multiplier down by one level and pushed up the base clock to 180MHz with the turbo multiplier of 24.

In fact the Intel Core i7-870 is identical to the Core i7-875K processor in regards to everything with the exception of the core being unlocked.

Short of a six-core monster machine, it's a hard to imagine what can beat it.

Moreover, like any Nehalem-class quad-core processor, all round performance is pretty epic.

The Lynnfield processors aren't part of the top tier product line, so Intel didn't offer any unlocked parts.

The release of the 'K-SKUs' from Intel doesn't bring anything other than an unlocked processor to the table.

All of which means that the unlocked multiplier that comes with the K-series moniker had better deliver the goods.