So here we are, about a week after the Ivy Bridge-E launch and a few hours past these new processors’ widespread availability on store shelves and one thing is obvious: while many enthusiasts are excited about the prospect of a 12-thread IVB architecture, few are willing to pay $1000 for that privilege. You see, the i7-4960X we reviewed last week is horribly expensive and offers minimal to no performance improvements over the more affordable Haswell i7-4770K in some key areas. But Intel isn’t launching just one CPU here. The i7-4930K and i7-4820K offer similar features at prices that are well within the reach of today’s cost-conscious users.

Intel’s direction with Ivy Bridge-E is particularly interesting and it has caused no small amount of controversy. While the processors themselves represent modest improvements over the outgoing Sandy Bridge-E products, they’re tied at the hip to X79, a platform which is beginning to show its age. X58 users looking for an upgrade will certainly appreciate its feature set but when placed alongside less expensive Z87 offerings, X79 lacks native USB 3.0 support, omits Intel’s SSD Caching and makes due with only two native SATA 6Gbps ports. Those are significant shortcomings in a product space than lives and dies by the features offered to end users.