Information Leaks About Intel’s Upcoming Devil’s Canyon & Pentium Overclocking CPUs

Intel has a couple of interesting processor SKUs set to hit the market soon, and while the company itself is keeping mum on them for the moment, the rumormill, as always, refuses to keep quiet. For enthusiasts, the dual “Devil’s Canyon” models will be of most interest, while for budget builders, the upcoming Pentium will be.

Devil’s Canyon is a Haswell refresh targeting overclockers. The architecture under the hood remains the same as Haswell, but the package and thermal interface material are being upgraded for improved efficiency when the chip is being pushed to the limit. Those interested will have a choice between the $254.01 Core i5-4690K, a quad-core model clocked at 3.9GHz, and the $362.96 Core i7-4790K, clocked at 4.1GHz.

With Computex right around the corner, and with Intel sponsoring G.SKILL’s overclocking competition I talked about earlier, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Core i7-4790K was the CPU supplied.

There’s good reason to be interested in Devil’s Canyon, but I admit I’m more intrigued by the overclockable Pentium G3420. While the model name is arguably boring, this chip will be part of Intel’s 20th anniversary of the Pentium brand. This modest dual-core chip will be clocked at 3.20GHz and retail for around $75. While losing features like HyperThreading and VT-D isn’t ideal, the Pentium G3420 could well become “the” budget chip to pursue, much to AMD’s chagrin, I’m sure.