Those of you that carry out heavily threaded tasks such as intensive 3D work, video encoding, or Excel modeling would have marked down March 2010 as this was when Intel released their first desktop hexa-core processor. Backed with Hyper-Threading support, the Core i7 980X provides 12 working threads that grant considerable performance gains over its quad-core siblings in a number of applications.Furthermore, by reducing the design process to 32nm, these extra cores and the extra performance come at no additional power expense. This was a lot to get us excited about, but like most Intel Extreme Edition processors the Core i7 980X is a tough sell given its $1,000 list price.If money is no object then the six-core Core i7 980X processor is as good as it gets right now. Conversely, today’s announcement from AMD is meant to follow the same trend as with recent Phenom CPU releases. AMD is hoping to offer a more attractive six-core processor by providing their Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition and Phenom II X6 1055T models at far more realistic prices.