Asus has near as darnit confirmed the upcoming release of 'Gulftown', Intel's six-core Extreme Edition Core i7-980X desktop processor.

The motherboard maker today said its boards based on Intel's X58 chipset will "support the upcoming 32nm processor based on the LGA1366 socket". Not 'processors', you note, but "the processor".

The company continued: "This new processor architecture accommodates up to six cores and significantly improves CPU performance."

Alas, Asus didn't name names, but then it values its relationship with Intel - or the unflinching nature of the chip giant's lawyers - too much to do that. But the product behind all this faux coyness is clear for all to see.

As we wrote yesterday, the i7-980X will debut during Q1 2010, probably mid-late February. From then, it will be Intel's sole Extreme Edition CPU through to the end of the year, replacing its current Extreme Edition, the four-core Core i7-975.

Gulftown contains six cores, each with HyperThreading support so the operating sees the chip as a 12-core part. The cores share 12MB of L3 cache and the on-board memory controller can handle 1066MHz DDR 3 memory. ®