As with any high-profile release there have been rumors circulating around Intel's upcoming high-end desktop processors for the X99 chipset, and a report today from Chinese site Coolaler claims to have the specs on these new Haswell-E CPU's.

The alleged Haswell-E lineup

Of particular interest are the core counts, which appear to have been increased compared to the current Ivy Bridge-E products. The lineup will reportedly include a 6-core i7-5820K, 6-core i7-5930K, and 8-core i7-5960X. Yep, not only are we looking at an octo-core desktop part but now even the "entry-level" Extreme part might have 6 cores.

Nothing wrong with more cores (and this will be especially attractive if we see the same MSRP's as Ivy Bridge-E) but there might be one caveat with the i7-5820K, as the reported specs show fewer PCIe lanes on this CPU with 28, compared to the 40 lanes found on the higher Haswell-E parts (and all current Ivy-Bridge-E parts).

Haswell-E would still provide more lanes than the current desktop i7 parts (an i7-4770K has only 16), but the disparity would create an interesting quandary for a potential adopter. Though x8 connections for multi-GPU setups is par for the course already on non-X79 desktop systems, the SATA Express and M.2 standards will put more of a premium on PCIe lane allocation for storage going forward.

An alleged CPU-Z screenshot of an 8-core i7-5960X part

Of course no official word from Intel on the matter yet, and only speculation on pricing. This is completely unsubstantiated, but is certainly of interest – particularly as hex-core i7's previously commanded the pricing of a more premium part in each prior iteration.