Intel has rolled out its fastest gamer-centric processor yet, the four-core Core 2 Extreme QX6800, three months earlier than anticipated.

The most recent leaks had the 2.93GHz QX6800 down for a Q3 release, already ahead of the end-of-year arrival the 65nm chip been expected to make.

Still, bringing the chip forward to Q2 - it's available now, Intel said, for around $1,199 a pop - isn't entirely surprising given it supports a 1,066MHz frontside bus and regular Core 2 Duos capable of sitting on 1,333MHz FSBs are expected in Q3.

The QX6800 has 4MB of L2 cache shared between each pair of processing cores for 8MB in total.

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