Now what's so interesting about the Core i7 950? As we have brought it up to the title of the article, it's an original processor, but it's not surprising. Why original? The Core i7 family, just like Xeon 3500, initially consisted of only three models at 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz and 3.2GHz, that is going up by 266MHz steps (or the doubled reference frequency). The Xeon 5500 series is tighter -- it starts at lower frequencies and goes to 2.93GHz using all integer multipliers. What does it imply? It would have been logical to expect Core i7 930 operating at 2.8GHz as the reviewed Xeon X5560. But the company has rolled out Core i7 950 instead, operating at 3.06GHz. That's original, there is no such thing in the other families.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/intel-ci7-950-p1.html