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Lord Xeb
November 3rd, 2008, 07:13 PM
As a buttoned-down company, Intel rarely likes to make sweeping changes, but its upcoming Core i7 CPU is a major break from the past. Gone is the ancient front-side bus that connects all of the current-gen CPU cores. Instead, cores will communicate via a high-speed crossbar switch, and different CPUs will communicate via a high-speed interconnect.
Also on the outs is the need for an external memory controller. Intel, which has relied on gluing two dual-core chips together under the heat spreader to make its quad-core CPUs, is now placing all four cores on a single die.
Even overclocking, which was once verboten to even talk about within 10 miles of Intel’s HQ, is now automatically supported. Intrigued? You should be. Intel’s Core i7 is the most radical new design the company has taken in decades.




For more, go to and read: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/core_i7_disected_and_benchmarked_everything_you_ne ed_know_about_intels_nextgen_cpu?page=0%2C0

Prices:

Core i7-920 ($284)
Core i7-940 ($562)
Core i7-965 Exteme Edition ($999)

They will being going out hopefully by week 46 of this year.


Benchmarks have been attached

snova
November 3rd, 2008, 08:10 PM
Neat.

Why are so many companies prefixing an 'i' to their products? iThink Apple started this nonsense...

mips
November 3rd, 2008, 08:22 PM
Also on the outs is the need for an external memory controller. Intel, which has relied on gluing two dual-core chips together under the heat spreader to make its quad-core CPUs, is now placing all four cores on a single die.


AMD has been doing this for a while now so it is nothing new.

Btw, I'm currently an Intel user before someone screams fanboy.

billgoldberg
November 3rd, 2008, 08:36 PM
Neat.

Why are so many companies prefixing an 'i' to their products? iThink Apple started this nonsense...

Intel started it, if I remember correctly.

ghindo
November 3rd, 2008, 08:42 PM
Neat.

Why are so many companies prefixing an 'i' to their products? iThink Apple started this nonsense...i386, anybody? ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I386

lisati
November 3rd, 2008, 08:46 PM
i386, anybody? ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I386

Have had a couple of machines with a '286......and have yet to see one with a 186.....

kernelhaxor
November 3rd, 2008, 08:49 PM
those benchmarks r impressive!
well, the price is 999$ .. so yeah

MaxIBoy
November 3rd, 2008, 10:34 PM
wget one of these

Lord Xeb
November 4th, 2008, 12:17 AM
It will be released week 46 of this year. Also, mips read the article and it will tell you a lot more of what intel is doing. Yes it is very AMD-like but it is a vast improvement over AMD. The prices will come down. Remember the Core 2 Duo?

toupeiro
November 4th, 2008, 02:09 AM
I'm pretty stoked. The next machines I'm getting through work will be Core i7 (nehalem) based, as well as the HP laptops. This is sopposed to be a monster processor, I can't wait to see if it can really undo the opteron 8356 at this kind of a price point. The Xeons can't touch it. The Opteron is a Server /Technical workstation class chip, and I see the i7 focused on the Technical Workstation market of the PC business, which has been AMD's domain for a while now. Looking forward to benchmarking this little puppy.

OutOfReach
November 4th, 2008, 02:16 AM
Intel was the one who invented the 'i' prefix. Not apple.

Back on topic, I really need to get a computer that comes with this. :)

Lord Xeb
November 4th, 2008, 02:17 AM
It will be a beast I can tell you that much.

MaxIBoy
November 4th, 2008, 03:12 AM
Build one.

Frak
November 4th, 2008, 04:19 AM
iWantItNao

jpittack
November 4th, 2008, 05:22 AM
I hear motherboards are supposed to cost as much, or more as the processors.

Supposably they are not overclock friendly, due to a 130 watt tdp overhead, that when reached, the cpu downclocks itself. (tomshardware)

I'm not interested in these. I would rather see the cell become more popular. A batch of fixes to one (perhaps in the next iteration) and I would use a desktop based on one.

Lord Xeb
November 4th, 2008, 10:54 PM
They will not be as friendly to overclocking, but once chip developers learn more about the i7, they will make better OC available. Right now, the OC I know about is the Turbo Mode. Also, the boards at first will cost as much as the chip but that is because of the new tech in them. The NB will not be doing as much and the same for the SB, so engineering a chip that does so is a little bit harder. Also, they are putting more onto a single board (like 6 DIMMs) were the real estate is already packed. The X58 will support both 3-way XFire and 3-way SLI.

MaxIBoy
November 4th, 2008, 11:10 PM
I would rather see the cell become more popular. A batch of fixes to one (perhaps in the next iteration) and I would use a desktop based on one.

EDIT: Ignore the bullcrap I spouted below, I was under the impression that the cell was just an array of 16 identical cores. Preserved for historical interest.

The cell is next to useless for gaming unless the game has been optimized for multithreaded processing AND the game is CPU-bound. Most games are GPU-bound and synchronous. In other words, you get a game using just a single core, and that core is at a very low clock speed. Or, you painstakingly develop an asynchronous engine, and by the time you have it finished, the game is obsolete. Also, it doesn't do you a lick of good because the game is probably GPU-bound anyway.