More Intel Core i7 Reviews

We've just posted a different kind of article on the performance of the just released Intel Core i7. It covers the weekend the we spent at Intel overclocking Core i7 in Intel's own lab. We consumed over 400l of liquid nitrogen and managed to raise the bar in all four of the 3DMark Vantage presets.

Intel finally took the wraps off its latest processor, the Core i7. Based on the long-awaited Nehalem architecture that radically changes the Intel platform from the ground up, the Core i7 sweeps into town bringing along a new chipset and the return of an old Pentium 4 feature. Does it make the grade?

Nehalem, as I've mentioned countless times before, is a "tock" processor in Intel's tick-tock cadence. That means it's a new microarchitecture but based on an existing manufacturing process, in this case 45nm.

A quad-core Nehalem is made up of 731M transistors, down from 820M in Yorkfield, the current quad-core Core 2s based on the Penryn microarchitecture. The die size has gone up however, from 214 mm^2 to 263 mm^2. That's fewer transistors but less densely packed ones, part of this is due to a reduction in cache size and part of it is due to a fundamental rearchitecting of the microprocessor.

Today marks the official release of the next step in Intel's march to market domination and with it they are hoping to put the competition to shame. What we get is a processor with four physical cores which through the "miracle" of Hyperthreading operates as if it has eight cores. Words like QuickPath Interconnect, Turbo Mode and Triple Channel Memory will all become familiar lexicons in no time at all since they are all integral technologies this new 45nm processor family uses.

e give you a one page article written with the benchmark monkey in mind! (We have a few around here too!). Core i7 965EE, 940, and 920 paced through four synthetic benchmarks and compared to Core 2 QX9770 and E8500. And we even throw in a little Prescott too, just because it was cold in the office.

Intel has designed a performance platform for power users and workstations and has achieved its goals in style - for those users, we absolutely recommend the move to Intel's latest and greatest CPUs. But, it's not without its drawbacks for enthusiasts on a budget and for gamers looking for a large jump in performance.

If you're a hardcore PC gamer or enthusiast, you're best being a little more cautious. We'd point you towards the Core i7 920 and ask you to think about your application usage, upgrade budget, and to keep an eye on its overclocking potential (which we'll be investigating later this week).

Ultimately, Intel has made some good steps forward in application performance and if you want to future proof yourself, we'd suggest that this is the platform to buy into and the Core i7 920 is the CPU to go for.

On 15 Nov 2008, Intel moves forward with a new micro architecture commonly known as Nehalem or Core i7. This new architecture is quite different from the current Core 2 Duo as it integrates the memory controller within the processor just like what AMD does. It also introduces a concept Quick Path Interconnect (QPI), which is quite similar to Hyper transport what you already have on AMD platform. Basically this new concept does away with the North bridge but it still has something known as IOH which connects to CPU via QPI link. Effectively, the bulk of the work now lies with the south bridge ICH10R. QPI can scale up to 25.6GB/sec of bandwidth between CoreT i7 Processors and the rest of the system, providing exactly Double bandwidth of 1600 MHz FSB.

Currently, there are processor models available, models 920 and 940 has a QPI of 4.8GT/s (133 x 36) a Model 965 QPI of 6.3 GT/s (133x48). This new architecture also increase the system throughput by introducing 3 channels memory architecture. It can take up to 6 DIMMs, up to 2 DIMMs per channel. In addition, Intel Turbo Boost Technology dynamically reroutes power to improve performance. It powers down the idle cores and dynamically reroutes the power to the active cores. Thus it is able to boost their performance without wasting power and allowing the active cores to achieve significant overclock performance.

Gigabyte is one of the first to deliver a board that works with this new processor. The GA-EX58-UD5 is one of the 3 models from the EX58 family that supports this new generation processor.

Currently, this board supports models 920, 940 and 965 and future Intel Core i7 socket LGA1366 processors with QPI 6.4 GT/s. The board Support for 3 channel DDR3 memory with 50% bandwidth increase to 192 bits for ever greater memory performance.

For graphics expansion, it comes wiht 3 Way PCIe 2.0 Graphics Interface. It supports both 3 way CrossFireX and 3 way SLI. The board also comes with 10 SATAII ports with RAID feature without the need for drivers to be install. The board uses an advanced 12+2+2 Power Design - 12 power phase for CPU vCore, and additional 2 power phases for NB chipset , 2 power phases for memory, ensures extreme overclock ability and longer component lifespan ....

Below is a picture of the Gigabyte EX58-UD5 running a pair of AMD Radeon 4850 in CrossFire mode.