I used an Nvidia Nforce-based motherboard in the first computer I ever built, so I’m a little sad to see that Nvidia’s freezing all development on their Nforce chipset because of licensing issues with Intel, primarily over whether or not Nvidia’s licence covers chipsets for Nehalem-based processors. Nvidia’s not developing new chipsets for AMD’s processors, either. Lame-o. [PC Mag]
Details for Intel’s new quad- and dual-core i7 and i5 chips have leaked in the form of a roadmap, so we’ve got some excellent specifics, including release dates and prices.
Remember when ridiculously massive, fully loaded “desktop replacement” laptops from Alienware and the like were all the rage? Well, they never really went away; in fact, they’re reaching new heights of, eh, that thing that they strive for, whatever it is.
Ars reviews AMD’s latest quad-core, the Phenom II, against a barrage of Intel chips and finds that while it “puts AMD back on the map” against today’s chips, AMD’s got a “long-term problem.” [Ars Technica]
Here’s another severe warping of the spacetime continuum caused by the financiapocalypse: Notebook makers want Intel to delay its crazyfast Nehalem-based mobile CPUs and chipsets. In other words, they want notebooks to be slower, longer.
Intel’s Core i7 chips, otherwise known as Nehalem, are here and over at Bit-Tech they’ve got hold of an i7 965, 940 and 920 and run them through a testing process to check if they’re as crazy fast as we’d heard they were. And the results are that yes, indeed they are. If you’re a power user, doing fast video conversions or otherwise stressing your processor to the max across all its cores and with hyper-threading, then the top-end 965 is a beast of a chip, apparently. But at $US999 it’s steep. Bit-Tech rekons if you’re an enthusiast or a gamer you’re probably better off looking at the low-end 920 chip, which still delivers quite a punch for a mere $US284. Hit the link for the full review, processor fans. [Bit-Tech]
According to CNET sources, Intel’s six-core “Dunnington”processor will begin rolling out to servers on September 15th under the Xeon 7400 series. The new chip is Intel’s first foray beyond four cores as well as their first to fuse multiple cores on a single die. It also features 16MB of L3 cache to help boost performance. The design is the last of the Penryn-class, and if the rumours hold true, we should see Core i7 (Nehalem) by the end of the year. [CNET via Electronista]
At the Intel Developers Forum Intel itself is turning the spotlight on the upcoming Nehalem chip microarchitecture. The chips will have integrated memory controllers built directly into the processor, as we mentioned before, which will allow three-times faster memory read-write speeds than previous generations.
