Intel launches Core i7 chip for desktop PC

The Nehalem architecture application processor chips for desktop PCs will be officially launched by Intel on November 17.

Specifically, the initial launch will be three Intel Core i7-920, 940 and 965 Extreme quad-core chips - all codenamed Bloomfield - with expected sales of 284 USD, 562 USD and 999 USD respectively.

Information characteristics Core i7 965 Extreme chip

All three Bloomfield chips carry a total of 731 million transistors but the speed of the operation has a big difference. Core i7-965 Extreme achieves 3.2Ghz clock speed with integrated DDR3 1333Mhz memory controller directly on the chip. The Core i7-920 and 940, meanwhile, clocked at 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz with integrated DDR3 1066MHz memory controller.

Each chip core will have separate L1 and L2 Cache cache. L2 Cache capacity is about 256KB. All 4 cores share L3 Cache cache with 8MB capacity. Another notable feature is that all three microprocessor chips can simultaneously connect up to 3 channels of RAM chips.

Motherboard with Intel X58 chipset

Currently only motherboards that use the Intel X58 chipset 25.6GB / s QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) are fully compatible with the above mentioned Bloomfield chip products. This series of chipsets can support up to 36 PCI Express 2.0 channels that can help connect multiple graphics cards. The ICH10 southbridge now also supports bandwidth up to 2GB seconds to accelerate USB, Gigabit Ethernet, HD Audio and SATA ports.

Currently, Intel has not revealed the official time for the three Bloomfield chips to be released to the market as well as to the device manufacturer.