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Intel Lynnfield CPUs

Stonedofmoo said:
My prediction is the i7 will turn into the modern day Pentium Pro and be forgotten about in a year when i5's are selling like hot cakes
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The Pentium Pro was far from forgotten, the Pentium II (and then III) were direct descendants of it, and then when the Pentium M was conceived (because the P4 was too power hungry for notebooks) it built upon the same P6 microarchitecture; finally, Core and Core 2 were derived from the Pentium M.

Arguably the Pentium Pro is one of the most important chips that Intel has developed in recent times.
 
philjohn said:
Arguably the Pentium Pro is one of the most important chips that Intel has developed in recent times.
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You're right, but that doesn't change the fact it was an expensive chip that only sold in high end workstations and servers and it was quickly superceeded and forgotten about when Pentium II arrived.
 
This is all really frustrating... all this beating around the bush... multiple sockets.
Why can't they just have a press release about their future strategy for the sockets and CPU's so we know we aren't getting buggered by a dead socket.
In about a week I'll have the money for a new system... but don't really want to buy i7 if it means all future upgrades will be incredibly expensive, or the socket will die within a year.
 
Natima said:
Why can't they just have a press release about their future strategy for the sockets and CPU's so we know we aren't getting buggered by a dead socket.
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The new LGA-1566 socket was announced right back when i7 first launched :confused:

i7 was always meant to be a top performance chip while the i5 was to be the mainstream part that most people would buy. The only difference between now and then is Lynnfield has been pushed back a number of times from it's original launch point while stocks of P45 and Core chips are used up.
 
Stonedofmoo said:
The new LGA-1566 socket was announced right back when i7 first launched :confused:

i7 was always meant to be a top performance chip while the i5 was to be the mainstream part that most people would buy. The only difference between now and then is Lynnfield has been pushed back a number of times from it's original launch point while stocks of P45 and Core chips are used up.
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Have you seen the news?

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18021739

The cpus for the LGA-1156 are going to be called i5 and i7 depending on there performance. This would indeed lead you to beleive that the 920 and 950 will be dropped since there are new i7 cpus coming out on the LGA-1566 socket.

Confusing for u? Yep.
 
CK61938 said:
Now here comes the most interesting part: the Lynnfield CPU will feature an internal PCI-E controller. This means that the new motherboards using the P55 chipset will not come with a Northbridge. So you get a direct link from CPU to GPU. So far it is only compatible with SLi, no word on Crossfire as yet. However, with the exception of a Northbridge could this mean that gaming performance finally gets the boost we have all been waiting for?
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No, because Lynnfields integrated PCI-E controller is only 16 lanes of PCI-E (Version 2.0). While thats the same bandwidth as 2x16 PCI-E Version 1.x, and sufficient bandwidth for SLI/Crossfire, its no better than I7's solution, as its PCI-E controllers are on the motherboard, and communicate with the CPU over QPI which is faster than a 16 lane PCI-E anyway.

So I7 has a faster integrated memory controller, and a faster communication interface. Also I7's QPI can easily be increased without a major redesign (just up the clock speed). I5 would probably need a new socket to have more than 16 lanes, although it could potentially be updated to PCI-E Version 3 with 16 lanes, and that would probably work fairly easily... Although who knows if it would work on an existing motherboard.

However, the interesting feature for gamers with Lynnfield isnt the integrated PCI-E anyway. Lynnfields turbo mode increases the clock speed by up to 6 steps when the CPU is only active on 1 or 2 cores, Current i7 models only increase clock by 2 steps. So for games which typically use 1 or 2 cores, Lynnfield could present a strong case, especially as the 3 channel memory on i7 really isnt being stretched hard enough to make a major speed boost compared to i5's dual channel.
 
Just read that Lynnfields will be branded I3 I5 and I7, does that mean the new i7's will compete with old i7's with diffrent socket? lol...

Confusion = sales?
 
might just save up for a D0 stepping 920..
does this mean they'll get rid of the lower end motherboards for i7s?
 
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