AMD has been talking of a graphics “smack down” with Nvidia with its new 4870 X2 card, but this week all eyes are on another potential smack down in the CPU space.
Intel looks like they’re about to deliver another smack down in the area they do best, and where they’re giving AMD a big run for their money – CPUs. The forthcoming Core 2 Duo successor, codenamed Nehalem, and it looks like it won’t disappoint.
Nehalem, no shortage of hypeThere’s no news yet on benchmarks, but fingers crossed. What is already known is that Nehalem, now dubbed Core, will debut with the i7 processor, details of which will appear this week. Core i7 promises 2 to 8 cores, “screaming performance” and “massive” memory bandwidth.
As is usual with Intel’s power-saving push, the chip promises more performance from less watts, although the first chip off the block – the Core i7 – is looking like it will be for the high-end crowd.
Desktop CPUs get a new name, againOnce again, there will be a new naming scheme for PC and notebook buyers to digest. The Core scheme is an interesting one – with Intel moving from the current “T” series model numbers, to using Core as the overall brand, and i7 denoting the chip type. We haven’t seen any model numbers yet, but safe to say Intel will be pushing “Core” hard, and the model numbers less so.
We'll be attending a technical briefing on Nehalem this afternoon (San Francisco time) for more detail.
Follow our Intel IDF 2008 coverage:
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- Intel promises “screaming performance” for Core i7- Live from Intel IDF - Atom, Centrino 2, Larrabee