Intel has issued two new documents that introduces some minor changes. They are all adjustments of the time schedule and not product related per se. First of all, Nehalem will debut in early November, exact date remains clouded. You will first of all see the Core i7 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz hit stores at a price of $999, but it will be accompanied by two other models that will move in on the Performance and upper mainstream segments. Core i7 2.93GHz will be priced at $562 and Core i7 2.66GHz at $284.
All of them are based on the Bloomfield core, which means they are quad-cores specially designed with an integrated QPI controller and built for enthusiasts. The Core i7 3.2GHz has one QPI link at 6.4GHz, while the other two has one link at 4.8GHz. All three sport 8MB L3 cache and 256KB L2 cache per core, and slide into the LGA1366 socket used by Intel X58 motherboards. All sport an integrated triple-channel DDR3 memory controller with official support for up to 1066MHz, and overclocking support for as high as you want.
Alas, these are the only models based on the Nehalem architecture the retail market will see for a whole year. Previous roadmaps have spoken of a refresh in Q3 2009 already, but Intel is now aiming to have the Lynnfield core ready for the holidays, while Havendale won’t arrive until January, 2010. The reason for the purposed delay is because of market and partner feedback says Intel. This means that Core i7 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz will stay on until Q4 when they will be replaced by two equivalent Lynnfield models.
Havendale is not quad-core, but will replace one
Lynnfield is a bit different from Bloomfield as the QPI controller has been replaced by a PCIe 2.0 generation controller. The memory controller has also been stripped of one channel, which leaves two DDR3 64-bit channels, which also means that it only need 1160 pins instead of the 1366 pins Bloomfield requires. It still sports 8MB shared L3 cache and 256KB L2 cache per core.
The last of the bunch will be Havendale, the one with the integrated GPU that had been moved back to 2010. Havendale sports two CPU cores, not three that some of you might have thought, and one GPU core. The specifics of the GPU is so far unknown but it should certainly be based on something Inteltastic so expect a focus on the basic features and not performance. The L3 cache will be cut in half to 4MB, since there are only two CPU cores now.
Up till now we’ve only discussed desktop chips, but there are also two mobile chips coming. They are basically the same as Lynnfield and Havendale, but have been dubbed Clarksfield and Auburndale. They have a much lower TDP but otherwise sport the same features. They even use the same socket interface, LGA1160.
Oh yea, and all of them sport second generation SMT, also known as HyperThreading, and will be made with Intel’s 45nm technology.
In 2010, enter hexa-core Westmere.
