Preliminary Tests on Intel Core i5 Conducted

i5? i5! Core i5 would be the brand name Intel's mainstream desktop derivatives of the Nehalem architecture based on the Lynnfield core would carry. It is similar to its big brother, the Core i7 for the most of the part except for a few differences:

• A current generation Direct Media Interface (DMI) Interconnect as chipset interface
• A 128-bit wide DDR3 memory interface (Dual Channel) instead of triple-channel
• Some more machinery from the northbridge migrated to the CPU, such as the PCI-Express root complex
• The newer LGA 1160 socket

Lynnfield continues to have four x86 processing cores with HyperThreading enabled, with 256 KB of L2 cache per core and a shared 8 MB L3 cache. Chiphell got its hands on not only the processor, but also a compatible motherboard and run a quick preliminary evaluation of the processor. The processor, clocked at 2,127 MHz, was put though SuperPi, wPrime, Cinebench, Fritz Chess, and 3DMark Vantage. The processor is expected to release in the second half of 2009.