At Least a Year for Mainstream Nehalem Derivatives

[btarunr]

The recent publications of pre-release benchmarks of the 2.66 and 2.93 GHz Bloomfield processsors gave us a taste of Nehalem bringing in something special into the industy. Sure it's got us all flying but here's a reality: Bloomfield and X58 platform are premium products and come with high-pricing. They aren't mainstream products, not even that 2.66 GHz Bloomfield. They run on the LGA 1366 socket and incorporate QuickPath interconnect as a system bus.

The real mainstream product is a processor called Lynnfield. It has many features of its wealthier cousin, like 8 MB L3 cache, four cores with HyperThreading technology, etc. But the crunch is here: It features a dual-channel DDR3 memory controller (Bloomfield has tri-channel), it will use a different socket: the LGA 1160 and the supportive chipset codenamed Ibex Peak uses the old DMI as its chipset interconnect.

The most recent roadmap slide shows all this coming our way only in Q3 2009, and that's about an year from now, enough time for them to flush current LGA 775 processors from the market.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[mcloughj]

Interesting info for those of us who were considering upgrades in the near future. looks like the next big thing will be a year away... better start saving!

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

So it seems that the LGA 1160 is gonna kill of the LGA 775 socket. Also, you make it seem like this is still going to have HT tech instead of the Quickpath interconnect. Correct? Lower end CPUs don't get the QP IC?

 

[btarunr]

So it seems that the LGA 1160 is gonna kill of the LGA 775 socket. Also, you make it seem like this is still going to have HT tech instead of the Quickpath interconnect. Correct? Lower end CPUs don't get the QP IC?

LGA 1160 have 4 cores, 8 threads, have QuickPath system bus, but its chipset will not use QuickPath as a connection between the northbridge and southbridge. It will use the DMI. And oh, only dual-channel, no tri-channel.

 

[jimmylao]

time to wait for larrabee. I honestly didn't think they'd nerf the mainstream that much.

However, if their cheapest enthusiast cpu that launches costs around 275 as with the Q9300 then all won't be bad.

 

[FatForester]

Having two different sockets is always incredibly annoying IMO. AMD with their 754 and 939 (and a dash of 940) was barely ok, since they pretty much focused everything on 939. With this, if you want more speed you're going to have to upgrade your mobo as well! :shadedshu