While Lynnfield is touted to be the budget offering from Intel based on the upcoming Nehalem processing architecture, reports from HKEPC suggest that the a 2.66 GHz Bloomfield part which returned stellar scores in pre-release evaluations by ChipHell we covered here, could be priced at US $ 284 making it one extremely compelling buy, considering it dethrones the current QX9770 in some tests. It's not confirmed at this point if the part could feature unlocked performance management features or whether they could be exclusive to a higher-priced premium product. This chip is slated for H1-2009. Lynnfield and Havendale could follow in H2, being based on the LGA 1160 CPU socket.

Benchmarks of Nehalem derivatives are on a roll. We had seen the Bloomfield 2.66 GHz scores and thought it was great. A couple of days ago, Tom's Hardware showed off their newest toys to the world in which was a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield we covered here. Interestingly, they had then stated that Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) prevented them from releasing any benchmark data, though following ChipHell's publication, they thought they would disclose theirs as well.

They carried out their tests on the Foxconn Renaissance X58 motherboard with dual-channel Crucial Ballistix 2x 1GB DDR3 1600 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Windows Vista SP1 and hotfix_vista32-64_dd_ccc_hd4800series_64906 patch. A 750GB Seagate SATA II hard drive was used.

In 3DMark 06, it secured a CPU score of 5183. In PCMark 05, a CPU score of 9583 with a memory score of 9010 was noted. In 3DMark Vantage, the CPU score was 17966 (CPU Test1: 2515.1 Plans/S, Test2: 23.08 Steps/S). 2.93 GHz Bloomfield had a Mere 11% performance advantage over a QX6800 (that clocks at 2.93 GHz). It is also said that this 2.93 GHz chip is 23% faster than a Phenom X4 9950.

ChipHell carried out the first comprehensive evaluation of the Intel Bloomfield 2.66 GHz processor, a derivative of the eagerly anticipated Nehalem architecture, which already has fan-sites mushrooming all over the internet.

The most prominant benchmarks used by enthusiasts and overclockers, 3DMark Vantage (CPU Tests), Super Pi 1M, Cinebench and SANDRA were run on this processor.

In the 3DMark Vantage test, the processor secured a CPU score of 16294. It crunched Super Pi 1M in 15.475 seconds. With the Cinebench, it secured 3048 with a single thread, the multi-threaded bench belted out 12627 CB-CPU hinting at the processor's high multi-core efficiency. And finally, Bloomfield takes SANDRA out on a date. You have to look at the red dot compared to a QX9770 yourself.

I'm appetised and looking forward to a great processor architecture and so could you.

One of the newest toys at Tom's Hardware is a Nehalem derivative Intel Bloomfield processor clocked at 2.93 GHz. This processor brings with it, a host of changes. To begin with, say goodbye to FSB. The processor communicates with the system using a technology called QuickPath interconnect. This is a high-speed, low-latency point to point link. It's comparable to the HyperTransport technology, which AMD has been using for close to five years now. Initially, Bloomfield will use a 20-bit wide 25.6 GB/sec. QuickPath link. The CPU incorporates the memory controller, which implies that your choice of memory will depend on the processor. As already noted in regard to the AMD processors, this approach of integrating a memory controller greatly reduces system-level latency. The CPU supports 3-channel DDR3 1333 MHz memory. That's 32 GB/s of bandwidth, with support for up to 24 GB of system memory. Of the six DDR3 slots, the first slot is required to be populated.

Unfortunately, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) don't allow them to disclose performance evaluations at this point though - ironically - their Taiwanese team ran preliminary tests on a Radeon HD4850 and a Foxconn X58 motherboard we covered here.Read the whole article here.

The crew over at Tom's Hardware is taking an exclusive look at a fully assembled Nehalem system that consists of a FOXCONN X58 motherboard and a Nehalem CPU. Details on the platform and the new architecture are already well detailed so I'll skip them. It's the motherboard that's cool and worth looking. That's FOXCONN's reference board powered by Intel's X58 chipset and ICH10-R southbridge, the same used on today's Intel P45 platforms. ICH-10 supplies up to four PCI Express x16 paths, of which two, are PCI Express 2.0. FOXCONN's Renaissance board also allows up to 24GB of DDR3 memory to be installed on 6 slots. With Nehalem, the memory is running in triple-channel mode (the name is pretty self explanatory). Initially the motherboard will support DDR3-800, 1066 and 1333 configurations. The Renaissance also has six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, Realtek ALC888S 7.1 channel audio and a Gigabit Ethernet. Speaking to the other motherboard features, they include the usual heatpipe cooling for the chipset, solid ultra-low SR capacitors, debugging LED lights, clear CMOS button round the backplate and a six-phase power circuit design. Expect benchmarks and price information when the official launch date of Nehalem approaches.

Intel Nehalem Posts Impressive CPU Scores with 3D Benchmarks

The rather lucky Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware got their hands on an Intel Bloomfield engineering sample that has a clock-speed of 2.93 GHz, running on a Intel X58 chipset based motherboard made by Foxconn called Renaissance to evaluate a Gainward Radeon HD4850 sample. System details are provided below.

Credible information coming from TG Daily suggest that rumors about Intel preventing users from overclocking their next generation Nehalem platform are false. Instead, Intel is going to promote overclocking with Nehalem. Of course, there will be some challanges related to the integrated DDR3 memory controller used in the Bloomfield processors part of the new platform, but this won't stop Intel from making Nehalem overclockable.

When Nehalem comes to life, you can expect that our usual suspects will have overclocking motherboards ready - and Intel will have overclockable CPUs.

Only time will tell, and this time will come as soon as the first Bloomfield 8 core (16 threads) processors and motherboards for them start to surface in Q4'08. Intel is also rumored to be preparing to replace their Skulltrail gaming platform with a new one that will be based on the Nehalem platform.

When it comes to hot news from MSI, my favourite source has always been bit-tech.net. These guys have some very good connections with MSI. Now a week before Computex 2008, they have convinced MSI to let them get a close-up look at Intel's next generation Nehalem architecture, which is based on the Bloomsfield CPU platform and Tylersberg chipset also known under the X58 nomenclature. The following pictures show a 1366-pin quad-core Bloomsfield CPU (no model and specs for now) with HT support and integrated DDR3 memory controller. All Bloomsfield processors will require a new cooling. Regular LGA775 coolers won't fit. The Tylersberg X58 motherboard made by MSI has six DDR3 memory slots. Six becuase you'll need a minimum of three DDR3 DIMMs to run in triple-channel mode. The chipset also features 36 lanes of PCI-Express 2.0, so you'll get a full x16 by x16 for at least two video card slots. The south bridge used with Tylersber is still ICH10, so don't expect extraordinary features when it comes to the number of SATA or USB 2.0 ports. Check out the rest of the pictures by the author Richard Swinburne over at bit-tech.net.

Leaked slides from Intel are floating around the Internet saying that Intel X58 paired with ICH10/R southbridge will be the first chipset combo to support Intel Bloomfield desktop processors, part of Intel's 45nm Nehalem architecture. The following list shows only a few of the new features that will be presented with Intel's forthcoming high-end platform:

• Intel Bloomfield is a 45nm quad core processor that supports 8 processing threads and use LGA 1366 Socket
• Bloomfield CPUs will come with 8MB of shared L2 cache
• Bloomfield supports IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) and triple-channel DDR3 RAM
• Bloomfield supports QPI and adds seven more SSE4 instructions.
• Motherboards with Intel X58 chipset that will support Bloomfield processors will utilize PCI-e 2.0 slots working in dual x16 or Quad x8 configurations.

I promissed more details on Intel Nehalem yesterday, and now it is time to keep my word. During the first day of Spring IDF 2008, the guys over at HEXUS.net have pictured the first working sample of a quad-core Intel Nehalem processor operating at 3.2GHz (revision A1). The 1366-pin, 731M-transistor 45nm native quad-core model, utilizes 256KB of L2 cache for each core, as well as 8MB of L3 cache. The CPU also integrates triple-channel DDR3-1333MHz memory controller and SSE4 instructions. Like the new 533MHz Silverthorne-based Atom processors, Nehalem will also incorporate Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) which is also known as Hyper-Threading (HT). Each physical core in a single Nehalem processor is paired up with its own virtual core. As a result, the quad-core processor will be detected to have eight cores (on the picture). Predictions say that this new architecture will offer around 30% better performance, on a clock-for-clock basis, when compared to Core 2, in a heavily-multithreaded environment - HPC and low-end servers, mainly. Current Intel roadmaps list the Nehalem launch date for Q4 2008, with a simulteanous rollout across servers and desktops.

Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Shanghai, China, officially opens its doors from April 2nd to April 3rd. Topics set to be covered at IDF Shanghai include Netbook, Nettop, Bloomfield (Nehalem), solid-state drives, QuickAssist (accelerators), system-on-chip (Tolapai), and USB 3.0. The pictures below are from one of these topics, the new quad-core Nehalem CPU, or more specificly its core. Intel's future Nehalem will bring a totally new system architecture and a next-gen platform architecture. It will come in new socket, and will be the first processor to have up to 8 cores and integrated DDR3 memory controller. Expect more details tomorrow.

Intel Smackover Motherboard Up Close and Personal

As Intel's next-gen 45nm Hi-k Nehalem CPU architecture codenamed Bloomfield is being planned for the fourth quarter of this year, it's time to see some pictures of the motherboard that will become home for these new processors. The board pictured below is an early reference sample codenamed "Smackover" (see picture 1). Smackover will be released in Q4 together with the Nehalem server parts and it will be a triple-channel DDR3 high-end workstation/gaming platform. The motherboard has single 1366-pin CPU socket, four DDR3-1333 slots, three of which being colored blue to signal the triple-channel support and two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, likely bringing CrossFire to Intel's platform. The only heatsink installed is the one covering the ICH10 southbridge while the Tylersburg NB is left "naked". The board has no IDE or floppy connectors, but only six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports.

It looks like Intel has decided to adopt the same approach as AMD with the cache structure on its upcoming Nehalem processors, opting to go for small per-core L1 and L2 caches, with a large shared L3 cache. The new architecture will feature 64KB L1 cache per-core working in the same way as current Core 2 CPUs, but instead of a shared L2 cache each core will have 256KB of its own. All of the cores will then have access to a shared L3 cache of up to 8MB. AMD's Phenom CPUs work in a very similar manner, such as the 9600, which has 256KB L2 cache per-core and a shared 2MB L3 cache. The exclusive L2 caches give each core a pool of fast-access memory, while the shared cache acts as a buffer to trap data and instructions other cores may have requested, allowing another core to access it more quickly than using the main memory.

A leaked PDF from Sun Microsystems' website (which has now been removed) suggests that Intel could have something quite impressive up its sleeve with its upcoming Nehalem processor. The processor was already rumoured to feature three channels of DDR3 memory per core compared to two channels of DDR2 per core on AMD's Barcelona and upcoming Shanghai CPUs, and it seems that could give the Nehalem quite a performance boost. Extrapolated figures from ZDNet based on data in the slide are shown in the graph below, and as you can see, the Nehalem on average scores twice as highly as a 2.3GHz Barcelona and almost 40% better than a 2.8GHz Shanghai in SPEC CPU tests. As always with benchmarks on unreleased hardware it's important to remember that the data may not be accurate and synthetic benchmarks don't always reflect real-world performance, but if these are at all reliable then Intel's next generation of processors could be a huge leap forward.

Intel Corporation President and CEO Paul Otellini today outlined new products, chip designs and manufacturing technologies that will enable the company to continue its quickened pace of product and technology leadership.

Speaking to industry leaders, developers and industry watchers at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Otellini showed the industry's first working chips built using 32 nanometer (nm) technology, with transistors so small that more than 4 million of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Intel's 32nm process technology is on track to begin production in 2009.

After hearing nothing about the 1600MHz FSB Xeons for several months VR-Zone tells us they will appear in Q4 this year. There will be 2 quad core Harpertown models at 2.8 and 3 GHz and a single dual core Wolfdale at 3.4 GHz. Additionally the cache is increased by 50% to 3MB per core. The faster FSB and increased cache will raise the bar even higher for Barcelona, however since both CPU's aren't available it is yet to be seen if this will be enough.

To support these new processors Intel will release the Seaburg chipset, it is not mentioned if the current chipsets will officially support the faster bus.
For a full list of new Wolfdales and Harpertowns visit VR-Zone.

Intel has revealed some information on their Nehalem processor in the latest roadmap updates. The 45nm Hi-K Nehalem-EP is based on 4-issue Intel Core micro-architecture technology, supports Simultaneous multi-threading and Multi-level shared cache architecture (L2 and L3). Nehalem-EP processor will arrive earlier than expected, in H2 2008, and will pair up with Tylerburg chipsets. EP stands for Efficient Performance, one of the new naming schemes for server platforms. It should mean good energy efficency on 1-2 processor sockets. There are also Mission Critical (MC) markings, for best RAS from 2-512 processor sockets, Expandable (EX) is for RAS from 2-32 processor sockets as well as Entry (EN) on 1-2 processor sockets to better align with future IT usage.