“Nehalem.” The name started appearing sometime last summer, along with the expected anticipation for the successor to Intel’s Core 2 line. The excitement actually began long before that, in a telephone conversation I had with a Kingston memory tech last February, who had recently attended a conference/workshop held by Intel for its partners, I was informed that some really great things were in the works. Of course he could tell me nothing about it, but it was very obvious that he was extremely excited with what Intel was cooking up for the future. Damn those nondisclosure agreements, all he did was whet my appetite to know more.
The Core i7 became reality late last year, marking an end to a couple of really successful runs for Intel. The LGA 775 platform began near the end of the Pentium series, and encompassed the Pentium, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and all but a couple of Core 2 Extreme processors. Intel utilized it much longer than I would have expected, and I really appreciated the fact that they went through several generations of processors without building in some obsolescence to prevent upgrading.
The Core 2 series was an extremely successful line for Intel. I’m not talking just sales, because nearly all new PC platforms that Intel has created for the past 25 years has been commercially successful to say the least. I’m more thinking about the technology itself. The generational change that the Pentium meant for all previous processors was repeated by the Core 2 series.
Today I will be looking at the Intel Core i7 920, the most affordable of the three Nehalem processors. Yeah, I’m a little late to the punch, but better late than never. I’d like to welcome our newest sponsor, Intel, to ThinkComputer.org’s growing family of manufacturers and vendors helping us to bring you as much information as possible before you make that hardware purchase. Read on to see if the excitement surrounding the Core i7 is all hype, or if you should start saving your pennies to join the party!
Specifications
Series: Core i7
Model: BX80601920
CPU Socket Type: LGA 1366
Core: Nehalem
Cores: Quad-Core
Name: Core i7 920
Operating Frequency: 2.66GHz
QPI: 4.8GT/s
L2 Cache: 4 x 256KB
L3 Cache: 8MB
Manufacturing Tech: 45 nm
– 64 bit Support
– Hyper-Threading Support
– Virtualization Technology
Voltage: 0.80V-1.375V
Thermal Power: 130W
Manufacturer Warranty:
– Parts – 3 years limited
– Labor – 3 years limited