The PC Report

Intel’s latest and most powerful processor has been popping up in the news over the past few months, but now it has been finally released and reviewed. The Intel Core i7-908X is Intel’s first six-core desktop processor released into their Nehalem line-up. Codenamed “Gulftown“, the i7-980X is built on the same 32nm process as the Arrandale/Clarkdale desktop CPUs and fits nicely into LGA 1366 motherboards powered by the X58 chipset with a simple BIOS update.

The 6-core beast comes with 1.17 billion transistors but thanks to the 32nm process is smaller than all the previous quad-core Nehalems. It comes loaded at 3.33GHz with a 3.60 GHz Turbo Boost, 12MB of L3 cache, 6 cores and 12 threads and a 130W TDP – the same as the other Bloomfield i7s. The chip also comes in the package with a new tower cooler that is bigger and presumably better than the cooler that came with previous i7s.

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Feeling satisfied with your long-running Core i7-920? Well, no more, because Intel has just released an updated version for sale. Like the i7-940 to i7-950 and i7-965 to i7-975 bump, the only thing new about the Intel Core i7-930 is a speed bump – which takes the 920’s 2.66 GHz and upgrades it to a 2.80 GHz with a 3.06 GHz Turbo Boost. It still packs the same four cores/eight threads setup as well as 8MB of L3 cache and the LGA 1366 socket.

The Core i7-930 is available now from several retailers such as Newegg, who are selling the chip for just $6 more than the i7-920 at US$294.99. Go out and grab one now if you want a cheap i7 on the LGA 1366 platform, or alternatively just overclock your i7-920 if you have one.

A new rumour surrounding AMD’s latest six-core processors has leaked out of AMD HQ. Their “Thuban” six-core CPUs will apparently be showcased at CeBIT 2010 in Germany, followed by a release to the public on April 26. This release will coincide with AMD’s 880G chipset debut.

The new hexa-core processors will go under the Phenom II X6 name and start with the 1075T, 1055T and 1035T models. All CPUs will be based off AMD’s 45nm process and compatible with the AM2+/AM3 sockets. Thuban processors will also have a speed boost-type technology that will function similar to Intel’s Turbo Boost technology featured in their Core i5 and i7 CPUs.

Today AMD has taken one big step in announcing that samples of their Fusion APU (Advanced Processing Unit), codenamed “Llano”, should be available in the first half of this year with volume production in 2011. The 32nm chip will pack both a quad-core processor as well as  a DirectX 11 supporting graphics processor on the one die. The chip is said to run at 3GHz+ and will support DDR3.

This “Llano” chip will go head on with Intel’s single die CPU+GPU solution, Sandy Bridge, which is also set for a 2011 production release. However, AMD will have the heads up on the Intel chip with their DX11-supporting GPU (which is based on the Evergreen DX11 lineup); Intel’s chip only supports DX10. AMD is also boasting that the chip will be less power consuming thanks to  power gating – a technique used on Intel’s Nehalem chips to help lower a core’s power and power up another core (hence Turbo Boost).

Also, for those of you wondering, Intel’s Arrandale and Clarkdale chips are not the same as these single-die CPU+GPU solutions – the Arrandale/Clarkdale chips have two dies (one for the CPU and one for the GPU). Anyway, no doubt we’ll see more of these chips later this year.

IBM recently opened up a bandgap for graphene-based field-effect transistors and now there here to show us what this means for all of us. IBM has demonstrated a 100GHz (that’s right, 100 gigahertz) graphene transistor that IBM hopes will eventually reach commercialisation and then replace the standard silicon chips we use today completely. Of course, the technology is in it’s early stages, but it does look promising for future processors.

Even though actual commercial chips are far off, IBM says that “the breakthrough we are announcing demonstrates clearly that graphene can be utilized to produce high performance devices and integrated circuits.” Look into the future guys and you may see these chips in widespread use…

According to the latest report from Fudzilla, there is going to be a two new Intel Atom processors, both with support for DDR3 memory, coming later this year. The two CPUs will be the Atom N475, which is clocked at 1.83GHz and has a TDP of 6.5W, and the Atom N455, which like the N450 has a clock speed of 1.6GHz and a TDP of 5.5W will also have support for DDR3. New netbooks with the Atom DDR3 processors should be coming in the second half of the year.

New reports are coming through about when both AMD and Intel will release their new six-core processors into their ranges. According to Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers the Intel six-core “Gulftown” CPUs, starting with the Core i7-980X, will be coming out at the end of March this year and priced at greater than US$1,000.

AMD will be releasing their six-core “Thuban” processors sometime in May of 2010. The CPUs will go under the Phenom II X6 1000T series, and will start with the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T and 1035T and will all be based off the 45nm process. A quad-core Phenom II X4 960T will also be released along with the six-core CPUs, and the new 890FX and 890GX chipsets will come a month before.

8199.5 MHz. That’s pretty bloody fast for a single core processor to pushed up to. A guy buy the name of TiN from XtremeLabs has achieved such a feat by pushing an old single-core Intel Celeron D 347 right up to almost 8.2GHz (the standard clock speed is just 3.06 GHz) to break the new speed record by just 16.8MHz.

TiN achieved such speeds thanks to a DFI LanParty UT P35 motherboard, OCZ RAM and a custom-made liquid nitrogen CPU cooler. He also apparently heated the processor up to 200°C to remove the integrated heat spreader attached to the chip. Unfortunately while huge clock speeds were achieved, no comparisons to other processors were made. I’m really interested to see how this CPU would perform in comparison to a top-of-the-line Intel Core i7 or i5 CPU.

Check out some nice pics of the process in the source link below.

AMD has released 5 new processors into the Athlon II and Phenom II line-up to fill out the lower-end of the scale, and also to compete with the recently released Intel Clarkdale processors. In this selection, we’re seeing two Phenom IIs and three Athlon IIs with prices ranging from US$74 up to US$169.

To get into the itty-bitty details, there is a Phenom II X4 910e running at 2.6GHz with a low power consumption of 65W but the highest price of US$169. Also new to the Phenom II range is the X2 555 BE – a dual-core processor clocking 3.2GHz and costing just US$99. In the Athlon II range there is the X4 635, X3 440 and X2 255 – with clock speeds of 2.9GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.1GHz respectively and prices of US$119, US$84 and US$74 respectively.

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Only a few weeks after Intel announced their Pine Trail platform we are seeing the new 32nm Intel Arrandale and Clarkdale processors for the latest generation of computers. Like the new Pine Trail Atom processors, the new chips contain both a processing die and an integrated graphics die. As you can see in the picture above, the 32nm processing die is slightly smaller than the 45nm GPU die.

First off we have the Arrandale platform, which are the mobile iterations of the 32nm Nehalem process. Launched today were a total of 11 Arrandale-based processors: five Intel Core i7s ranging from 1.06GHz to 2.66GHz, four Intel Core i5s ranging from 1.06GHz to 2.53GHz and two Intel Core i3s at 2.13 and 2.26GHz. All the processors carry 2 physical cores and 4 threads via Intel’s HyperThreading technology, support DDR3 RAM at speeds of either 800 or 1066 MHz and (except for the Core i3s) can make use of Turbo Boost, which pushes a single core beyond the rated speed to achieve the best performance. The full chart of new CPUs is below.

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