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.

The new HP G62t is a fairly nice looking laptop, comparable to the Envy 15, and comes with a fairly nice price tag too of only US$599 for the base model. For that price, you get a new Intel Core i3 processor at 2.13GHz (although you can pay more and get an i5 or i7 instead), 3GB of DDR3 RAM, a 160GB hard drive that’s upgradeable to 500GB, a 15.6-inch LED display, Intel HD graphics (not so great), DVD burner, Wireless N and a multitude of connectivity options.

If you want to get this Macbook-Pro-esque laptop it should be available now in stores as well as via the HP website.

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.

Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT; a joint venture between Intel and Micron), responsible for a huge chunk of advances in SSDs and flash technology, has announced that they are sampling 2-bits-per-cell 25nm MLC NAND (pictured above). What this basically means is that solid state drives will be able to be bigger in capacity as well as cheaper for the consumers – both great pieces of news for the SSD market. Mass production of this new 25nm NAND should begin in Q2 of this year with products such as Intel’s 3rd-gen X-25M drives arriving in Q4.

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.

The latest thing to appear from Intel at CES 2010 is the AppUp Center: an app store designed specifically for netbooks with an Intel Atom processor on the inside. The AppUp Center, which is available now in its beta stages, will be bundled with new Atom netbooks from Asus, Acer and Samsung and also available for the public to download for either Windows or Linux. Intel has been working with over 3,000 developers to make this happen, so we decided to load it up and give it a try.

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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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It’s heading up to CES 2010 so it’s just about the right time for huge amounts of new machines to start flooding in for users to enjoy. Heading off the pack is the Lenovo line-up refresh, which has been officially released today.

First up is the new Lenovo ThinkPad Edge, which is rather sexy for a ThinkPad machine and will be available in a few different colors. At launch, you will be able to grab the 13-inch model (14- and 15-inch models coming later) with either an AMD Turion Neo X2 or AMD Athlon Neo X2 processor with up to 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Other features include WiFi b/g/n, optional 3G/WiMAX in-built modem, a built in card reader and HDMI out. It will come preloaded with your choice of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional (32-bit or 64-bit)

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