The PC Report

The new Sandy Bridge architecture from Intel is sure looking to be a great solution for the future after a sample has been tested by AnandTech. The hardware analysis site got their hands on a sample Core i5-2400 processor – a quad-core Sandy Bridge chip running at 3.1 GHz and with 6 MB of L3 cache.

Overall, the chip performed around 10% faster than similarly clocked CPUs available on the market today without consuming any more power. This isn’t the shining area of the chip though. The integrated graphics processor (IGP) present in the Sandy Bridge processor was faster than a discrete ATI Radeon HD 5450 by a fair margin and is powerful enough to play current games such as Dragon Age: Origins on lesser-quality settings.

Sandy Bridge processors will also have a naming scheme that will be easy to follow. Simply take a look at the chart below to get an idea of how the naming scheme will work. K suffix processors denote unlocked multipliers, S will denote “performance optimized lifestyle SKUs” and T denotes power optimized.

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Intel announced a few days ago that it has made one of its biggest purchases in the history of the company. The hardware giant has picked up security and antivirus company McAfee for a whopping US7.68 billion, or around US$48 per share in cash. Intel says that McAfee will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary under their Software and Services subdivision.

This purchase is a mammoth one for Intel – the largest in the company’s 42-year history and the largest in the IT security industry. Intel made a nice US$4.3b profit in 2009 and had a record second quarter of this year raking in US$2.9 billion in profit. McAfee’s profit for 2008 was just US$172 million, so Intel must have some big plans for the security giant if they’re going to turn a 7.7 billion dollar acquisition into profit.

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Intel today has released some fairly mainstream processors with unlocked core multipliers, a first for the company who mainly reserve fully unlocked processors for their “Extreme Edition” line. The Intel “Clarkdale” Core i5-655K and Intel “Lynnfield” Core i7-875K are these new processors, both of which come with a fairly reasonable price of US$216 and US$342 respectively. The i7-875K is a particularly good deal as the processor is cheaper than the i7-870, which is essentially the same chip just without the unlocked multiplier.

The Core i5-655K is essentially the same as the US$175 Core i5-650 – it packs a clockspeed of 3.20 GHz, a Turbo Boost clockspeed of up to 3.46 GHZ, support for dual-channel DDR3 memory up to 1,333 MHz, two cores with four threads thanks to HyperThreading and 4 MB of L3 cache with a 73W TDP. The only thing different from the i5-650 is the unlocked core multiplier and unlocked power.

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Intel has quietly added two new processors to their desktop line-up. The Core i5-680 is the fastest Clarkdale processor yet, coming loaded with two cores running at 3.6 GHz each which can be scaled up to 3.86 GHz thanks to Turbo Boost technology. The 32nm chip comes with 4 MB of L3 cache, Hyper-Threading support and a 733 MHz integrated graphics core. The Pentium E5500 is also joining the ranks today for those with an LGA 775 socket – it comes with a 45nm, 2.8 GHz dual-core CPU with 2 MB of cache and no HT or Turbo Boost.

Also, news is coming to us today of a second Intel processor to join the Gulftown six-core line-up. The Intel Core i7-970 will come with a 3.2 GHz core clock (slower than the i7-980X’s 3.33 GHz clock), presumably with Turbo Boost and the same 12 MB of L3 cache and will be compatible with LGA 1366 sockets. Prices for the Core i5-680 will start at US$294, the E5500 will cost you around US$75 and when the i7-970 gets released in the coming weeks it should retail for cheaper than the existing Core i7-980X.

Light Peak technology from Intel is set to bring us 10 Gb/s transfers and be still compatible with major protocols before it – and is just around the corner. Light Peak technology will be coming to us sometime next year starting with Intel’s push for devices onto the market. According to Intel, Light Peak is not supposed to be a replacement for USB 3.0 and is fully compatible with the same ports and protocols so both technologies should be able to co-exist peacefully.

This could very well be the future of connectivity options, so whether you should upgrade to a new device just for USB 3.0 in the current climate is a tough choice with this great, new and fast technology just around the corner. Intel also says that in the future this technology could scale up to ten times in the next decade, meaning that this truly looks to be the future for peripheral data transfer.

Intel today announced some info about the upcoming architecture set to succeed Nehalem. The new set of processors, named “Sandy Bridge”, are expected to go into mass production sometime later this year probably for an early 2011 release. These next-gen processors will be built using Intel’s second-gen 32nm process and will span into the production of 22nm chips. Intel’s sixth-generation graphics core will also be present on the processors and will be the first to feature Intel’s Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) instructions. New AES-NI encryption/decryption instructions will also be present.

Intel also released info on the “Moorsetown” range of Atom system-on-a-chip processors. These CPUs are set for a first-half 2010 release and will bring new power saving technology that aims to reduce idle power by a factor of 50 and also use 10 times less power than the first-gen Atoms during audio playback. More info on both these processors will be coming in the future.

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.