Well, the NDA officially ends at 12:01 tonight. Of course some one always breaks the NDA early. It appears that it is Tweaktown this time.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1642/intel_core_i7_nehalem_arrives_and_fsb_departs/index.html

11/2/2008 10:21:51 PM

Legion Hardware's Review

http://legionhardware.com/document.php?id=786

11/2/2008 11:25:17 PM

Benchmark Reviews
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=63

PC Perspective
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=634

HardOCP
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU3OCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Tech Report -- X58 Motherboard Comparison
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15816

Techgage
http://techgage.com/article/intel_core_i7_performance_preview/

Guru3D
http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-core-i7-920-and-965-review/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/

Techspot
http://www.techspot.com/review/124-intel-core-i7-920-940-965/

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 12:04 AM. Reason : Added More]

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 12:18 AM. Reason : Added More]

11/3/2008 12:00:33 AM

/care

11/3/2008 12:06:42 AM

lawl

you people are excited about nehalem

i've had that shit for a while now

11/3/2008 12:09:42 AM

Driver Heaven
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=656

T-Break
http://www.tbreak.com/articles/8/1/Intel-Core-i7-920-amp-965-EE-CPUs/Page1.html

Trusted Reviews
http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/review/2008/11/03/Intel-Core-i7--Nehalem--Architecture-Overview/p1


By far the best one that I have read is the PC Perspective Review. I think the only review that will compete with it will be the Anandtech review when they post it.

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 12:58 AM. Reason : :]

11/3/2008 12:57:18 AM

color me surprised

AMD's architecture on Intel's process technology: faster and more expensive

I gave up on keeping up with the state of the art a long time ago, when I realized the real price/performance/power sweet spot usually lagged about 2 generations

I'm sure I'll be checking these reviews out in about 3 years when the motherboard selection is more mature and the market value is bottoming out as everyone starts pawning their kit on eBay to buy whatever just hit the streets for Christmas

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 1:49 AM. Reason : market's about ripe for that dual socket 940 I've been considering, though, ehehe]

11/3/2008 1:47:33 AM

Quote :

"I gave up on keeping up with the state of the art a long time ago, when I realized the real price/performance/power sweet spot usually lagged about 2 generations"

I thought that it was one generation. I bought my Q6600 when the new 45nm parts came out for the same price you can buy it today, $190.

11/3/2008 1:56:02 AM

yeah I think you're right actually, closer to one generation for desktop stuff

I shop the workstation / server market more so I probably shouldn't even be commenting in this thread

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 2:06 AM. Reason : was disappointed the first link didn't include Opteron or Xeon comparisons, lol]

11/3/2008 2:05:44 AM

Quote :

"AMD's architecture on Intel's process technology: faster and more expensive"

that's how this shit works, yo

AMD comes up with something new and inventive and awesome

intel figures out a way to make it marginally better and ends up dominating the market

AMD is left sitting there all

rinse and repeat

11/3/2008 9:56:06 AM

I would also like to see a server hardware comparison. Servers are the place that Nehalem was supposed to see the greatest gains, yet I don't see Intel even showing any server benchmarks.

11/3/2008 10:12:33 AM

looks awesome, I decided not to wait for it because of the obscene amounts of money its going to cost to build a desktop with i7 over the next six months.

I built for gaming and as someone said earlier, the price versus performance is never in the bleeding edge stuff...

11/3/2008 10:17:15 AM

damn i wish i could build a new one this is looking nice.

Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081103-intel-lifts-curtain-on-nehalem-performance-hint-its-fast.html

Im honestly glad they are finally getting rid of a lot of legacy support.

So whos getting an octal core?

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 10:58 AM. Reason : link]

11/3/2008 10:57:38 AM

Quote :

"that's how this shit works, yo AMD comes up with something new and inventive and awesome intel figures out a way to make it marginally better and ends up dominating the market AMD is left sitting there all rinse and repeat"

Speaking of which, I thought the note about Crossfire working no matter what, with SLI requiring a specific BIOS option pretty interesting.

11/3/2008 11:11:28 AM

this is going to be an expensive upgrade for most (min. $600).

cpu + x58 motherboard + 3x ddr3 module's

are memory manufacturer's now going to have to start selling memory in three's (aka triple channel ram?)

nowadays you can get cpu + motherboard + 4gb ddr2-1066 memory for <$400

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 11:15 AM. Reason : ,]

11/3/2008 11:12:50 AM

If I am looking at getting upgrades for Christmas, is it worth it to ask for a Nehalem processor or just go with a high end Core 2 Duo? Not sure which would be the better choice and value.

11/3/2008 11:21:21 AM

with three channel ram, you would think that there would be cores in multiples of three

11/3/2008 11:25:38 AM

^^i'd say core i7, while it will be more expensive and not as mature, it IS a different socket/chipset altogether, plus there's no upgrade path for the LGA775 anymore, so if you went to a Core2Duo you'd be stuck and have to do a full upgrade again when you go to LGA1366

11/3/2008 11:45:52 AM

^^ the number of channels isn't tied to the number of cores.

11/3/2008 11:57:51 AM

Quote :

"this is going to be an expensive upgrade for most (min. $600). cpu + x58 motherboard + 3x ddr3 module's"

That's pretty routine at this point. Last time it was CPU, LGA775 motherboard, DDR2 memory.

At least this time it looks like consumers are getting a pretty decent performance boost, rather than the minimal Pentium 4 478 -> Pentium 4 775 jump.

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 12:20 PM. Reason : .]

11/3/2008 12:20:41 PM

Quote :

"this is going to be an expensive upgrade for most (min. $600). cpu + x58 motherboard + 3x ddr3 module's are memory manufacturer's now going to have to start selling memory in three's (aka triple channel ram?) nowadays you can get cpu + motherboard + 4gb ddr2-1066 memory for <$400"

Its actually going to be closer to $750 if you want decent ram speed. Asus P6T (cheapest X58 mobo), Core i7 920, and 3GB G.Skill DDR3 1600MHz. $310 + $290 + $150=$750.



[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 12:50 PM. Reason : :]

11/3/2008 12:48:31 PM

man and i JUST bought a new computer.

i guess i'll have to wait another year to upgrade, when the good shit is outl.

11/3/2008 12:50:24 PM

When will all of this be available to order, and where are ya'll getting the prices? I looked on Newegg to see if they had a pre-order site available. I need to be able to give my family some links to see if they can get it in the near future.

11/3/2008 3:35:32 PM

Well, I am using the 3 channel DDR3 kits off of newegg, the Core i7 920's base price is $284 in units of 1,000 and that is the motherboard MSRP from one of the reviews. I expect the processors to be inflated by 15% over the 1,000 unit price on initial release as they always have been. The Core i7 920 will probably run you closer to $350 on launch day, but will be down by the end of the month.

The motherboards are starting to show up for sale at some online retailers.......

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 4:18 PM. Reason : :]

11/3/2008 4:05:29 PM

for personal desktop systems, i'd wait until the price of DDR3 came down some before building a system

you can wait a few more months, i promise

11/3/2008 5:28:12 PM

anyone know if nvidia has a board for it yet?

11/3/2008 7:55:20 PM

Quote :

"the number of channels isn't tied to the number of cores."

yeah, i know

it would just feel better

11/3/2008 8:02:01 PM

Quote :

"anyone know if nvidia has a board for it yet?"

The X58 board is Nvidia, ATI, and only board. Intel wouldn't give Nvidia the licensing rights for Nehalem's integrated memory controller, so Nvidia decided to give the board partners the option to include the NF200 northbridge on their X58 boards. Intel really wanted to screw up Nvidia's chipset business over after Nvidia claimed that gpu upgrades were always better than processor upgrades. Intel now has a monopoly on motherboards for their products once the Core 2 series dies out.

[Edited on November 3, 2008 at 10:37 PM. Reason : :]

11/3/2008 10:23:22 PM

^ intel is gonna lose a lot of high end consumers to AMD... Then again maybe not as AMD is going with their own of ATI.

Nvidia is looking fucked.

11/3/2008 11:35:36 PM

and that's not anti-competitive at all!

[Edited on November 4, 2008 at 1:04 AM. Reason : nVidia: coming soon to Intel anti-trust proceedings near you!]

11/4/2008 1:03:53 AM