Intel released their Core i7 family late last year. At the time there were three models, the Core i7 920, the Core i7 940 and the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. Intel CPUs have long been known for their high performance relative to the competition and are at the leading edge in terms of process technology, transistors on the die and features. Their main competition for the CPU market, AMD, has lagged behind in performance and has had to compete in the price/performance category to even stay in the game.
Intel is launching their second series of Core i7 processors in the form of the Core i7 950 and Core i7 975 which is the fastest available Intel CPU on the market today at 3.33GHz. This processor uses the same core features and design as the previous Core i7 CPUs taking up the $999 spot on their lineup previously taken up by the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. With unlocked multipliers and the ability to overclock automatically, it should be an interesting ride in the least.
- Intel Turbo Boost technology
- Intel Virtualization Technology
- Enhanced Intel SpeedStep technology
- Execute Disable Bit
- Intel 64 architecture
- 45nm process
- Speed 3.33GHz
- Quick Path Interconnect speed 6.4GT/s
- HyperThreading Yes
- Quad Core: Yes
- Intel Wide Dynamic Execution
- Very deep out of order execution
- Enhanced Branch prediction
- Optimized for 32-bit applications running on advanced 32-bit operating systems
- Intel Smart Cache
- 32KB Data L1 Cache per core (128KB Data L1 Cache total)
- 32KB Instruction L1 cache per core (128KB Instruction L1 Cache total)
- 256KB L2 cache per core (1MB L2 Cache total)
- 8MB Level 3 Cache
- Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost
- Enhanced floating point and multimedia unit for enhanced video, audio, encryption and 3D performance
- New accelerators for improved string and text processing operations
- Power Management capabilities
- System Management mode
- Multiple low-power states
- 8-way cache association provides improved cache hit rate on load/store operations
- System Memory Interface
- Memory controller integrated in processor package
- 3 Channels
- 2 DIMMs/ channel supported (6 total)
- 24GB maximum memory supported
- Support unbuffered DIMMs only
- Single Rank and Dual Rank DIMMs supported
- DDR3 speeds of 800/1066MHz supported
- 512Mb, 1Gb, 2Gb Technologies/densities supported
- 1366-Land package
