While the latest in motherboard news may not be particularly thrilling, if you’re planning on building a PC any time soon (or just ordering one), it pays to be aware of what’s out there. I’m going to be putting something together myself in a few months, after these boards have clashed for a while and a clear victor remains, and while I’m not yet decided on AMD vs Intel, if it’s the latter I’ll definitely be running a P55.
The first reviews are hitting the net. Check ‘em out.
And you thought that Apple finally drove the front running clone maker off of a cliff. Nope. Psystar successfully navigated the bankruptcy courts and is back at its old game of annoying Apple. The ongoing lawsuit is still in play, but bankruptcy no doubt allowed the company to shed some debt and reorganize under Chapter 11 guidelines. Now the company is back and just released a new Core i7 clone.
Remember that Phantom i7 laptop from Eurocom we heard about last month — the one sporting a non-mobile Core i7 processor? Well, there’s a little more info on it now, and it’s even better/worse than you imagined. Check out these ridiculous specs. Remember, this is a laptop.
The Asus Core i7-powered ROG was all by itself at the CES Asus booth but for good reason. This thing is a F’n beast! It’s massive and must weigh a metric ton. The Asus booth monkey wouldn’t open the case for some reason despite my persistent asking and joking. Even still, it’s a gigantic, massive, huge, gaming machine that probably has it’s own weather climate.
Core i7 chips are slowly becoming available so it was only a mater of time before a speed geek got a hold of one and set a world record. The same chap that overclocked a Pentium 4 631 to 8140.4 MHz last year did the tweaks this time around with help from an ASUS ROG Rampage II motherboard. Without taking anything away from him, ASUS claims that the new motherboard, which features small buttons that enables real-time hardware adjustments, made the world record speed of 5510.09 MHz accessible. Still, fancy-pantsy motherboard or not, that’s hella fast fast Core i7 CPU.
So far about every major and niche computer maker has announced a Core i7 desktop platform this week and ASUS is not to be outdone. The ROG CG6190 pairs up the powerful Core i7 Extreme Edition with the Intel X58 chipset. The press release isn’t exactly clear but it seems that the box can support up to 12 GB of triple channel DDR 1333 memory and 4TB of hard drives with the graphics being provided by a 3-way SLI and ATI CrossFireX graphics. All this computing power has to come at a price but ASUS didn’t announce how much it will be, nor when it will be unleashed. But damn, this sexy gaming rig packs a lot of power.
Okay, here’s one more Core i7 ‘puter to announce. Commodore – yup that Commodore – has just announced the Core i7’s will be available in its rigs too. No new models, but rather just a new CPU options for the build to order computers. Prices start at $3,399 for the GX model line that includes dual 1GB ATI Radeon GPUs and a high-def paint finish but can shoot up into Trust Fund Baby price range with the XX model line that includes Core i7 965 Extreme edition and dual 2GB Radeon GPUs for $5,999. Kind of still pricey, eh?
With Dell, Alienware, and Gateway already party’n their cores out, Velocity Micro and CyberPower are joining the festivities too. Velocity Micro’s Edge, Raptor, ProMagix and Vector model lines are all gaining a Core i7 option starting with the Core-920 for $1,699, and continuing up to the stratosphere with the Core-940, and Core-965 Extreme. The CyberPower offering, dubbed The Black Pearl, comes packing with a 3.2GHz 965 Extreme Edition CPU, dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 cards, and 12GB of RAM all wrapped up in a $3,999 package. Now, where is the Apple Core i7 Mac Pros, eh Apple?
Those big packages from Intel must have arrived at all the custom prebuilt computer sites, because all of a sudden they’re all making a racket about how their latest setups rock the new Core i7s like a hurricane:
And of course they have all the other fixins as well.Keep in mind that Core i7 is not a magic bullet, though companies will try to tell you otherwise. It’s a fundamentally faster processor than the Core2, but a fast Core2 can still take on a slow Core i7, so check your hard hardware sites for the latest reviews before plunking down for a budget next-gen processor.
Without fanfare or press releases, Dell has launched desktops featuring Intel’s Core i7 CPU. The Studio XPS lineup gain the Core i7-920 2.66GHz or 2.93GHz and start out at a reasonable $1,499. Gamers can opt for the latest Intel CPU and the Dell name (without the Alienware premium) with the XPS 730x starting at $2,599 with the same Core i7-920. Or, spend a bit more cake with the 730x and 730x H2c desktops to buy into the Core i7-965 Extreme overclocked to 3.73GHz starting at $3,999. The only issue is you are going to have to wait a bit with the Studio XPS desktop not shipping until 11/29/08 and the gaming models not going out until 12/19/08.
Studio XPS & XPS via electronista
Lets look at the big picture here: MacWorld is in January, the Mac Pro’s are need for a CPU bump, and Intel is planning on releasing new Xeon server CPUs early next year. It sure looks good that the Mac Pro’s should receive a CPU upgrade soon but the question becomes, what CPU will Steve-O slap in the the Mac Pro?
Chances are Apple will stick with the Xeon line up and the Core i7, or Nehalem, is the next logical step-up. Even though this upcoming CPU runs at comparable clock speeds as the current generation, benchmarks have soon a reasonable performance boost. Depending on the rest of MacWorld’s news, this might get pushed to a simple press release later on or it could be featured along with other Mac Pro upgrades – Blu-ray burner, anyone?
The next big thing in processors is hitting today — Intel’s Core i7, otherwise known as Nehalem, is finally hitting the ground. If you don’t know that it is, check out our past coverage. This first batch probably doesn’t have the processor you want to get (the more consumer-oriented ones be coming out a little later, good price comparison at the bottom of this page), but it’s a good preview of the performance we’ll all soon have in our desktops.
Check out the coverage at:
HardOCP
Tom’s Hardware
Anandtech
Tech Radar
Guru3D
Or your favorite hardware review site. I can’t wait to get one of these for my PC, and I’m hoping Apple is looking at making them available as well.
If that headline doesn’t get excited, may as well move on to the next story. Nothing to see here, folks! Except for a bad-ass processor that’s about to drop on November 17. If you’ve been following the Nehalem story, you know that it’s Intel’s microarchitecture “tock” to the 45nm process Penryn “tick.” You may have heard it referred to as “Core i7″ as well.
Basically, it means you’re going to be getting the most out of the silicon starting next month, or more likely early next year, since the ones coming out next month are super high-end, not really for end users like you and me. Still, it’s time to start checking under those cushions for spare nickels, because upgrade time cometh! [via Expreview and ZDNet]
