I7, Nehalem CPUs and X58 chipset

Specifications & Features

• Core Frequencies - 3.2GHz (965), 2.93GHz (940), 2.66 (920) 
  
• QPI Speed - 6.4GT/s (965), 4.8GT/s (940, 
  
• 920) 
  
• TDP (Thermal Design Power) - 130W
  
• Stepping - 4
  
• Number of CPU Cores - 4
  
• Shared L3 Cache - 8MB
  
• L2 Cache - 1MB (256K x 4)
  
• Processor input voltage (VID) - 1.160v
  
• .045-m
  
• icron manufacturing process
  
• Shared Smart Cache Technology
  
• PECI Enabled
  
• Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST)
  
• Extended HALT State (C1E) Enabled
  
• Execute Disable Bit (XD) Enabled
  
• Intel 64 Technology
  
• Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)
  
• Packaging -  Flip Chip LGA1366
  
• Total Die Size: Approximately 263mm2 
  
• Approximately 731M Transistors
  
• MSRP - $999 (965), $562 (940), $284 (920)
  

Everything you need to know about Intel's next-generation Nehalem CPUs and X58 chipset, including hints about how it will overclock

Note: This is a preview article, now that Core i7 has launched, please click here for the Core i7 launch coverage.

After Intel revealed more details about Nehalem to CPC at IDF Fall 2008, we’re finally in a position to tell you almost everything there is to know about the new Core i7 processor, which was, until recently, better known by its codename, Nehalem. After days of lengthy briefings we’ve discovered its new design, new features, new technology and eve

n some of its benchmarking and overclocking characteristics.

We’ll cover the basics in this section – what Nehalem is and why it’s such a sweeping change for Intel. Scroll to the bottom of the page to skip to read more in-depth discussions of specific aspects of the new CPUs that will form the basis of Intel's high-performance product line over the next few years.

NEHALEM - NATIVE AND INCLUSIVE

Nehalem is a radically new design for Intel: for the first time, the company is producing a 'native' quad-core CPU, where all four cores sit on the same piece of silicon. With its Core 2 CPUs, Intel used two dual-Core dies to create a quad-core chip. 

Nehalem features Level 3 cache, something first seen on earlier Xeon server chips, but Intel has indicated its Core i7s will feature up to a massive 8MB (shared between all four cores) rather than the 2MB of the Phenom X4. Each of Nehalem's four cores has 256KB of lower-latency Level 2 cache rather than the 512KB of the Phenom X4.

The Level 3 cache of Nehalem is described as being ‘inclusive’, meaning that it holds the data of all the Level 2 caches. This means that if a core needs to fetch data, and it doesn’t find it in the Level 3 cache, it can be confident that the most up-to-date version of that data is held in system memory and fetch straight from there. If the Level 3 cache wasn’t inclusive, the core would first have to look at the cache of the other three cores to ensure that none of them had a more recent version of the data it needs. An inclusive cache is therefore said by Intel to be more efficient than an ‘exclusive’ cache design, even if it does mean that 1MB of Nehalem’s 8MB Level 3 cache is taken up by storing a copy of the 256KB Level 2 cache inside each processing core.

INTEGRATED MEMORY CONTROLLER

Intel has also followed AMD in bringing the memory controller onto the Nehalem CPU die rather than having it be part of the Northbridge on the motherboard. It's achieved this by modularising the design of the CPU. The seperate processing cores and caches are linked to the onboard memory controller via a new bus standard called QuickPath (sometimes called QPI, short for QuickPath Interconnect). 

As QuickPath replaces the Frontside Bus (FSB) and Northbridge combo, it also takes over the role of allowing the CPU to connect to other system components, busses and controllers such as the PCI Express controller and DDR3 memory. This will, among other things, allow a Nehalem processor to have an integrated graphics processor, much like AMD’s forthcoming Fusion product. We doubt that Nehalem processors with integrated graphics will show up for at least six months, and Intel has given no roadmap for this.

NEW SOCKET

As a Nehalem CPU communicates directly with memory, it needs an additional bank of connections to the motherboard. The current Socket LGA775 doesn’t have enough pins to accomodate the memory controller, so Nehalem CPUs require the new Socket LGA1366 which has 1,366 connections to the motherboard rather than just 775. The two sockets are not compatible in any way, so you’ll need a new CPU cooler for Nehalem-based processors as well as a new motherboard.

Without a memory controller taking up space, the Northbridge of a Nehalem motherboard is much more streamlined than previous generations. The first Nehalem Northbridge will be Intel’s X58 Express, which provides 36 PCI-E 2.0 lanes for single 16-lane, dual 16-lane or quad 8-lane graphics setups. Both ATI’s CrossFire multi-graphics and Nvidia's SLI will work (although SLI support will be limited to certain approved boards).

HYPER-THREADING

The last big news about Nehalem is that it uses Hyper-Threading. This technology works just as it did with the Pentium 4, using spare resources of a processing core to try to execute a second process thread. This means that a quad-core Nehalem processor can accept and attempt to process eight threads simultaneously, making it even more massively parallel than the current Core 2 Quad CPUs.

http://www.custompc.co.uk/features/604725/intel-core-i7-and-x58-revealed/page2.html

Asus overclocks Core i7 to 5.4GHz

Posted at: 5:31pm 18th November 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

The R&D guys at Asus show the potential of Intel’s new architecture when using liquid nitrogen cooling

We have to admit that we were pretty chuffed after getting a Core i7 to run at 4.27GHz using just air cooling, but the research and development (R&D) guys at Asus have just shown us what the chip can do if you cool it with LN2, with which they managed to achieve an incredible clock speed of 5.4GHz.

Using a 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Engineering Sample, Asus achieved the overclock using its own X58-based P6T Deluxe motherboard, along with 3GB of OCZ triple-channel RAM. However, the real star of the show appears to be the CPU itself, as the overclock was achieved with a huge 27x multiplier and a 200MHz QPI base clock. While this is a decent enough overclock over the 133MHz default, we overclocked the QPI to 210MHz on the P6T Deluxe in our own tests, and we even managed to get 220MHz out of the Asus Rampage II Extreme (reviewed in Issue 65 of Custom PC), so this isn’t an exceptional achievement for the motherboard. 

On a side note, we’re also slightly confused about the 3,600MHz Rated FSB reported in the CPU-Z screenshot (see below), but we assume that this is a quirk of using the current version of CPU-Z on new technology. 

While we’re pretty sure that this overclock wouldn’t be stable enough to run through our benchmarks, it’s still a great achievement for an overclock, and just goes to show the potential of the Core i7 architecture for achieving sky-high clock speeds with the right equipment, so hats off to the chaps at Asus.

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605205/asus-overclocks-core-i7-to-54ghz.html