Market, meet the Core i7
Intel’s new chip officially is released today and has caused chatter for months about whether or not the new technologies applied will produce greater performance and system speed. There are a few things that the new chip does for everyone. Here’s a list of five I could think of after the jump.
- QuickPath Interconnect or QPI for short. This is the new memory controller on-the-die for the Core i7 which means less latency going to memory in most cases. If you think you’ve heard of this before, it’s probably because you have. AMD has been using their version, the HyperTransport for years now; on this one, Intel finally caught up.
- SLI or Crossfire? Using two video cards or one? ATI or Nvidia? I dunno, it’s your pick, now. The new Intel chipset X58, released alongside the Core i7, is now coupled with SLI support ever since Nvidia came to an agreement with Intel on intellectual property sharing rights. It’s just better to have the choice, isn’t it?
- Another Die Shrink - During the Core i7’s stay, it will undergo yet another die shrink to the 32nm architecture. This means even faster speeds with the processor having to go shorter distances with data and processing.
- Buy RAM, it’s now the age of 64-bit - Mainstream 64-bit OS’s have been out for at least 6 years now, but processors were slow catching up with AMD’s Athlon 64 being one of the first to utilize this new idea of opening address space to use more RAM. With a normal 32-bit system, the Max RAM addressing was up to 4GB, now the sky is the limit (thought I’m sure someday it won’t be) for the near future with the 64-bit OS. New Core i7 motherboards, right now, have 4-6 RAM slots with ability of loading up to 24GB in 6 slots (4GB per slot). This is a huge increase and will likely only get better as more capacity is added per slot in the future.
- Triple Channel RAM - On new Core i7 motherboards, it’s like dual channel, but instead of 2 DIMM’s having the near-performance of one, 3 DIMM’s will have the near-performance of one. That means 3 stick’s of 4GB acting like one stick of 12GB.
So, head to your nearest retailer (and by nearest I mean, Newegg), and pick up a new “core” upgrade for just around $650. That is, if you have the cash to spare. If not, well…Christmas is coming… 
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