After flaunting the P6T Series motherboards, and the monstrous Rampage II Extreme, ASUS decided to expand its Bloomfield CPU-supportive motherboard lineup with its workstation-class offerings. ASUS is known for bringing in workstation boards on desktop platforms. They have had Intel 975P based workstation boards, just as they had nForce 590 SLI boards. These desktop-thru-worksation platforms are usually single CPU socket platforms, with certain workstation features, such as PCI-X interface, enterprise-grade storage controllers, among other features that make them durable and suitable for mission-critical environments. They don't sport enterprise chipsets, and hence carry batch-leading desktop chipsets.

With Nehalem and the new Socket 1366, ASUS did just that, with the inclusion of two single-socket workstation boards. These motherboards, at the outset support the upcoming Core i7 processors, and have the potential to support Xeon processors that use the same socket, or even the same core. There are two models lined-up: P6T6 WS Revolution and P6T6 WS Pro. The P6T6 WS Revolution is the flagship board. It features six full-length PCI-Express slots, which might have variable number of available PCI-Express lanes, depending on the number of PCI-E cards connected. It features a 16+2 phase CPU power circuit. The board features the Tylersburg X58 chipset, along with an ICH10 series southbridge. There is passive cooling for the VRM area, northbridge, and a large southbridge block, that could be possibly cooling a supplementary PCI-Express switch chip. Storage options include Serial-attached SCSI (SAS), SATA II and e-SATA ports.

Remember the A-DATA DDR3 triple channel memory and the ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard? They are both detailed on our page, but this story aims to show how both parts perform when working coupled with a quad-core Core i7 engineering sample CPU. The results you're about to see below are achieved by three 1600MHz A-DATAs overclocked to over 2000MHz. The result is system memory read/write speeds of up to the incredible 20515/16946 MB/s. The latency time is also worth mentioning - 22.9ns.

Pictures of the mainstream Nehalem chips otherwise known as Lynnfield have emerged in the asian forum XFastest. Unlike the Bloomfield that has 1366 pins, Lynnfield has only 1160 pins and lacks the QPI link that the Bloomfield uses for triple channel DDR3. Instead Lynnfield uses DMI which only supports dual channel DDR3. Check out the link below for even more comparison images.

During the final weeks before Intel's Nehalem release date, we have covered almost any motherboard that will be simultaneously available as the platform launches. Today we'll accentuate on Biostar's T-Power X58, yet another LGA1366 mainboard that will help Core i7 buyers. The board is pretty much standard, it has a 12-phase power design, 6x DDR3 1333/1600/2000 slots, 3x PCI-E 16x SLI and CrossFireX capable slots, and 6x SATA + 2x eSATA + 1 IDE ports. The T-Power X58 also features a heat-pipe cooling system, on-the-fly power/reset buttons, and a LED POST code display. There's also a 7.1 integrated audio, two 10/100/1000 LANs, and two FireWire ports.

After yesterday's ASUS P6T Deluxe quick introduction, today is time for the heavy artilery to come by and stop at our front door. For sure ASUS, one of the biggest brands in the computer industry is not going to have only one or two motherboards to support Nehalem. Although the platform is not yet officially introduced, ASUS is ready with its Rampage II Extreme motherboard. As the name suggests this will be the enthusiast range of motherboard offerings support for LGA 1366 processors, triple-channel DDR3 memory and up to three PCI-Express x16 graphics cards. The new Republic of Gamers machinery might not have a fancy heat pipe cooling (it might not need one) but it has a few other tricks, such as a special VTT CPU power card that provides a 16-phase CPU and 3-phase memory power design. The board also features a number of strange buttons that will help experts overclock their hardware. The Rampage II Extreme also has six SATA 3.0 Gbps connectors, dual Gigabit Ethernets, FireWire, eSATA ports and most likely support for both ATI CrossFire X and NVIDIA triple SLI technology. Let the pictures finish this post:

Following the launch of Nehalem architecture based CPUs from Intel, motherboard vendors would introduce their fleets of motherboards into the market, all of which are based on the new extreme performance chipset from Intel, the X58. MSI on its part, has three models lined-up. There is a performance segment X58 Platinum, followed by an enthusiast-grade X58 Eclipse. There's an even higher model, whose name is under the wraps for now. This model would cater to the market of super-overclockers.

A company slide showing model-specific features has surfaced. It can be seen that all motherboards MSI has to offer, support both ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU technologies. X58 Platinum and Eclipse offer SLI support without the presence of the nForce 200 chipset, while the super-overclocker board uses it. X58 Eclipse sports 3 PCI-Express x16 slots, making it 3-way SLI capable. X58 comes with two such slots. The highest offering, however, has four slots. Perhaps it helps set-up 3-way SLI for graphics plus one card dedicated to handle PhysX calculations, and of-course, 4-way ATI Crossfire X.

Intel would be rolling out an elite fleet of desktop processors based on the new Nehalem architecture soon. The first derivative, the Bloomfield core, is supposed to be the architecture's flagship for the desktop PC market. And for it, Core i7 Extreme 965 is supposed to be the leading processor. Priced at US $999, the processor is clocked at 3.20 GHz and features four cores and eight logical processors thanks to HyperThreading Technology (encore). Details of it are covered here.

Mobile01, unboxed the i7 965 before launch. The contents show a massive stock cooler and the processor itself. The stock cooler is composed of the same fins projecting radially, just that they are much thinner, and more in number (to boost surface area of dissipation). The cooler uses 50% of fins made of copper and the rest 50% made of aluminum. The large CPU contact base is made of copper and pre-applied TIM. The box pictured is the "white-box" part, expect the retail box to be of that exact size.

Thanks to some inside information that was published today by various hardware portals, now we know that Intel has decided to enhance the overclocking capabilities of two of its still to be released non-Extreme Core i7 processors. Intel's LGA 1366 Core i7-940 and Core i7-920, which are clocked at 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz respectively will now boast unlocked memory controlers, meaning that users will be able to change the memory multiplier and thus the memory frequency beyond the stock DDR3 800/1066MHz speed. The unlocked memory multiplier will also allow the QPI speed to be changed. The Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) bus resembles AMD's Hypertransport bus. A slide change in the memory frequency will result in higher QPI bus speed, just like in the current AMD processor family. Previously, we knew that only the Core i7 Extreme processors like the 3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme Edition will have these overclocking features. I sincerely hope that with this last minute change Intel will make us overclockers really happy.

XFastest.com posted today a ton of ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard press event shots and detailed product pictures. All the valuable information about the motherboard can be seen in the pictures. Only four pics will be posted here, the rest of them can be viewed at our collegues at VR-Zone.

Later this year, Intel will launch three models of processors based on a newer socket, a newer architecture. The processors are based on the Nehalem-derived Bloomfield core, and require a compatible motherboard with the 1366-pin land grid array (LGA) socket. There are three models lined up, one in each category of extreme, performance and mainstream. They carry the Core i7 brand name and here are its model numbers:

• Core i7 Extreme 965 (PIB model: BX80601965)
• Core i7 940 (PIB model: BX80601940)
• Core i7 920 (PIB model: BX80601920)

The 965 is a Extreme series product that sits on the top of the pile, it should be the fastest desktop processor ever made. The 940 falls into the performance category, given its price. It is trailed by the 920 which seems to have the best price to clock speed, it falls into the mainstream category. A table explaining parameters in detail and model prices is provided.

Intel's upcoming Nehalem architecture brings in a host of changes. One of the most important of them is that the processors now carry memory controllers. From what is known so far, the upcoming Nehalem processors come with official support for DDR3 800 MHz and DDR3 1066 MHz though talk is that it just could slip in DDR3 1333 MHz support on an official scale. Here's a complication: Some of the computer enthusiasts with plans of retaining their current DDR3 1800/2000/beyond may have severe problems running the memory at their rated frequencies on a Nehalem chip. They might not work on their rated frequencies at all.

The reason behind this is that Nehalem has processor and memory voltages synchronized. Fresh studies suggest that a voltage of 2.0 V can fry a Nehalem processor. It was earlier noted that this voltage limit was 1.60 V to 1.70 V. It would need extreme caution for you to set the core to run at even 1.8 V since at that voltage the processor could start degrading and finally cease to work. The conclusion is that the Nehalem platform, with its synchronized CPU and memory voltages, will be limited by the DDR3 modules ability to reach high frequencies at lower voltages. This could have implications on the kind of memory kits that come out in the near future. Manufacturers could offer high-end kits that function well within 1.6 V with the supposedly high frequencies albeit loose timings, just to keep the memory and processor operating safely.

Intentional or not, a huge set of company-confidential diagrams from Intel have surfaced from Japanese website PC Watch. The diagrams show Intel's roadmap until the beginning of 2010. While the authenticity of these diagrams are questionable, and there are bound to be inaccuracies, they provide a broad view of Intel's consumer PC processor plans. The first time shows a gradual transition between the current Core and upcoming Nehalem architectures. What's more, it shows how Intel may have segregated the desktop PC market, with six main product divisions from bottom to top being integrated board, value, essential, mainstream, performance and extreme. The value, mainstream and performance segments are further classified on price-bands.The contents of the diagram are pretty self explanatory in terms of what kind of products are slated for when and a little peak into what they are made of. Highlights of the diagram include:

Apparently NVIDIA has decided to give all Intel owners a big present by introducing the native support of its SLI technology for Intel Nehalem. This information was published first at The Tech Report by Scott Wasson, and comes directly from the final editors meeting of NVISION. According to Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP products at NVIDIA, the company will authorize native SLI support on Intel X58 motherboards without the need of its nForce 200 chip - under certain circumstances. Those circumstances actually include a certification process of every Intel X58 motherboard at NVIDIA's Santa Clara certification lab. Once in the lab, the boards must pass basic testing for functionality, slot placement, and other criterions. After that the makers of these boards must select from a menu of licensing options available to them. Afterward to be certified boards will also be required to display an "SLI Certified" logo on their boxes and other marketing materials. Once the above steps are completed without a problem, NVIDIA will provide the board maker with an approval "cookie" key that it must embed in the system BIOS. The combination of this approval key and an Intel X58 chipset will then unlock SLI support in NVIDIA's ForceWare driver software. The whole process of certification is reported to be cheaper than the cost of the nForce 200 chip alone, which is around US $30. That's the interesting part you need to know, now we wait. The full story is posted here.

Without doubt, Nehalem is what the computing world is raving about. Intel's next generation PC processors will arrive at stores sometime September thru October. Intel has put in a nice set of incentives to woo the enthusiast community, perhaps some of whom are sitting tight on US $3000 worth of CPUs in the form of dual QX9775 installations. Incentives include the Turbo Mode dynamic speed adjustment feature, projecting the processors as powerhouse chips that also have the potential for extreme computing or overclocking. NordicHardware captured such an installation which features a Core i7 Bloomfield processor seated on a ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard with a liquid-nitrogen copper pot installed (a cooling device which consists of a copper cavity in contact with the CPU, in which liquid nitrogen is poured for rapid cooling). It's noted that the CPU temperatures plummeted to -120° C (or -184° F). It was noted that the Core i7 held on pretty well at those deep-space temperatures. There however, are no stability tests to back those observations as yet. Enjoy the pictures for now.For more pictures, visit this page.

Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors (codenamed Nehalem) will use the new X58 chipset and the ICH10-R Soutbhridge. DRR3 memory can be installed in six slots running DDR3-800, 1066 and 1333.

The board we took photos of is a protoype that's why you can see manual soldering and cabling on it.

The high-end offering by MSI based on the upcoming Intel X58 chipset and the 1366-pin land grid array (LGA 1366) is pictured in its full capacity. It brings with it a fascinating set of features and is slated for Q4 2008. Like all the other X58 motherboards, the Eclipse supports QuickPath Interconnect, an FSB-replacement by Intel for the LGA 1366 processors, offering system bus bandwidth around twice as that of FSB 1600 MHz, 25 GB/s.

The first platform image of a reference motherboard based on the 1160-pin land grid array (LGA-1160) and its initial corresponding core-logic Ibex Peak has emerged, it was pictured at the Intel Developer Forum. The pictures show a company reference board with the LGA-1160 socket. A quick glance over the board shows its most significant feature, the core-logic (chipset) is now consolidated into a single chip instead of the traditional northbridge + southbridge design. The board features four DDR3 slots, the processors that make it this platform, namely Lynnfield and Havendale would sport dual-channel memory controllers. This board merely demonstrates the platform, it cannot be taken as Intel's final design at this point. Next to the DDR3 slots can be seen a SO-DIMM slot, that goes on to show that the very same platform could drive Nehalem's mobile platform.

We are barely months into having Centrino 2 laptops at the store, following delays of six weeks with its launch owing to last minute glitches with its integrated graphics (IGP), and Intel has already demonstrated a Nehalem-based mobile computing platform at the ongoing Intel Developer Forum (IDF). This mobile computing platform for now can be loosely called a prelude to the successor of Centrino 2, it is codenamed Calpella.

The platform will be using dual-core and quad-core CPUs codenamed Auburndale and Clarksfield respectively. Intel set-up a Clarksfield validation platform with the mobile Nehalem in situ. The size of the active cooler explains a lot, and that's a quad-core chip we're talking about. It wouldn't be too far sighted telling that by this time, next year high-end laptops will be equipped with an 8-thread-capable Nehalem mobile CPU.

After Intel's Nehalem platform is no secret anymore, it's time to start looking at the motherboards that will support the new Socket 1366 buddies. One of them is ASUSTeK's upcoming P6T Deluxe mainboard based on Intel's yet-to-be-released X58 Express, the first chipset to power the Socket 1366 Core i7 Nehalem processors. As part of the whole platform, the P6T Deluxe has a total of six DDR3 slots intended for triple-channel mode and three PCI-Express x16 slots with support for dual and triple video card configurations. It's too early to say which one, ATI's CrossFire, NVIDIA's SLI or both combos. Expect further information when the time comes. Meanwhile if you want to take a closer look at the motherboard please click here.

During the ongoing Intel Developer Forum (IDF) event, Intel has announced its first 6-core processor codenamed Dunnington. It will be branded as the Xeon X7460 and is expected to become available in servers beginning next month. Intel claims that systems using this chip already broke performance records, including an 8-socket 48-core IBM System x3950 M2 server, which became the first platform to break the 1 million tpmC barrier on the TPC-C benchmark.

Intel has also shed some light on the upcoming fleet of processors based on the Nehalem architecture. The first wave would only include quad-core, HyperThreading-enabled processors based on the Bloomfield core, also said is that they are planning to manufacture a second server derivative designed for the expandable server market (Nehalem-EX). Later, desktop processors based on the Havendale (dual-core) and Lynnfield (quad-core) processors, while the notebook/mobile platform will be offered the dual-core Auburndale and Lynnfield quad-core parts.

Intel Corporation announced today that desktop processors based on the company's upcoming new microarchitecture (codenamed "Nehalem") will be formally branded "Intel Core processor." The first products in this new family of processors, including an "Extreme Edition" version, will carry an "i7" identifier and will be formally branded as "Intel Core i7 processor." This is the first of several new identifiers to come as different products launch over the next year.

According to the guys over at Expreview, Intel is naming its new Nehalem range of processors "Core i7".

There will be 3 Bloomfield to enter PC market later this year, and the 999USD top-of-the-line Bloomfield is the only Core i7 Extreme Edition processor current revealed.

All i7 processors and i7 Extreme Edition processor will be officially announced in Aug 11st, launch date set to Q4 this year.

This is for all of you, who are impatiently waiting for that new CPU, the X58 boards with that new socket and that triple channel DDR3 support. Maximum PC has managed to get their hands on everything needed to build one of these systems. They give single, dual and triple channel memory setups a try as well. To top things off, they have even taken a few images. One image from Maximum PC can be seen below, but make sure to take a look at all the other ones on their site.

Intel Prepones Nehalem Launch

Although the introduction of Intel Bloomfield, the next-generation processor from Intel was slated for November later this year, sources at motherboard companies report that Intel could prepone its launch to September along with the X58 system chipset platform. However it is known that motherboard vendors will not be in a position to bring LGA-1366 socket based motherboard into retail channels until early October. This might not cause internal-competition between Intel's products.

The latest publication of model-specific launch schedule of Intel processors up to Q3 2009 show several models of Extreme processors based on the Bloomfield core beginning from the 3.20 GHz Bloomfield part, which could be succeeded sometime in Q2 2009.

The very first wave of Nehalem architecture based processors arrives in Q4 2008, with the 3.20 GHz Extreme Bloomfield part, the Core 2 Quad is already cleaved into Performance and Mainstream segments, with a 2.93 GHz Bloomfield part making it to the former and a 2.66 GHz part to the latter segments. This is also the time when Intel makes the final additions to the Yorkfield family with the Q9650 processor in the performance and a Q9400 to the mainstream segments. The roadmap shows a gradual synthesis between the current generation and the next. By Q3 2009, Intel will have a full-fledged line-up of processors, including the part that has overclockers looking forward to, the Havendale. This chip is a successor to Wolfdale. It is a dual-core Nehalem-derived chip that supports Hyper-Threading. Also by Q3, the mainstream quad-core offerings would divide between lower Bloomfield and the Lynnfield core processors.

Also, a rather interesting tidbit is a slide which shows Lynnfield schematic with "Integrated or discrete graphics", with the video hardware marker attached to the CPU. Would this mean Intel beats AMD in the race for the first CPU+GPU CPU+IGP?