Nehalem - imminent?

[Clunk]

I see that overkackers have nehalem chips and boards for pre-order at massively gouged prices.

Will scan be doing pre orders this time round, and if so, do you know when you will be listing the stuff on your site?

[PeterStoba]

I'm interested to see if there are more than 3 chips launching at first, and if there are any cheaper too, may have my wish list filled now for Santa

[DavidM]

I don't believe this product's been officially released yet.

[grimpy]

Will be interesting to see what Scans pricing is.

[Jonj1611]

I was thinking of getting a Intel Quad core, is it worth waiting for this chip? And does anyone have the slightest idea of what pricing might be like?

Jon

[ArtAddiction]

I was thinking of getting a Intel Quad core, is it worth waiting for this chip? And does anyone have the slightest idea of what pricing might be like?

Jon

No word of CPU coolers for the i7 yet & here's something for those overclockers.

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,8118.html

We've posted information regarding Intel's Nehalem platform and its support for various DDR3 memory clock frequencies in the past. We've come across some more now, actually a lot more. As stated in the previous reports, the Nehalem platform will officially support only DDR3-800 and DDR3-1066, but there is still a strong buzz that there will be official support for DDR3-1333 memory, but it has not been decided yet.

There have been some confusion as to why Intel Core i7 would not support DDR3 memory clocked at higher frequencies and the first thing you need to be aware of is that it is not the frequency of the memory that is the culprit.

The problem is rather that the memory and the processor internals are fed synchronized voltages. Previous reports have stated that anything above 1.65V would fry a Nehalem processor and it would certainly be hard to get any of today's DDR3 memory modules to any kind of decent speeds at this voltage. But, these stories are exaggerated, but the fact remains that Nehalem processors are not going to like voltages above 1.7V.

You have to put it through some extreme handling for it to give up right away, but if you feed the memory with voltages above 1.8V, the processor could start degrading and finally cease to work. According to the information we've received you need to hit close to 2.0V to kill a Nehalem processor.

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 should create a whole new niche for DDR3 memory since we've also received information that says that latencies play only a minor role with Nehalem. More aggressive timings will boost scores in pure memory benchmarks, but the generic system performance seems to care little, if anything at all, about timings. This could mean that memory manufacturers could start to focus on hitting high frequencies at low voltages and loose timings for our dear Nehalem processors.

Already, tests with Corsair's DDR3-1333 memory that handles 1600MHz at 1.64V and 1800MHz at 1.7V have been performed so we should still see some decent memory frequencies on the Nehalem platform, but it will certainly be a more delicate process of reaching there than it has been before.

[Jonj1611]

Thanks for the links

Yeah it looks nice, but is way out of my budget, I could get a processor but no way that type of price for the motherboard, will wait a year for prices to drop and get a quad core for the moment

Cheers
Jon

[Chris P]

The i7 is still under NDA at the moment...

As always other Retailers will advertise stock before the NDA, however they will NOT have stock before SCAN and the advertised prices are NOT accurate.

As soon as NDA has lifted SCAN will launch, have stock with a better price

Regards

[pauleden]

Chris,
Can you say if the NDA has a known 'lift' date?
Paul

[DavidM]

We can't comment on unreleased products.

[Clunk]

Thanks Chris

[Boogle]

Chris,
Can you say if the NDA has a known 'lift' date?
Paul

Since Chris said:

As soon as NDA has lifted SCAN will launch, have stock

I would imagine Intel are doing a hard launch. Which means NDA will lift on 31st with Scan selling on that day. I've got a feeling City Link's Saturday service will see a momentary spike!

[DavidM]

We can't comment on unreleased products.

[Jonj1611]

I would buy it if it wasn't for the DDR3 memory, just can't afford that, the processor and the mainboard looks pretty pricey too, and I don't believe they are going to drop in price that much.

Can always save for next year though, when I am sure I will purchase just as a new architecture is coming out lol.

For now will stick to the quad core and pray that the quad-core prices drop a little when new chip is launched, sometime soon I imagine

Jon

[Blaineoliver]

I am not happy when ive heard the price of these chips, and the synchrinous voltages, this sounds like a good way to melt a chip. We will see with time if these are the enthusiast chips people are hoping for.