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Intel Roadmap Sheds Some Light on Upcoming Core i3, i5 and i7 Releases

Roadmap includes some Lynnfield and Clarkdale chip specs

Nov 28, 2009 10:37 GMT  ·  By
Intel Corporation still has a firm grasp of the IT market and its upcoming CPUs are evidence of the company's intention to keep this leading position and, perhaps, even strengthen it.
   Intel Corporation still has a firm grasp of the IT market and its upcoming CPUs are evidence of the company's intention to keep this leading position and, perhaps, even strengthen it.

Although official information on Intel's future releases is, except for few exceptions, mostly vague, PC enthusiasts may still squeeze information out of whatever comes their way, whether it's a photo of a certain prototype or a certain quote. However, most often, what individuals with reasonable hardware know-how turn to for more accurate info are roadmaps, and when a roadmap leak occurs which includes the specifications of processors that have not even been given a release date (as was the case with the roadmap leak in mid-July), such enthusiasts have all the more reason to start dreaming about new systems configurations based on processors that don't even exists on the market.

This time around, a roadmap leak not only provides information on the specifications of Intel's Core i5 750 and i7 860 low-power version Lynnfield chips (“S” chips) but also has some info on the Pentium G6950, a Clarkdale-based CPU. The roadmap indicates speeds of 2.4GHz and 2.53GHz for the Lynnfield Core i5 750 and i7 860, respectively, (which are scalable to to 3.2GHz/3.46GHz) and the specs of the G6950 are a clock of 2.85GHz, 3MB L2 cache. The leak also mentions the Core i3 530 and 540 central processors, with 4MB L2 cache and respective clocks of 3.06GHz and 2.93GHz.

The roadmap even seems to indicate the release periods of the i5 650, 660/661, and 670, which are Clarkdale Core i5 processors. They are set for launch during 2010's first quarter (which is consistent to Intel's announcement of their release on Januray 10) and their frequencies range between 3.2 and 3.46GHz for the i5 650, 3.33 and 3.6GHz for the 660/661 and 3.46 and 3.73GHz for the Core i5 670. As a note, the current i5 750 only reaches 2.66GHz. Besides the Core i5 661 which has a thermal envelope of 73W, all Clarkdale i5 chips consume 73W.

As comparison, the new low-power S versions of the aforementioned Lynnfield chips only eat up 82W, compared to their initial incarnations which use 95W. In addition, the S chips have a L2 chache of 8MB and should also appear during the first quarter of 2010.

The full roadmap, a huge 8515px × 3956px image, can be viewed here.