14 DAY TRIAL // After having announced that its Core i7 940 processor would no longer be available for order after July this year, Santa Clara, California-based Intel has recently stated that it will also phase out its current flagship Nehalem processor, the 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition Model. With this latest announcement, the company indirectly confirms recent rumors according to which it will soon take the wraps off the latest installments of its Nehalem-based processor lineup, the much anticipated Core i7 950 and 975 chips.
According to Intel's latest product change notification, the Core i7 965 processor will be available for order until September 4, 2009, with the final products planned to ship on May 7, 2010. This basically means that the chip maker's fastest consumer processor to date will be phased out in less than one year after its launch. However, chipzilla is expected to update its processor lineup very soon, with the company planning to introduce two new chips, which will eventually replace the Core i7 940 and the Extreme 975 models.
Previous reports indicate that Intel plans to launch the Core i7 950 and 975 processors before the debut of the Computex show in June this year. These two parts are essentially beefed up versions of the processors they will be replacing, namely the Core i7 940 and 965. They will likely be launched with prices similar to those of their earlier counterparts and will deliver enhanced performance with factory-set clock speeds of 3.06GHz and 3.33GHz, respectively.
Intel launched the first Nehalem processors back in November 2008, when the chip maker introduced three new processors, rated as the company's finest. Part of the new line of Core i7 processors, the 920, 940 and 965 desktop CPUs were designed to deliver enhanced performance on a new X58 platform that delivered support for a number of new features, including Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) and triple-channel DDR3 memory.