14 DAY TRIAL // While Advanced Micro Devices has been busy bringing more and more graphics cards to the market, Intel has been doing something similar, only on the central-processing-unit front. Having already released its Pine Trail platform and its 32nm chips with integrated graphics, the company is now gearing up to refresh its Core i7 lineup. One chip, namely the Core i7-930, is currently planned for official introduction on the last day of the month, but, as it often occurs with upcoming products, it has been listed ahead of launch in online stores, in Europe to be exact.
The Intel Core i7-930 is a quad-core CPU dubbed “Bloomfield” and will supposedly replace the 920 model. The new processor is based on the 45nm manufacturing process and its four cores operate at a frequency of 2.80 GHz. In addition, the CPU has a 256KB L2 cache memory per chip (4x 256KB) and no less than 8MB L3 cache. The processor also supports Hyper-Threading (comes with 8 threads in total) and has an integrated triple channel DDR3 memory controller.
The Triple Channel PC3-8500U controller will enable the CPU to be paired with large amounts of high-speed, top-tier memory. This, by itself, will boost PC performance, a performance that will be further improved by the Intel Turbo Boost technology. In addition, the Core i7 will support a number of extra features, such as the Enhanced Halt State, Extended Stop Grant State, Deep Sleep State, Deeper Sleep State and Deep Power Down.
The Intel Core i7-930 central processing unit is being listed on online stores with a price tag of 254.86 Euro. This price point is about 25 Euro higher than that of the Core i7-920, but might eventually decrease after the product's official introduction. Currently, Intel plans to formally announce its quad-core chip on February 28th.