News Intel to discontinue Core i7 920 & 940 CPUs

Killing i7 after what, a couple of months? Nice Intel!

@ Turbo: Why will i5 be hotter than i7? What did I miss?

 

Cool as in Kewl.

 

i think it was quite clear that i5 would perform similarly to i7 which is why i have been waiting what i hope to get is an i5 based home server then perhaps upgrade my gaming comp to i7 as the prices fall

 

This is a VERY good point! Well done

 

It's not killing it, it's simply focusing i7 on the super high performance workstation needs where it was intended originally. Triple channel is NOT a good idea for "mainstream" - we've seen triple channel kits cost less than dual channel DDR3 and DDR3 takeup for LGA775 is very low. i5 will be powerful, but still mainstream with 4/8GB of DDR3 so it will bring down prices of dual channel DDR3 kits quickly.

 

Meh, my q6600 still does everything I want it to do without skipping a beat. I'll just duck and cover and wait for the dust to settle in a year or two before I look to overhaul the system.

 

Yes - simply put, Lynnfield will have less L3 cache iirc and only two channels of DDR3, however we've already seen when Core i7 runs on dual channel it makes FA difference to performance clock to clock, and with less L3 cache Lynnfields could probably overclock better too (or, at least the memory controller will OC better - making up for the extra channel of memory).

Intel has highly aggressive prefetchers thanks to its (long route to memory) FSB era Core 2 series, but now with such low latency memory access multiple channels don't make a huge amount of difference on the desktop, only server where it will also offer redundancy and extra capacity.

If anyone thinks Lynnfield will be cheap, think again imo. The boards will be high "Core 2 price", but coming down within 6-9 months as the bill of materials gathers pace, and depending on how much competition AMD puts in (to bring down the cost of P55). Since LGA775 parts will also be around with G41/P43 - Intel will be forcing the hand of many of us (again) to fork out more for a basic core performance to work up from. No more £60 E5200 + £100 P45 board sorry - you'll be looking at £150+£180 CPU if I were to throw in my 2p.

That said, it's not a bad thing given the technology, but I think with COMPETITION from Nvidia chipsets and AMD CPUs it would make the industry far more consumer friendly.

 

I am betting that the I5 will stay as long as 775 has, after a year there will be a die shrink, most likely the P65 chipset released offering some new features and such. I've not looked for intels road map yet, just guessing.

I7 is so young, that running out and grabbing the tech seemed a bad idea to me from the get go, i knew it would shift considering it was workstation grade.

Basically by this time next year i would have finished uni, earning a better wage than i am at the moment on placement, and the Q6600 right now will be due a potential upgrade as it will be 3 years old at that point.

Of course unless microsoft make some changes we could all be shafted soon, currently XP and vista are limited to 8 cores and the way things are going 8 cores will be fairly normal 2 years...
(yes XP would bottle neck an 8 core beast due to 32-bit, but we will still be using it!)

 

It doesn't matter, those with a clue might be aware that there are many affordable Xeon processors for the 1366 socket, including 920 equivalents and dual cores.

 

i7 920 eqiuvalent Xeon = X5550 @ 2.66 GHz, a real bargain at almost 1,000 dollars or £740

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=996527&source=froogle

 

Not to mention that a lot of single LGA1366 motherboards don't support Xeon processors.
On the other hand... The CPU support section for Asus P6T shows "Core i7 950" and "Core i7 975".

 

Sorry man, you're looking at the dual-socket versions. The single-socket version is the X3520 and has the same MSRP. They got the same frequency as the 940 and 965 too.

 

I will be trying to keep m q9450 well fed and happy for a bit longer then.
If it does go belly up, i'd rather place some dosh in AMD kit and OC it, than a lot of cash on comparable intel kit.
Will have to wait and see what this gpu on cpu has as ups and downs yet.....

 

I got in there just in time then... makes me wonder whether I should upgrade to a D0 or not before it disappears... maybe not... anyway. I'm pretty damned sure I can get a few years from this thing

I still don't get why i5 couldn't be socket 1366 however.

I'm a bit gutted that there will be no new 1366 boards when SATA3 comes available however. I hate having PCI cards for stuff that could be on the mobo.

 

I suddenly feel the need to slap Paul Otellini very hard...

 

Does this mean AMD will have the lower end market sealed up? If Phenom II x2 or Athlon II are priced right, add that to AM2+ boards and DDR2 (while its still cheap) I recon AMD would be better value for money.
On a side note, isn't the enthuast market usually made up of theose wanting either top end performance or best performane at the lowest price? Thats why C2D was so good. An E2xxx could yeild 3.5gHz of performance. i7 may pverclock like a beast but if the price is elitist, then does it offer the value? Seems intel is splitting the market into top end (i7), mid range(i5), Enthuast (C2D) and lower end

 

Retracted. Apologies, never heard of the W3520, to be fair it is not even listed on Intel's sspec for 1366 socket Xeons, have some rep. To be fair, I doubt current consumer X58 motherboard will continue to be produced when the plug is pulled on the i7, which might bump the build price up a notch.

 

Have some rep for writing the best sentence this week.

 

+3 I've decided just now to stick with my Q6600 until I see limitations in it's performance. I'm sure that will not be anytime soon.

 

So, basically, we will see some i5s that perform the same as 920s or 940s but will be a bit cheaper yet need a new MB + some dual-channel DDR3?

So instead of paying £500+ for an i7 rig you now have to spend £450 for an i5 rig? Meh, my E6600 @ 3.6GHz will be enough until at least Christmas then. I was actually hoping for i5 being something like i7-for-people-on-a-budget.