Intel's new Nehalem blows everything else away

Early benchmarks of the forthcoming Nehalem, aka Intel Core i7 processor, reckon it offers breakthrough performance,

mostlyIntel's long-awaited Nehalem* processor has hit the net with a bang, and ChannelWeb says it is "so powerful that it

simply destroys previous CPU benchmarks. An early look at the company's new chips shows they have the potential to drive

current data center-class performance onto the desktop. … Early results show nearly historic levels of improvement over

previous generations of processors."

Indeed, YoYoTech, a UK-based supplier, has just announced "the fastest, single-processor, production machine ever," on SPEC

benchmarks. Its Fi7ePower MLK1610 (sic) has an Intel Core i7 965 processor and 9GB of high-performance Corsair DDR3 memory on

an Asus** P6T motherboard, and looks like an 8-core system (with hyperthreading) to your standard 64-bit Vista. YoYoTech

(which has a shop at 30 Windmill Street, London, W1T 2JL) claims its £3,995 machine beats the fastest thing from Sun or IBM

by more than 50% -- but they'll soon have Nehalem based systems as well.

There will also be much cheaper systems.

For example, Custom PC has just published a rave review of the Scan 3XS X58 Core i7, a pre-overclocked PC running on an Asus

P6T Deluxe. It concludes: "The PC industry moves forward at an often frightening speed but sometimes huge jumps in

performance occur. With the arrival of Core i7, we are witnessing such a jump."

If you want the details, AnandTech has a comprehensive 20-page review (which shows performance isn't so good with media

encoding), while Guru3d crams it into 19 pages.

Chips should be on sale around November 19. Sorry, Nehalem won't work in your old motherboard: it needs a new Socket B, aka

LGA1366.

* Nehalem is pronounced Na-HAY-lum, to rhyme with Salem. Nahalem is a river in Oregon, which is a common source of Intel US

code-names. These include Deschutes, Klamath, Prescott, Tillamook and Willamette. It is not one of the Israeli lab's

codenames -- which include Banias, Dothan, Golan, Merom, and Yonah -- even if it looks like it.