Intel Lynnfield CPU Bests Nehalem In Performance/Watt

Vigile writes "Not many people have debated that Intel's Nehalem architecture is the fastest available for consumer desktop computers since it was released last year, but quite a few have complained about the cost of the platform. Intel just released new Lynnfield-based processors under both the Core i7 and Core i5 names and tests are showing the new CPUs beating Nehalem in both performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar tests to a startling degree. And while raw performance probably still goes to the Nehalem-based Core i7 CPUs, the lower prices of motherboards and memory for Lynnfield processors will likely more than make up for it." Update: 09/08 14:03 GMT by T : There are more eye-wateringly exhaustive examinations of the new chips all over the Web; here's HotHardware's version, and Tom's Hardware's.

Comments

Re:arm

[Kjella]

If you imagine ARM as a women's flyweight newbie and Lynnfield as the men's heavyweight world champion in boxing, you got a pretty good idea how that match will play out. Not nearly the same class and the results are as expected.

Re:Lack of focus

[afidel]

It's called binning and price discrimination. One is a technical/economic tool to maximize profits based on the non-perfect nature of chip manufacture, the other is the capitalists favorite tool to extract the maximum profit possible out of the consumer.

Re:Lack of focus

[afidel]

Wow, how is explaining the market dynamics of chip manufacturing a troll?!? Was it the use of the word capitalist? You do know that it's a perfectly valid economics term, right?

Re:Nehalem vs. Nehalem

[Andy Dodd]

By definition, if it isn't a Nehalem die, it's not Nehalem, even if it's just a "tock" variant (die shrunk - see Intel's "tick/tock" roadmap) of Nehalem it's still a different chip design.

In this case, the CPU has significant design differences from a Nehalem CPU. There's a lot more than just removing some pins from the package. The CPU had to be changed significantly (one DDR channel removed, QPI replaced with DMI) in order to allow those pins to be removed.

The removal of QPI in favor of DMI (much slower but simpler/cheaper) is a *significant* difference.