Review Having recently covered Crucial’s new M4 SSD, it seemed only natural to go further in-depth with it’s Intel counterpart, the 510 series. Both of these drives feature Marvell’s 88SS9174 controller, with the Intel drive using the BKK2 revision, and a SATA 6Gb/s interface.
Sata 3 performer: Intel’s SSD 510
Intel and Crucial’s drive are more similar than just that though. Crucial’s drives are manufactured by its parent company Micron, that produces NAND flash with Intel in a joint venture. So how different can these drives be from a consumer perspective?
While Crucial’s drives are available in sizes ranging from 64GB to 512GB, Intel is only offering the 510 in 120GB and 250GB capacities. Despite focusing its manufacturing on just two versions, Intel is asking a fair bit more for its kit. You’ll find yourself parting with £225 for a 120GB drive and £425 if you want 250GB. Read the rest of this entry »
Product Round-up While there’s no escaping the fact that solid-state drives are still expensive, they are steadily getting cheaper and the capacities are increasing. For the average PC user to be convinced that it is a must-have upgrade, the performance benefits would really need to be experienced.
Costs aside, no doubt concerns as to whether a system would actually benefit significantly from installing an SSD without the latest and greatest I/O bus is another factor and an area that this round-up examines.
To give you an idea of what’s out there that can deliver those super sweet performance numbers, without draining your savings, this round-up looks at mostly 128GB drives with a focus on Sata 2 performance measured with Crystal DiskMark. If budget is of no concern to you, a couple of the latest Sata 3 models are included for good measure. Read the rest of this entry »
Group Test If you’re planning to build a new PC around an Intel ‘Lynnfield’ Core i5 or Core i7-800 processor then you are guaranteed to get stacks of performance at a reasonable price. In addition to a new CPU, you’ll also need a motherboard that’s based on Intel’s P55 chipset and supports the LGA1156 interconnect spec.
To help you choose the one that’s right for you, we’ve rounded up five of the best motherboards to see what you get for your cash. We tested each motherboard with a Core i7-870, 4GB of dual-channel Kingston KHX2133 memory, an AMD ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card and an Intel X25-M solid-state drive running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.
Asus P7P55D Deluxe
There are three eye-catching aspects to the Asus P7P55D Deluxe. The chipset is cooled by a large low-profile aluminium heatsink which is covered by a plastic plate that carries an illuminated Asus logo. It’s not pretty but it leaves plenty of room for your graphics cards. This brings us to feature number two: there are two PCI Express 2.0 graphics slots that support both CrossFireX and SLI as well as a third, long PCIe x4 slot which seems tailor-made for PhysX duties.
Two PCIe x16 slots and a long x4 connector for a PhysX card
The third thing that should catch the eye of any self-respecting geek is the 16+3 power regulation hardware that surrounds the CPU socket. The chokes and capacitors are absolutely tiny and the overall effect suggests some excellent engineering. Read the rest of this entry »
Review We published an in-depth look at Intel’s 45nm ‘Lynnfield’ processors – aka the quad-core Core i7-870 and Core i5-750 – last week. Unfortunately, the chip giant’s non-disclosure agreement (NDA) prevented us from including full performance figures.
Intel officially launched the new chips yesterday morning, so we’re now free to present the results of our benchmark tests in full.
he LGA1156 Core i5-750 was tested on an Asus P7P55D Deluxe
motherboard, while the Core i7-870 was plugged into both the Asus board and a Gigabyte P55M-UD4. In the charts, the figures derived from the Asus tests are the two top-most Core i7-870 bars – the next two down are the Gigabyte numbers.
We’ve also included figures for the LGA1366 Core i7-940 ‘Bloomfield’ processor, which was tested on an EVGA X58 SLI motherboard. The Core 2 Extreme QX9650 figures come from tests made on an Asus Maximus II Gene board. Read the rest of this entry »
Preview When Intel launched the ‘Nehalem’ architecture-based Core i7 – codenamed ‘Bloomfield’ – and the X58 chipset in November 2008, we assumed that the anticipated mid-range follow up would be called Core i5.
LGA1156 vs LGA1366: on top…
This mid-range processor – codenamed ‘Lynnfield’ – was flagged as a replacement for Core 2. It will use a new, LGA1156 processor socket and feature an integrated PCI Express graphics controller (1 x 16 or 2 x 8). Like Bloomfield, it will have an integrated DDR 3 memory controller, but it will be a dual-channel job rather than the triple-channel unit found in Bloomfield.
But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Lynnfield is Core i7 and Core i5. Specifically, it appears as the Core i7 800 series and Core i5 700 range. Officially, Bloomfield is the Core i7 900 line.
The differences between the two new families of processor are quite slight despite the apparent gulf between the Core i7 and i5 names. The memory controller on the i7 800 has been cut down from the i7 900 and the QPI link has been replaced with DMI (Direct Media Interface). If you read our feature on DDR 3 performance on Core i7, the prospect of losing the triple-channel controller is unlikely to cause you any concern. Read the rest of this entry »
