Intel plans to ship three Nehalem architecture based Bloomfield processors and new matching mainboard chipset in fourth quarter. Intel has not announced the official names of the upcoming processors, but internally the processors are identified by their codenames XE for 3.2GHz processor, P1 for 2.93GHz processor and MS3 for 2.66GHz processor. All the processor will have 8MB L3 cache, Multi-threading and 130W TDP. The X58 and ICH10 chipset combination will also be launched with the new processors. The X58 chipset will get the new QuickPath Interconnect architecture for data transfer between the system and the processor. The new platform will see a performance increase of 15 to 30 percent as a result of the new processor and date transfer architecture. The new platform will also feature four PCI Express 8x slots and support AMD’s Quad CrossFireX technology. There is no word on when Intel will be able to license Nvidia’s SLI technology for the platform. By not licensing SLI technology to Intel, Nvidia is shooting itself in the foot. Gamers normally adopt multiple graphics card systems and for past few years Intel’s CPUs have been the number one choice for gamers. To make room for the new processors Intel will phase out Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and QX6800 in July and Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Q9650 in first quarter of 2009.
[Via DigiTimes]