Taipei (Taiwan) - Hot on the heels of AMD's overclocking secret, we can reveal that Bloomfield and Lynnfield, key processors of Intel’s upcoming Nehalem family, will indeed feature overclocking capabilities for up to eight CPU cores (16 threads).

Credible information we were able to obtain from industry sources suggest that rumors about Intel preventing users from overclocking Nehalem processors are false.  From what we have learned, Intel has very healthy silicon on its hands. It appears that there are some challenges related to overclocking, especially in the memory controller area. However, it is unlikely that there will be anything that prevents overclocking of the CPU cores.

Core 3, or whatever Intel decides to call the desktop Nehalem CPU, will be available as an Extreme Edition variant again, which is ready to elevate the performance bar. At the very high-end, Intel is currently "investigating the development of the successor of its super-expensive V8 Skulltrail platform. This time around, your Windows Task Manager will see 16 cores and not just eight (8 cores, 16 threads).

Bloomfield is Intel's high-end part, featuring a 192-bit DDR3-1333 and DDR2-1600 memory controller. DDR3-1600 support is still unofficial at this point, since Intel is waiting for JEDEC ratification. Lynnfield is the mainstream desktop part, which will feature a more conventional 128-bit memory controller.

Time will tell what Intel's Bloomfield overclocking potential really is. It will be interesting to see what  Fugger, Coolaler, Kinc, Shamino (apologies to the ones I forgot to mention here, but we can't keep track of all those nicks) and the rest of OC community can do when Bloomfield gets frozen to -100 degrees Celsius or even less than that. We will try to find out is final silicon immune to the infamous "cold bug" or not.

When Nehalem comes to life, you can expect that our usual suspects will have overclocking motherboards ready - and Intel will have overclockable CPUs.

Uhh

Jun 06, 2008 07:59     

What desktop computer needs 16 cores?
lol report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -7

RE@: Uhh

Jun 06, 2008 08:26     

Maybe someone will want to encode 4 movies at once? lol who knows
BDF report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

an enthusiast's one

Jun 06, 2008 08:47     

...
m report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

What Desktop computer?

Jun 06, 2008 09:35     

How about the one runnig the Next Gen Windows OS :)
More Power Please report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

What computer needs...

Jun 06, 2008 12:02     

1980's... no one needs more than 640k memory Early 1990's - 486 systems will ONLY be used as servers... never on someone's desk. Come on people... quit with the "no one needs 'x'"... Computers & software can never be fast enough or have enough capabilities. How else can you expand the abilities of a human if you are waiting on a computer... Duh...
John report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +11

why you need more cores

Jun 06, 2008 13:14     

Raytracing will do better on more cores. The performance scales in proportion to the number of cores you have. Twice the cores, twice the performance. And this is backed by testing done on SIMULATED multi-core systems -- networked, not integrated on the same chip. So just imagine the scaled up performance on a 16 core processor...
VitriolicV report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +8

@ John

Jun 06, 2008 13:20     

we cant fully utilize quad cores, so how could we use 16 cores to its full potential?
lol report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -3

@ lol

Jun 06, 2008 18:55     

Just because your spreadsheets won't get done faster doesn't mean that you can't see performance gains when multi-tasking of when using upward scalable applications like raytracing (my pet example). And it's not that we CAN'T fully utilize quad cores, it's that a lot of current programmers are mired in an old single-threaded paradigm. But the industry is beginning to realize that concurrency is the future of consumer computing. Don't belittle progress; it's always useful.

VitriolicV report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +4

multi-cores

Jun 06, 2008 23:09     

maybe we desktop users don't need 16 threads, but the servers and supercomputers do and those markets are where Intel makes money
justalurker report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

I think the article has a type O

Jun 07, 2008 01:55     

I think the article has a type O. As far as I know JEDEC official standard for DDR2 is PC2-6400, DDR2-800. I've read rumour reports JEDEC will support DDR-2 1066 but I was unable to find proof this has happened.
cmag report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Interesting...

Jun 09, 2008 06:44     

There was a whole big fracas after the article which announced that AMD CPUs will have overclocking. Mostly it seemed as if everybody was saying something somewhere between "I'm too cool for an oldschool button" and "I'm too oldschool to want to have overclocking simplified". I wonder how much a decent Intel overclocking mobo is going to cost BTW... Haha! Me personally I will never overclock without some kind of guarantee from the manufacturer. Almost all my friend have lost a Chip or a GFX card or a whole mobo, because of pushing it too far at some stage. Not my cup of tea. I'd prefer an overclocking button.

The Trutherizer report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

RE@: Uhh

Jul 14, 2008 13:47     

Are you drunk, "What desktop computer needs 16 cores?". 16 cores just isnt enough to allow playing of a few games at the same time, my 4 core pc goes into slow mode with only 3 games running.
xVader report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0