Intel and NVIDIA’s New Performance Parts

Intel and NVIDIA have both been busy on the next generation of high performance parts:

Intel has listed the Core i7-970 CPU. Retailing at $900, this chip has six hyperthreaded cores at 3.2 GHz, 12 MB of cache and is made using a 32 nm process. It still plays second fiddle to the 980X which is 133 MHz faster and possesses a faster (6.4 GT/s vs 4.8 GT/s) QPI speed. It ought to be a cheaper alternative, however, and once the new chip is in the hands of overclockers we might see the performance gap narrowed significantly. The i7-970 is currently $100 less than it’s big brother. The release of this chip comes along with price drops on some lines and discontinuation of others, according to Fudzilla.

Elsewhere, Asus has been showing off their Mars II dual-GTX480 board. A single 480 already puts out a ton of heat (we have a review of a watercooling kit for the GTX480 in the pipeline) so a dual-480 card is likely to be a beast. Pictures at the above link show three PCI-e power connectors which will no doubt draw some serious power, making this a niche product at best. The card has an SLI connector – we may well be seeing some record benchmark scores when someone has the cash and the cooling to put a pair of these in SLI. There is more vague news on the ATi front from Fudzilla; the ATi 6000 series ought to be arriving in October.

If you like performance hardware, it looks like you’re in for a treat – or two – in the very near future.

–David