Nehalem Benchmarks?

Computex is supposed to start in about ten days. Will the CPUs show up?

This isn’t going to be about AMD. Whether we see 45nm chips there or not, not like we’re going to get any real benchmarks from them, and they wouldn’t be very good anyway.

No, the real event, show or no show, will be Intel’s Nehalem. It’s about time Intel gives us some hard, cold numbers on what these things can do. After all, they are supposed to debut in Q4.

Expensive as they and their infrastructure will likely be, Bloomfields will set the performance standard for 2009 and will indicate how much better AMD is going to have to get if it ever expects to get back into the ballgame.

Then again, Intel won’t just be competing against AMD. Most people are going to expect a serious performance bump over Penryn, more so than Penryn over C2D, for their extra money.

The only bigger news than Nehalem benchmarks will be the lack of them. Let’s face it, Intel hasn’t covered itself in glory from its 45nm rollout so far. While it hasn’t been terrible (outside of servers), it’s been a bit sub-par.

No Nehalem benchmarks at Computex will leave the message, justified or not, that Intel’s having some significant problems with 45nm. The Phenom fiasco has raised the bar for everyone; lack of news will be taken as bad news.

We shall see.

Ed


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