Motherboard makers fiddle with Penryn parts
By Theo Valich: Friday 03 August 2007, 17:59
AS THE TIME of launch for new processors approaches, more and more interesting information starts to leak from Taiwan. Thanks to our friends at Au-ja.de, we hear that motherboard vendors are now testing 45nm Penryn processors.
These tests are regularly done to prepare BIOS updates for motherboards that are already present, and to discover possible incompatabities - something that makers of Socket 775 motherboards are very well aware of.
We hear that motherboard makers are in possession of four different processors of the Penryn generation: two Wolfdales and two Yorkfields.
Wolfdale is a dual-core, single-die processor core with integrated 6MB of L2 cache, and the clock-speeds in play are 2.33 and 2.66GHz. Since these rely on the 1.33GHz FSB,the multiplier is set at 7x333 for the 2.33GHz part and 8x333 for the 2.66GHz one.
Yorkfield is simply waht Conroe was to Kentsfield: two Wolfdale dies are placed onto single Socket 775 organic package - so the amount of L2 cache is doubled to 12MB. And, right now, two things are being tested, the 2.33GHz and 3.33GHz models, with respective multipliers. The 2.33GHz part uses 7x333, while the 3.33GHz Extreme one works at 10x333.
As it stands right now, it looks like the difference between the regular version and the Extremes will be more pronounced. Unlike the original Conroe and Kentsfield with a difference of a mediocre 266MHz, Yorkfield EE is clocked at 3.33GHz with 12MB of L2 cache, while the fastest regular Yorkfield is set at 2.33GHz, a clear 1GHz difference in clock.
That should make up for the difference in price. µ
Bookmarks