Talk:Intel Core i7

DDR3 speed
I think there is an error, the 2 basic models (800/900) officially only support DDR3 up to 1066 MHz, and the Extreme Edition will support up to 1333 MHz memory, check the table here: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=556&pgno=2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.238.44 (talk) 19:38, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

FSB
In the infobox, it says "FSB speed: 4.8 GT/s", this is a mistake, i7 will discontinue the use of FSB. I think we should come up with a new infobox. Greetings --201.212.140.93 (talk) 04:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried to edit it to QPI, but now it won't display, I guess it's predefined info box. Still, I am not changing it back, no info is better than wrong info as i7 has no FSB —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.35.10.117 (talk) 13:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't wory, I have created a new infobox - CPU QPI. It displays, but unfortunately I believe I broke something, as GHz and GT/s won't link. If anyone can fix this, please go right ahead. Nintendo 07 (talk) 00:02, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

System bus speeds and CPU clock multipliers
Even chips without a front side bus still have a system bus and a multiplier. I'm currently trying to figure out what they are for these chips. They should be in the same approximate range as Intel's others, though. 2933 is not evenly divisible by 333 or 400, so I figure that it must run on a 266mhz bus with a multiplier of 11. The lower-clocked chip is not likely to run on a faster bus, so it's probably 266mhz x10. The 3.2ghz part is harder to pin down, as it could be 266mhz x12 or 400mhz x8, but the smart money is on the former. I sincerely doubt that Intel would skip straight to a 533mhz bus without going through 466mhz first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.124.70.221 (talk) 01:25, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The CPU-multiplier is not to the system bus in the Core i7 CPUs anymore, but it is to a genereal reference clock, which is 133MHz on current Core i7 CPUs. So the multipliers are 20, 22 and 24 for the model numbers 920, 940 and 965. --MrBurns (talk) 19:03, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Pricing
This website reports different pricing than what is shown here. 69.115.150.3 (talk) 01:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I notice that website's source is Hardspell. If you follow the link, the Hardspelll website only has prices in Euros. Neoseeker has seemed to just convert euros to US$. This is probably a flawed way to go about it: it is likely the European prices are more than the American.219.90.147.95 (talk) 10:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

There are two dollar amounts given for each CPU - what's the difference? --Vossanova o&lt; 14:20, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Please read the note immediately after the table. There are no official prices from Intel yet. the three prioces given are from three different rumors reported in the trade press. look at the references for details. -Arch dude (talk) 14:31, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, let's just go ahead and remove them then. We shouldn't have any rumors or speculation here, even if it comes from a "reputable" site. --Vossanova o&lt; 14:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Much of this article is speculative: that's why it has the "Future chip" box at the top. As we get nearer and nearer to the actual launch date things become more clear, but until Intel actually tells us we do not really know. By now, the only major remaining unknowns are the actual launch date and the actual pricing. I did not put the prices in the article. I did try to make it a bit more clear that these are estimates. The price situation was not as out of control as the date situation, which I addressed by adding a paragrapth. Perhaps we need a paragraph for the price situation? It's not clear to me on what grounds we can remove a rumor: the existance of the rumor meets the WP standard for verifiability. -Arch dude (talk) 17:27, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * While having prices at all is a little questionable (see WP:NOPRICES), most of the "Lists of ... processors" articles do have launch prices (wholesale, not retail), so I've accepted it. But the way they're given in the table now is outright confusing - two different US prices, and a UK price for a retail pre-order that was up for a limited time?  It's a little out of hand.  I would suggest moving all that info into a new paragraph (e.g. X listed the prices at $$$, Y listed the prices at $$$), and let people decide if that paragraph is worth keeping or not. --Vossanova o&lt; 15:45, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like they're out, but they're priced a bit differently than on the page. Newegg has them at $319.99, $599.99 and $1069.99. Not sure how you cite prices that can vary from place to place. -RandomEngy (talk) 23:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Ordering
I've changed the processor order to go from lowest to highest to match all the other "list of processor" articles. --24.82.242.132 (talk) 08:23, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Handling the 3 November articles
Collegues: There are a flurry of new reviews: more than twenty new articles in the last few hours. We need to avoid chaos in our editing. Any thoughts on how to do this? I think we need to remove the older review refrences and then pick two or three of the most reliable of the new ones. Thre is also a chance that Intel will make some official announcements or even actually release the product. I slapped a "current event" header on the article. I also re-insteded the "future chip" header until we see an official announcement. -Arch dude (talk) 11:03, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

This was removed by someone (not me) because there didn't seem to be a flurry of edits. I agree with the removal. --XaXXon (talk) 20:50, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

ECC?
A new editor added the lack of ECC support as a drawback, but we need a better cite if this is indeed the case. I removed the statement as a WP:SYNTH. Please discuss here. -Arch dude (talk) 04:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That is me (talk), and I added a pointer to the ECC memory page, where the usual rule of thumb is one bit error per month per gigabyte. I and my colleagues have thousands of gigabytes in running computers, and the lack of ECC is a drawback for scientific computing.  All AMD CPUs have memory controllers that has ECC.  Core 2's can be supported by the X38 and X48 chipsets.  But not the Core i7.  —Preceding undated comment was added at 04:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC).
 * I'm not arguing with your conclusion, but you will need to cite a "reliable source". Please see WP:V. I also have not yet seen a source that says that core i7 cannot support ECC. Please cite a source. If you need help with formatting the cite, then just cram it in any old way and we can fix it later, but we need a source. Thanks for your understanding: this "reliable source" thing is a PITA when you have personal knowledge of a subject. (BTW, please sign your posts, since it makes these discussions easier to follow. to sign, jut type in four tildes, and the software will sign for you. Thanks.) -Arch dude (talk) 04:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think this should be posted until it is proved. And I don't even see it as a "drawback" for a desktop chip even assuming it's true.  Nehalem-EP socket 1366 based (server) motherboards requiring ECC DDR3 memory have been announced, so at least the server grade Intel chips in this family will support ECC.  And ECC is almost exclusively used in servers, very rarely in desktop PCs; ECC is also slower due to the error checking overhead, so it's less desireable for typical desktop applications, like gaming, video processing, etc. anyhow. 76.10.146.131 (talk) 19:07, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * At some point my edits said "no current core i7 boards supports ECC" and it was changed to what it was now. I am not sure by whom at the moment.  I have been double-checking all the motherboards I can see: the Intel DX58SO, the two ASUS boards, the gigabyte board, none have ECC.  I have not seen supermicro and tyan boards yet.  If anyone can point to anything from Intel, I will be thankful. Moscito (talk) 01:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Are these really drawbacks considering, today is Nov 14, and the chip comes out on the 17th? is it a drawback on the chip if its something that WILL be corrected with time? Is it really a drawback for the architecture if in 10 years none of it will be true? By then, the chip will be dead, and presumably there will have been ecc. Also can the natural pricing of new technology being more expensive than the previous generation be considered a drawback? Why not list the chips own base price as a drawback then? --67.241.177.245 (talk) 07:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking as just one editor, I decided not to delete this drawback yet. Once we actually get to see the Intel data sheet for the Core i7 processors, we will know whether or not the integrated memory controllers have ECC. If they do, we remove this objection from this article. (It can be moved into an article on motherboards.) If the device cannot do ECC, then we re-phrase the sentence to refer to the Core i7. We do not yet know about later instances of the Nehalem archictecture (Gainstown, Becton, Lynnfield, etc.), or even about possible new members of the Core i7 family (975? 985?) but we will know about the processors that are the subject of this article. -Arch dude (talk) 08:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems like a silly drawback to me. Obviously if one is involved in scientific computing and also listens to Daniel Bernstein, then this is relevant. I doubt that many people will fall into that category. You might as well say that its lack of ISA slots or its not having 16 cores is a drawback. Chaotic42 (talk) 23:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Ask for opinons from other editors: I'm neutral of whether or not it's a drawback, but the ability or inability of the on-board memory controller to support ECC needs to be listed in this article once we know which it is. The reason: unlike all earlier Intel x86 processors since 1994, this is the first one with its own memory controller. if missing, ECC abilility therefore cannot be added by selecting a different motherboard. -Arch dude (talk) 00:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The spec sheets for ASUS bloomfield motherboards http://au.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=179&l3=815&l4=0&model=2588&modelmenu=2. I'll try to collect all authentic ones from the manufactuers

They are releasing i7 based xeons soon, and ECC is basically a requirement with regards to servers, so there must be the ability for it. Maybe intel will add it in later revisions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.36.92.18 (talk) 12:15, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that the i7 has ECC capability, just disabled as market segmentation. They will likely sell you a Xeon at twice the price, identical in every way except that the ECC is enabled if you have a top-end motherboard from supermicro. Moscito (talk) 02:39, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Intel said in their FAQ on the I7 that "typically ECC memory is used on servers and workstations rather than on desktop platforms.” However Microsoft published a report in 2007 rumored to say that single-bit error rates in DRAM may be among the top ten causes of systems failures, suggesting Windows users may need ECC: ‘Microsoft says PCs may need DRAM upgrade', http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199601761 72.73.92.130 (talk) 06:48, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I talked with a PogoLinux representative on April 25/2009 and he said that they ship workstations with ECC-supported Core i7 configurations. For example, here's their Core i7 standard system page: http://www.pogolinux.com/quotes/editsys?sys_id=28712 70.68.70.186 (talk) 19:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You actually don't really need ECC for desktop systems, if your RAM is working correctly (it should pass at least a few hours on memtest86 and goldmemory). The problem ist that most people don't test there RAM at all or rely on the BIOS-test allone, which is unsufficient. From what I remember, the error rate of correct working non-ECC memory is about 10^(-10) errors/(bit*hour) (which would be about 100 times higher then ECC), which is about 3 errors in 24 hours, if you have 1GB RAM used. Also ECC has a lot of drawbacks, i.E. higher price, lower performance, harder to archiev high clock speeds/overclock and ECC memory-controllers are more expensive to build and need a more expensive motherboard design. --MrBurns (talk) 01:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * 3 errors in 24 hours seems like a perfect example of why you *do* need ECC. Not everybody reboots their machine every day, the people running Linux or FreeBSD etc on their desktop maybe reboot every few months - in this situation three bit errors in 24 hours soon add up and have a high probability of eventually corrupting important kernel structures or data that is about to be writen to disk. Gavinatkinson (talk) 07:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

My 3 cents: (1) Nehalem integrates the memory controller on the die, so I don't see how the presence or absence of ECC support can be affected by mobo design or chipset selection; (2) I've studied Intel's website and have been unable to determine whether i7 or Xeons consistently do or don't support ECC; (3) The current Features section is garbled because it lists "No ECC support" as one of the "features" of the Nehalem architecture (clearly wrong because at least some Xeons support ECC) and also lists it as one of the differences from Core 2, which makes no sense because ECC support for Core 2 depends on the memory controller (which is part of the chipset) rather than the processor.

A related point re. the Features section: I don't understand how a triple-channel memory controller, each channel of which "can support one or two DDR3 DIMMs", can handle 9 memory slots. I'd think (3 x 2 =) 6 would be the max.Therealdp (talk) 18:28, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Intel Core i7 does not support ECC, and that is the entire story. However, Supermicro buids a motherboard with a LGBA-1366 socket that can accomodate either a corei7 or a Xeon 5500, and which can support ECC IF the processor is a Xeon. Most of the LGBA-1366 motherboards can in theory support a Xeon, but they cannot support ECC memory because not all of the pins are connected. I decided to try to describe this in the article because a reader migh otherwise buy the Supermicro board thinking that they will get ECC on a core i7. -Arch dude (talk) 19:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think you're right that i7 lacks ECC support. For one thing, it makes intuitive sense that would be a distinction between i7 and Xeon, given their intended applications. For another, when I go to http://ark.intel.com/searchfeature.aspx, check "ECC required," and examine the search results, not one i7 appears in the list. However, it would be good to have a citation. How did you arrive at your conclusion?


 * Your statements about LGBA-1366 mobos, etc. are good info, but I don't see it in the article. Am I overlooking it?


 * In any case, it's clear that "no ECC support" is not a characteristic of the Nehalam architecture, as stated currently, nor is it something that distinguishes i7 from Core 2. The search results I mentioned indicate that Core 2 ECC support is dependent on the chipset -- not the processor. (PS - Thanks for correcting the memory-slots statement -- I thought there was something odd about it.) Therealdp (talk) 23:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I got my ECC information directly from the Intel spec sheets of the original three Core i7 processors, which are listed as references in the first paragraph of the article. Yes, this is specific t the core i7 and not to the architecture. -Arch dude (talk) 00:05, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I took a cut at editing per our discussion -- hope you think it's improved. Also, realized the Drawbacks section covers ECC support (with citations) and your points about LGBA-1366 mobos -- apologies for missing this previously.Therealdp (talk) 06:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

DDR3 price
The DDR3 price "drawback" is silly, but it is asserted multiple times in the trade press, so I guess we must keep it. The actual situation is that DRAM production follows a boom-and-bust cycle, with periods of massive overproduction causing market gluts and consequent price collapses. We are currently in a market glut. During a glut, slower speed grades and older technology inventory is sold below cost, and even newer stuff is sold a break-even. Manufacturers eventually cut production and balence is restored, followed by a DRAM drought and a price spike, and the cycle repeats. In the current situation, You can buy three 1GB DDR3 DIMMs for a total of about $110 US: that's less than half the price of the cheapest processor. This objection is therefore silly. -Arch dude (talk) 08:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The drawback is not silly: DDr3-prices may be cheap compared to RAM-prices a few years ago, but they are still about double as expensive as DDR2. This is, because DDr3 is a new technology and most users still buyy DDR2, so DDR2 is produced and traded in larger quantities, which makes the price cheaper. I also don't think, that DDr3 is sold below production costs. this is maybe true for DDR2, but not for DDR3. Of course the price situation of DDR2 and DDR3 will change, I think about the end of 2009, when there will be Nehalems, which are not high end or at least upper middleclasse available in great quantities. At this time, there shoul be not a lpot difference between DDR2 and DDR3 anymore and in about 2 years DDR2 will be considerable more expensive then DDR3. I have a lot experience w/ DRAM-productioncycles (as a consumer), it was similar w/ EDO/SDRAM, SDRAM/DDR1 and DDR1/DDR2. --MrBurns (talk) 23:28, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Question to arch dude: given that people don't just buy 1GBx3 -- i almost never set up a workstation without 4GB of RAM (I run Linux, many people now run 64-bit versions of vista), and that if DDR3 1333 2GBx3 is about as much money as DDR2-800 2GBx4 ECC, shouldn't we consider the difference to be non-trivial? (This are both Kingston branded memory in downtown Taipei.)
 * Hey, I'm just one guy, with just one opinion. Why not propose a nominal AMD setup versus a nominal Core i7 setup and compare memory costs? Here: let's use DDR3 1333 2GBx3 @ $74 = $222 for the Core i7, and DDR2 667 (1GBx2 @$12 + 2GBx2 @$21) = $64 for the AMD. The percentage amount is not interesting: the dollar amount is. (prices from Pricewatch) The 6GB costs $158 more for the Core i7. This is a trivial amount compared to the cost of the processor. -Arch dude (talk) 03:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are using Windows x32, you can use only about 2.75-3.25GB, so it doesn't make sense to buy more then 3GB. And most users still use x32, not x64. And also most users don't need more then 3GB, you don't even need that much memory for very memory hungy games like Far Cry 2. --MrBurns (talk) 23:33, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If only that could've been stated 1 month later after GTA IV was released for the PC... ⒺⓋⒾ ⓁⒼⓄ ⒽⒶⓃ ②  talk 05:44, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I agree with some of your point, certainly for some of people it may be miniscule but if you measure it like that, then I say wow, Arch Dude, that's the price diff between a Q9650 and a Q9550. And I would venture a guess that most people who have high-end processors also tend to have more RAM. Moscito (talk) 03:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

DDR3 can be gotten for $30 Canadian a Gigabyte. At this point it's not expensive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.230.86.52 (talk) 20:27, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Conflicting information about turbo speed increases
The clock speed increases offered by the turbo mode are quoted as "133-266MHz" in one section and as "400MHz" in another. I've amended these to show that the step size is 133 MHz with no fixed maximum and provided a link to the Intel white paper on the technology. Juux 16:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juux (talk • contribs)

Early Test issues
I can't seem to access the cited source, but the article says "In the single-threaded Super PI Template:UnsignedIP -->
 * Please read the sentence carefully. The processors being compared did not have the same clock speed. Therefore the core i7 executed fewer clock cycles per second. Therefore, it completed the test in fewer clock cycles even though it took more time. To get a fair comparison, we need to replace this with an newer benchmark that compares a QX9770 with a Core i7 965, both running at 3.2Ghz: there are now hundreds of published results to choose from. -Arch dude (talk) 22:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

There must be some kind of typo or miscalculation in the Super PI results cited in the article at the time of this comment [QX9770, 3.2GHz, 14.42s; i7 920, 2.66GHz, 11.54s]. The conclusion that this indicates a 20% advantage per clock cycle for the i7 is wrong; it should be 50%. If, however, the time for the i7 should be 15.36s, as in the anonymous comment by 12.31.231.168 above, that would represent a 13% advantage for the i7 (which is a little easier to believe). I can't seem to access the website referenced in the footnote either, or I'd find the correct times myself. If yobeta.com is kaput anyway, perhaps a completely different study should take its place in the article. —SaxicolousOne (talk) 06:06, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Where did the 11.54 seconds come from? The quoted sentence saye 15.36 seconds. -Arch dude (talk) 17:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know where 11.54 seconds came from, but that's been the figure in the article since a user named "Juux" put it there at 23:47 on Dec. 28, 2008. Apparently, that figure had been back and forth a bit prior to that. And since my last comment, someone has edited the article under the assumption that the 11.54s figure is correct, stating that the i7 was, in fact 50% faster than the QX9770....  —SaxicolousOne (talk) 01:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

L1 cache
We need to state how much L1 cache each core has. NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis (talk) 03:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Done.-Arch dude (talk) 02:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Thermal Considerations
I haven't seen any mention of the temperature range that this processor runs in. I'm referring specifically to the processor temperature not the environment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.230.86.52 (talk) 20:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Image
Is there noone out there who bought an i7 and could make a High-Res, free image? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.52.132.128 (talk) 17:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You don't see much more on aa high res image than on the one used now, when the heat spreader (IHS) isn't removed. But I somehow doubt that the image is a real ci7 image. I don't own a ci7, but all Intel CPUs using IHS form the first Pentium 4 CPUs to Core 2 Quad had more text on the IHS then just the name of the product line (including an 8-digit alphnumeric number (at least on Core 2 Wuad CPUs), which looks like a serial and is L738B526 on my Core 2 Quad Q6600). --MrBurns (talk) 22:09, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Under the Intel Core 2 article you find a lot of photos of C2 CPUs w/ IHS, inclusing my Q6600 in the kentsfield section. So you can see much text on this heatspreaders and no big Core 2 logo, from what I know Ci7 heatspreaders should be printed similar. Even most Pentium 4 CPUs have similar things printed on them, see i.E. . --MrBurns (talk) 23:07, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be an image of the logo? Jffner (talk) 09:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Corei7's are "healthy"?
The drawbacks section contains this statement: "Core i7's are healthy for your motherboard (mainboard)." Really doesn't make sense to me. Spam? Errantkid (talk) 14:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You probably could have deleted that without asking. I did so. --Vossanova o&lt; 14:39, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

What have drivers to do with clock for clock performance?!
Under the drawbacks section is says:

more recent testing done on all clock rates of official hardware with final drivers and BIOS revisions show that Core i7 at the very least beats Yorkfield clock-for-clock...

How on earth can a driver (who is run by the processor) make the processor perform better?! A CPU have a number of instruction it can run pr clock and a good driver will maybe use fewer instructions so that you can run more code pr clock. So indeed we can get a performance increase by writing better software but the CPU itself is NOT able to execute more instructions pr clock (perhaps unless a microcode update is performed).

So my point is : with smarter tuned software you are able to do more stuff in a set timeslice but the processor itself can't execute more instructions pr clock than what it was designed for! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.213.182.76 (talk) 09:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, shouldn't this section just not be in Drawbacks? It basically says "tests from before the hardware was official were not so good, but now they're good" right?  Really it's not a drawback then. 71.58.213.116 (talk) 17:54, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You're absolutely right. Not to mention the fact that it has no source, and half of it is a rambling comparison of cache sizes. Deleted. --117.53.136.79 (talk) 15:51, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Assessment
A request has been made at the comptuer project to assess this article, however briefly looking ove rhte article suggest to me it is B class maybe GA class, if it meets B class but might meet GA clas si will have ot decline to review it and oyu will have ot submit it for a GA review-- Andy ( talk  -  contrib ) 00:08, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree. this article was written primarily during the late stages fo development and very early stages of release of Core i7, and it has not been updated to remove the "current events" reporting of that era. the preliminary benchmarks are now obsolete and should be replaced with later benchmarks that have a bit more perspective. Furthermore, there are now (this week) reports that Intel will use the name "Core i7" for the high enf to the Lynnfield devices in additon to the original 1366 chips described here. If so, we will be forced to move this article to a different name, and write a new Core i7 articl that attempts to explain why Intel has done such an idiotic thing. -Arch dude (talk) 01:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have not fully reviewed it, i said based on what i have briefly looked at, the article is without a doubt c class, jsu tbecause a article is out od date does not mean it fail b clas it probally fail ga review but it be easily fixed on the review. i have got personal commitments so i was not able to review fully which will take about 1-2 hours and i plan to do it tomorrow, and i will post the rating of it here ie how it matches ot each of b1 to b6, if it fails 1 then it not b class and on assessment page on project.-- Andy ( talk  -  contrib ) 21:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok this is the full review

B1=no (source number 5 and 6 and 8 and 14 fails relible sources as it is a blog/forum)

B2=yes

B3=yes

B4=no (i say nop because it use a lot of bullet poitns it should be written in essay format)

B5=yes

B6=yes

the articel faiols on the above for b assessment fix them and as arch dude said update the aritcle as it is out of date-- Andy ( talk  -  contrib ) 15:52, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Intel's naming nightmare
Fellow editors, we are in the early stages of a real mess.

The processor described on this page is the consumer version of the LGA 1366 "Bloomfield" device. Intel named the family "Core i7" starting in mid-2008 an dreleased it in November 2008. Processors within the family are distinguished by the number (e.g. the "Core i7 920",) and the numbers are in the 900s.

Rumor has it the Intel will release three new consumer families based on the LGA 1152 "Lynnfield" device. The entry level family will be the "Core i3", the mid-range family will be the "Core i5", and, in a naming fiasco reminiscent of The Importance of Being Earnest, the high-end Lynnfield family will be called the Core i7. All three Lynnfield families can use the same motherboards and have the same basic architecture. The Lynnfield devices cannot use the same motherboards as the Bloomfield Core i7, and in particular the Lynnfield Core i7 cannot use same motherboard as our beloved Bloomfield Core i7, nor does it have the same system architecture. The Lynnfield Core i7 family will have numbers in the 800 range (e.g., Core i7 865.)

We are already getting edits to our article that refer to the Lynnfield Core i7.

Proposal: We should rename this article to "Intel Core i7 900 series" and then use the "Intel Core i7" name for an article that discusses Intel's use of the Core i7 name and that points to this article and to another article called "Intel Core i7 800 series."

Unless I hear dissenting opinions (with alternative proposals) I will make the changes within a week. If we get a lot more Lynnfield activity, I will act sooner. Please discuss. I'm not particularly happy with my proposal, but I feel that it is the least bad response to Intel's madness.

Thanks, all. -Arch dude (talk) 19:36, 16 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I fully agree with the need to change the "Intel Core i7" article to something that discusses the use of the name and points to the implementation. IMHO we might not want to have a separate page for each series though, because the problem is bigger than this. The same mess already exists (to a lesser degree) in the existing articles for Celeron, Pentium Dual-Core, Core 2 and Xeon. They *all* describe the some of the same chips (Merom, Allendale) and then some more. OTOH, Celeron and Xeon have large articles spanning some 15 years of different CPUs, while Core 2 only has one implementation (there are some rumours about a Clarksfield based Core 2 P1!) and Pentium has at least nine separate articles (Pentium/OverDrive/Pro/II/III/4/D/M/Dual-Core), most of which overlap to some degree with Xeon and Celeron. There are also the articles for each of the microarchitectures (P5/P6/Netburst/Core/Nehalem) that duplicate some of the information.


 * Then, there are some minor problems with the articles, e.g. the fact that Intel renamed their Pentium Dual-Core to just Pentium, which leads many people to the wrong page, or the problem that the Core 2 page mostly describes the entire Core microarchitecture.


 * I'm not saying it should all be changed at once, but the articles for Nehalem/i7 should ideally follow a scheme that also works for the other. I think that each technically different chip (Lynnfield, Clarksfield, Yorkfield, ...) should be described in detail in exactly one place, with links to and from each of the brand names using it (Pentium, Core 2, Xeon, Core i7, Core i5, ...). I'm not sure if the chips should then be grouped by microarchitectures or if each one should get its own page. At least some chips (Conroe-L, Merom-2M) could be pretty boring if you try to fill a whole page, while the P6 micro architecture has many interesting implementations that fill pages today.


 * Thanks for bringing up the topic Arndbergmann (talk) 20:49, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You are correct, the problem is quite broad. My opinion is that we should have a single article per brand name, a single article per microarchitecture, and a single article per device. Yes, some "brand" articles will be small, but that's fine they are effectively "navigational" articles similar to disambiguaton pages. When (if) I make the change, I will try to be consistent with a eventual mega-change. We may need and overview article for The history of the Intel X86 brands. -Arch dude (talk) 22:03, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, sounds good. I'm not sure I understand how specific you want a 'single device' article to be though. To take a complex example, would that model mean we have a) one 'Celeron 500 series' article, b) separate articles for 'Celeron 500 series', 'Celeron M 500 series', 'Celeron 500 ULV series' and 'Celeron M 500 ULV series', or c) separate articles for 'Merom' (including some Celeron 500, Celeron M 500 and Core 2 Duo T7000/L7000), 'Merom-L' (including Celeron 500 ULV, some other Celeron 500/M500 and Core 2 Solo U2000) and 'Merom-2M' (including Celeron 575/585, Pentium Dual-Core T2000/T3000 and Core 2 Duo T5000)? I can see arguments for each one, and I expect to see the same kind of complexity with Nehalem. Arndbergmann (talk) 11:04, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In the model I would prefer to move toward, "Celeron" would be the brand article, and we would have one "device" article (more or less) for each socket type. The current "Intel core i7" article would become something like "Intel LGA 1366 processors" and would discuss the core i7 900 series and the Xeon 3500 and 5500 series, since they all share the same socket and (some) motherboards. The "Intel Core i7 900 series" is an intermediate step that gets us out of the current crisis. -Arch dude (talk) 11:18, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I would fear that LGA1366 and LGA1152 might be as long-living as the old PGA604 and LGA775 sockets, in which case those articles become a huge mess in the long run. I just had another idea: Each "device" article could describe all processors that have the same product code, which can be easily enumerated and has a unique name and number. In my example, it would be "Intel Merom Family (80537)" including all Celeron 500, Pentium T2000/T3000 and Core 2 Duo T5000/T7000/L7000/U2000. For the immediate question of this article, we would get "Intel Bloomfield (80601)" including Core i7-9xx and Xeon 35xx, "Intel Gainestown (80602)" for Xeon 55xx and "Intel Lynnfield (80605)" for Core i5-7xx and Core i7-8xxx. Each such article for a product code would describe a unique package with a specific combination of microarchitecture, number of dies, mobile/desktop use and SMP capability, but varying in brand name and what features get enabled through fusing (cache size, HT, frequency, ...). Arndbergmann (talk) 11:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's perfect, except possibly for the name, and it is what I was trying to describe. The reason I did not get it right is that I don't know enough about the subject, expecially product codes. The reason it's perfect is that the "device" article can completely cover its subject and can stand alone, with no need for later updates when Intel announces a new device. -Arch dude (talk) 14:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've slightly extended Template:Infobox CPU to allow linking to brand names. With that, we can structure the pages for the product codes as


 * I guess we could add more fields in there for the relationship between cores, in two dimensions. One dimension would be sequential predecessors/successors (Kentsfield -> Yorkfield -> Lynnfield), the other dimension the market between value mobile ULV and high-end server within one generation (Clarksfield -> Lynnfield -> Bloomfield -> Gainestown). Other information that could be added to the infobox is die size, transistor count and cache size. Arndbergmann (talk) 17:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've also added links to all the processor cores to Template:Intel processors, to make navigating through them straightforward. As we migrate to one article per product code, the links in there can point to actual pages. I've added the lists as collapsed sublists, because they would otherwise take up *lots* of screen space. Arndbergmann (talk) 13:34, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A Basic Question
Is the Core i7 a 64 bit processor? Although this is implied by the use of the number 64 in a couple of places, the opening paragraphs of the article should state this explicitly if it is true, because people who are not knowledgeable about processor chips might need to know. (For example, Microsoft's hardware compatibility list requires one to enter that information.) Palmpilot900 (talk) 17:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point not to assume it. Intel Core 2 and Intel Pentium D both have "64-bit" in the lead sentence, so I added it here too. --Vossanova o&lt; 17:41, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Core i7 IS 64-bit, as all Nehalem CPUs are.

Intel Infoscape at the Consumer Electronics Show - removed
It read like a blatant shill advert. Jamsta (talk) 13:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Dead link
There's a dead link where it says µPGA-989. My suggestion is to use intel.com to find info on this subject or contact Intel? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MrK4 (talk • contribs) 16:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Address technology rather than branding?
I'm curious about the i7 technology - how it is distinguished from other processors out there, cost/performance, good use cases etc.

But the article doesn't address that and spends most of its time on the branding, listing different names, etc. Can more info on the technology and use cases be added? Or if it really just a brand with little relationship to technology, can that be clarified and the various versions of it be compared in functional performance in prose? Thanks. --NealMcB (talk) 20:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem is that Core i7 is just a brand, and it's used for a number of technologically very difference processors, all of which are also sold under other brands (Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, Xeon). The article tries hard to make that clear (see links under "Main articles"), but in order to get the details you just need to follow the links. Arndbergmann (talk) 20:47, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Core i7 is a brand, not a technology, just as Xeon is a brand. Xeon brand has been used a succession of many processor families covering multiple generations of procesor technology. the newer Core I7 (and core I5 and Core I3) brands so far cover only two generations (45nm Nehalem and 32nm Westmere) technologies, but Intel intende to use them for processors using newer technologies in the future. -Arch dude (talk) 03:29, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

We need a major rework.
Fellow editors:

This article started when there was really only one instance of the Core i7 brand. We now have many instances covering three microarchitectures and at least two sockets in each microarchitecture. I feel that it is time to restructure the article. In particular, we need to remove all material the is specific to the original Bloomfield. The most obvious change will be the removal of the infobox. The infobox is intended for articles about specific processors. We have (or should have) a seaprate article about each Intel processor that is used with a Core i7 brand, and each of those articles has an infobox. The Core i7 article should not have a processor infobox. By analogy, the Xeon article does not have a processor infobox.

We may need to create an "Intel Brand" Infobox.

If there are no objections, I will attempt to restructure the article starting on Saturday, 15 January. -Arch dude (talk) 00:46, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The processors don't belong in separate articles-see Xeon. The infobox is something that shouldn't be there. The article needs updating, not any of what you said. Any info specific to Bloomfield can be said to be for Bloomfield only.Jasper Deng (talk) 02:48, 12 January 2011 (UTC)


 * How about moving information from the Core i7 and i5 articles over to the Intel Core article, and adding a new section there? Right now, we have a significant amount of duplication between the articles, and IMHO it would be easier to explain the complex relations in just one place rather than having it in the i5 and i7 articles as well as the Intel Core ones. Arndbergmann (talk) 04:21, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * More appropriate, in accordance with Core 2 Quad's redirection to Core 2, would be a Core i- article. A single article is too long.Jasper Deng (talk) 05:19, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would argue that the Core 2 article is also in need of a cleanup, and that parts of it should be moved to the Core microarchitecture article, since they also apply to the respective Celeron/Pentium/Xeon articles. Maybe then it's no longer too long for a combined article. Having one article for Core 2 (core microarchitecture) and another article for Core i (both Nehalem and Sandy Bridge) seems confusing, too. If we were to make one article for all Core i processors, I'd vote for splitting it between Core i (Nehalem/Westmere) and Core i (Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge). However, I think it's best to keep the all the articles for Celeron/Pentium/Core/Xeon rather short and have the details in the per-microarchitecture articles. Arndbergmann (talk) 14:49, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Colleagues, we need to distinguish between: Wikipedia has, and needs, articles in each of these categories. It might be reasonable to consolidate processors into the microarchitecture article in certain circumstances. It is not in general reasonable to consolidate processors into brands, because the same processor is usually used in different brands. -Arch dude (talk) 16:14, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * brand names (Pentium, Celeron Xeon, Core (2, i7, i5, i3))
 * microarchectures (Core, Nehalem, Sandy bridge)
 * processors (Bloomfield, Clarksdale, etc.)
 * In my opinion, this would create too many articles. If someone searches Intel Core i7, they don't want three separate articles. If you say this, the Xeon article has to be split.Jasper Deng (talk) 20:56, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Lead-in contradiction
The lead in says:

Intel Core i7 is an Intel brand name for several families of desktop and laptop 64-bit x86-64 processors using the Nehalem, Westmere, and Sandy Bridge microarchitectures and manufactured in Costa Rica and Malaysia.

But also says, " Core i7, first assembled in Costa Rica,[10] was officially launched on November 17, 2008[11] and is manufactured in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon, ... "

Otherwise, it states it is manufactured in Costa Rica and Malaysia. The later claims it is manufactured in a wholly different Hemisphere. Is it both? Is it past then present? Clarification needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.187.99.79 (talk) 20:29, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Removed cite
The first citation was from an essay mill (http://bestcustompapers.com). That can't possibly be acceptable. I removed it and replaced it with a cite needed template.-- SPhilbrick  T  15:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Sandy Bridge vs Westmere
It says "Sandy Bridge is the second generation Intel Core i7 series processor". How does it compare with the first generation? Is it any better? A quick look at the Specifications table shows it has less cores and less L3 Cache memory. So is it any better? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alphachap (talk • contribs) 16:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They are aimed at different marketing segment. Keep in mind though that Wikipedia is not a forum.Jasper Deng (talk) 18:59, 19 March 2011 (UTC)