The Core i7 officially launched

Although tests of these processors have been available for two weeks (cf. notre dossier), it was only yesterday that Intel officially launched the Intel Core i7 processor and authorized its sale. The 3 versions, 965 Extreme, 940 and 920 clocked at 3.20, 2.93 and 2.66 GHz respectively are now available then.

In practice, they can be found on sale at around €1040, €570 and €300 respectively. Expensive! Especially as you have to add to that the cost of a new motherboard based on the X58 chipset and with an LGA1366 Socket (€263 to €329 according to the model), as well as the DDR3 memory. Triple channel kits are available from all manufacturers (€103 to €298 for 3 GB, €210 to €360 for 6 GB), even if in practice you need to remember that the already slight advantage of triple channel memory disappears altogether after DDR3-1333, dual channel even proving more rapid as a result of lower latency at chipset level.

As a reminder, the Core i7 gives significant gains in multithreaded applications and is the ultimate work station processor. In contrast, gamers’ interest in the CPU will be limited, with the main advantage of the platform lying in its capacity to support SLI solutions such as CrossFire.