Nehalem LGA1366 and X58 show up in Taipei

[sushrukh]

MSI showed us how it is currently testing early versions of Intels next generation Nehalem architecture, which is based on the Bloomsfield CPU platform and Tylersberg chipset the latter will be branded under the X58 nomenclature.

First, the CPU and its new socket: while the roadmaps say the high-end Nehalem to be launched in Q4 will have up to eight cores, the one MSI had in its office was just a quad-core but with eight threads.

The socket is still LGA, but instead of the 775 used on current boards, this one now features 1366 pins and is slightly rectangular not Pentium Pro rectangular, but simply a stretched out square.

The back of the socket now has a metal backplate to brace itself and Im afraid youll be buying a new heatsink too because the socket fittings have changed since LGA775. In fact, the whole area that needs to be exclusively for Intel CPU use is now apparently over twice the volume of that compared to LGA775 giving motherboard manufacturers even less space to shoehorn in additional components.


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Link (http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/30/nehalem-and-x58-show-up-in-taipei/1) to full story

[Andrew1990]

That chip looks sweet as well as the board, but I am going to wait till they iron out all the kinks. Anyone remember the Early P4 days? Where the Pentium 3 beat the Pentium 4s at a lot of things for a much lower cost.

This design does look like it will offer a lot though, but the one thing that will probably turn me away is the no overclocking part. Of course motherboard designers may find a way to circumvent this but if they cant, then I am not buying into it.

And by no overclocking, I mean the lower end socket that most people would consider and not the more expensive one.

[PP Mguire]

There will always be overclocking.

[Miles]

I have removed the images as they are directly linked to Bit Tech site and that's against our rules.

[PP Mguire]

Its not a review though and this site has no other information regarding this subject for themselves.

[werty316]

The pictures were removed because they were direct hot links. They would have been fine if they were uploaded to a free image service like ImageShack.us.

[sushrukh]

I have removed the images as they are directly linked to Bit Tech site and that's against our rules.

Sorry for the inconvenience Miles.I thought i've uploaded them to imageshack before uploading them.Sorry.I'll post the pics again after uploading them on Imageshack. :)

[peti1212]

Looks really nice, I like how they have 6 slots for memory. Always nice to have enough if you ever decide to upgrade to more GBs. :) The processor looks massive, but I guess if it does it's work will low temperatures then there is nothing to worry about. :) Nice

[PP Mguire]

The pictures were removed because they were direct hot links. They would have been fine if they were uploaded to a free image service like ImageShack.us.Ah nuts. I never pay attention to that.

[Kougar]

I had a field day with Bit-Tech's coverage on this. I won't pretend to know how MSI can get away with leaking the info early though...

Something that may concern some is the mention of the QPI links being blamed for the hot X58 chipset.

Nehalem is going to have more QPI links, a triple MCH, and 8-way SMT. Since someone was mentioning old P4 Northwoods... 2-SMT on Northwood P4s made them slightly hotter chips, so I expect 8-way SMT to do the same here.

The good news is that huge blue box clearly illustrates just how much ROOM there will be for CPU coolers now. I predict we will likely see plenty more 140mm fan sized CPU coolers soon... The other bit of good news is the larger die + larger CPU heatspreader will mean larger CPU cooler / waterblock baseplates though, which should help mitigate the heat a bit.

And of course, there is no compatibility with current CPU coolers and blocks. Not only is the heatspreader now elongated but the mounting holes did change. A few coolers may be lucky enough to still work after new mounting kits are had, but not likely for most.