Introduction

Change has come, and in a way that you may not have expected. Nope, it’s not because we have a new President, it’s because the computer community has a new CPU to play with. Say goodbye to Front Side Bus, LGA 775 and 4x multithreading and let’s welcome Quick Path, Turbo Boost and 8x Hyper-Threading, as well as more headroom for overclocking, and all this is done in a 45 nm platform.

In November of 2008, Intel launched its Core I7 Nehalem Processors. When the Core I7 was launched, three new processors were introduced, the 920, the 940 and the 965 Extreme - all are quad core processors. The Core I7 processors are codenamed Bloomfield and have received a major overhaul when compared to their predecessor the Core 2.

 The Intel Core I7 now has 1336 contacts (LGA 1336) or otherwise known as Socket B where the Core 2 had only 775 (LGA 775, Socket T), this makes the chip 20% wider and incompatible with previous motherboards.