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Popular online computer parts vendor Newegg this week gave one of its suppliers, IPEX, the boot. The reason, says Newegg, is that IPEX was the one who supplied the vendor with fake Core i7 chips.
"Initial information we received from our supplier, IPEX, stated that they had mistakenly shipped us ‘demo units.’ We have since come to discover that the CPUs were counterfeit and are terminating our relationship with this supplier," Newegg said in a statement.
Initial reports had pegged D&H Distributing as the culprit, but the supplier has since been cleared of any wrongdoing.
"Contrary to any speculation, D&H Distributing is not the vendor that supplied us with the Intel Core i7 920 CPUs in question," Newegg added.
Fake CPUs weren’t terribly difficult to spot. There were several misspelled words on the retail packaging, including a sticker that spelled "socket" as "sochet," eWeek.com reports. In some cases, the user manual inside the box was blank.
As for customers who were affected, Newegg said it is sending out replacement chips.
See here for an unboxing video of one of the counterfeit chips.
Image Credit: ZDNet
Good news for IT admins. Intel last week announced a new vPro platform for its Core i5 and i7 processors designed to make remote maintenance and management of PCs an easier task in the enterprise.
"Businesses, particularly those that haven’t purchased PCs for several years, face a computing environment that no longer handles the applications many workers and IT are adopting," said Rick Echevarria, vice president, Intel Architecture Group, and general manager, Business Client Platform Division. "The integration of intelligent performance along with smart security and cost-saving manageability features in the Intel Core vPro processor family provide IT and SMBs a no-compromise platform. We also are excited about how Intel vPro Technology gives IT the flexibility to look at client virtualization, consumerization and rich cloud applications"
The new platform based on Intel’s Core vPro processors consists of the new Intel Q57 Express chipset, Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection for notebooks, and Intel 82578DM Network Connection for desktop PCs.
Image Credit: Intel
With all the talk of Core i7, Core i5, Intel’s upcoming six-core Gulftown, and a plethora of swank X58- and P55-based mobos bombarding the market place, are you starting to feel left out puttering along on your LGA775 build? Well, you should be — this is Maximum PC, after all. But outside of our niche of power users, LGA775 still reigns supreme, and by no small margin.
As Fudzilla reports it, LGA775 processors are the current king of the sales hill, accounting for a whopping 77 percent of sales. The dated socket won’t be able to hold onto that pace throughout 2010, but by the end of the year, Intel expects LGA775 to still account for half of all processor sales.
So who’s buying into socket 1366 and building high-end Core i7 foundations? Not many. Currently the least popular Intel socket of the bunch, higher end Core i7 chips only account for a measly 1 percent of sales.
Socket LGA1156, on the other hand, claims 18 percent of all Intel shipments and its market share is expect to grow to 44 percent by the end of 2010. And of course there’s the ever-popular Atom series, which surprisingly only makes up for 5 percent of all Intel CPUs so far in this first quarter.
Image Credit: windowsdevcenter.com
Touchscreen PCs haven’t really taken off the way, say, touch-capable smartphones, media players, and other handheld gadgets have, and a big reason for that is a lack of power. So it makes sense (and gets us a little excited) that HP would cram a Core i7 chip into its TouchSmart line as part of its new 600 Quad series.
You do have to pay to play, however, with pricing starting off at $1,700. That gets you a 23-inch touchscreen display with an Intel Core i7 720QM quad-core chip racing along at 1.6GHz and 6MB of L2 cache. That also includes 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory, a 750GB 7200RPM hard drive (or 1TB if you’re willing to roll with a 5400RPM spindle speed), Nvidia’s GeForce GT230M graphics with a 1GB frame buffer, slot-load DVD burner, Wi-Fi, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and other odds and ends.
Some of the more noteworthy upgrade options include an Intel Core i7 820QM quad-core CPU (1.73GHz, 8MB L2 cache), twice the amount of RAM, a 1.5TB 7200RPM for just $50 more, and a Blu-ray player.
The HP TouchSmart 600 Quad series is available now.
Image Credit: HP
Ready or not, six-core computing is coming, and it’s coming from both sides of the tracks. We all know about Intel’s plan to move to six-core chips, which will start with the Core i7 980X, a pricey processor (think at least $1,000) designed for socket 1366 systems. Look for this one to debut around the end of March.
But AMD also has plans to compete in the six-core sector and, according to news and rumor site DigiTimes, will launch three six-core desktop chips under its new Phenom II x6 1000T series in May 2010. These will consist of the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T, and 1035T, each of which is being built on a 45nm manufacturing process.
Coinciding with AMD’s six-core parts will be a couple of new chipsets, the 890FX (RD890) and 890GX (RS880D).
No official word on pricing from either side just yet.
We know how it is. You really want a sweet Intel Core i7 PC, but it has to be small. No, small is the wrong word; it has to be tiny. The new Congatec Conga-BM57 small form factor motherboard may be just the thing. Measuring a mere 95 x 125 mm you’d expect this board to be running an Atom or maybe even an ARM CPU. In fact, it runs a Core i7-620M clocked at 2.66GHz, and has 8GB of DDR3 RAM.
The board has integrated graphics with Intel Flexible Display Interface (FDI) allowing two simultaneous outputs via HDMI, VGA, DisplayPort, or SVDO. The architecture can support up to 5 PCI Express lanes, 8 USB ports, 3 SATA, one EIDE, and a gigabit Ethernet port.
It is certainly impressive considering the form factor. Congatec isn’t quite sure what the BM57 will be used for as of yet, but threw out gaming devices and medical imagery as options. We’ve got our fingers crossed for an HTPC.
According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, socket 1366 owners won’t have to wait too terribly long before being able to step up to six cores, though at $999, the flagship chip won’t come cheap.
Fudzilla says Intel will start shipping its upcoming Core i7 980X in March, which will be Intel’s first six-core part developed in 32nm Westmere architecture. It will sport the same 3.33GHz frequency as the quad-core Core i7 975, as well as the same Turbo clock. And once again, official triple-channel memory support will be limited to 1066MHz.
Other specs include 12MB of cache, 6.4GB/s QPI, 12 threads via Hyperthreading, and a 130W TDP.
Image Credit: Intel
According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, Intel’s upcoming 6-core Gulftown chips won’t be the only upgrade options for socket 1366 owners. They say Intel plans to release a Core i7 930 part in the first quarter of 2010, which will supplant the ever-popular Core i7 920.
Like the 920, the 930 is a Nehalem-based 45nm quad-core part, except that it will come clocked at 2.88Ghz instead of 2.66Ghz. It also boasts a QPI speed of 4.8GT/s and 8MB of cache. In addition, Fudzilla says the 930’s Turbo engine can automatically overclock the part to 3.06GHz.
No word yet on price, but we suspect it will probably sell for about the same as the 920, which checks in at $284 in 1,000-tray quantities.
Image Credit: Intel
I have a confession to make; I get a kick out of leaked Intel roadmaps. They almost always tend to be revealed mere days after I purchase a new CPU and are pretty effective at taking all the joy out of my new purchase. Of course, in the world of technology my fancy tends to be fickle, and a bit of CPU lust never hurt anyone.
The latest Intel roadmap doesn’t contain too many surprises but it does show that the transition to 32nm is well underway. The few standouts are a new sub-brand called Core i5 “S” that drops the chip down from 95w to 82w, and a Core i3 that strips away the turbo mode to bring down the cost. Intel’s movement at the low end of the market clearly shows their commitment to taking on AMD in the budget realm and it will be interesting to see benchmark comparisons on these new parts.
As for the high end, the new Core i9 “Gulftown” 6-core chip appears to be currently on schedule for a Q2 release next year. This gives us about 6 more months to enjoy our measly old quad cores. Click the image below to check out the detailed roadmap, or hit up PC Watch Japan for all the gory details in “loosely” translated Google English.
Are you going to upgrade to a Core i9?
Proving that a mini tower can pack a punch, Dell this week released a new Vostro desktop for small businesses that makes use of Intel’s latest processors.
Released yesterday, Dell’s Vostro 430 desktop comes standard with an Intel Core i5 750 processor (2.66GHz, 8MB L3 cache), 1GB of DDR3-1333 memory, an 80GB hard drive spinning at 7200RPM, an ATI Radeon HD 4350 videocard with 512MB of onboard memory, and Windows Vista Home Basic. From there, virtual system builders can opt to add more muscle in the form of an Intel Core i7 870 processor (2.93Ghz, 8MB L3 cache), up to 4GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, and an Nvidia GeForce GTS240 videocard with 1GB of memory.
At $700 and up, the new Vostro is a little more than what small business owners are accustomed to paying for Dell’s Vostro line, which typically run between $300 and $400, but the 430 is the only one to be built around Intel’s latest architecture.
Image Credit: Dell
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