Intel's iSeries Processors i3, i5, i7 What's the difference and where are we going?
Where have we been?
To understand where we are and why we need to know where we came from so a quick summary of Intel processor history. Back in about 2006, Intel produced the Intel Pentium M processor, which's designed was based on the Pentium III. The Pentium M was a low power consuming, fast and efficient processor designed for laptops. The new chip designed also shortened the stages (instruction length)to 12-14 from 31 in the Pentium D there by out performing the Pentium D in most applications dispite the MHz Myth.
Where we are.
The i3, i5 and i7 LGA1156 is NOT Nehalem, it's Westmere a different architecture. i7 LGA1366 is Nehalem and has the memory controller on the processor is a nice neat package. The LGA 1156 boots the memory controller off the die. The memory controller works very similar to the P45/X48 Chipsets only the i series hasn't been optimized for channeling the memory that way. This affects how much though put the memory bandwidth uses (or how fast it is). The memory bandwidth is has increased it just hasn't increased as much as we would like considering what we seen on performance with the i7 LGA1366.
i3 Processorsi3 5xxDual Core Processors. They have hypertreading and an integrated GPU, but no integrated memory controller, and no automatic overclocking feature. Popular i35xxi3 550 (Believed to be in iMac) i3 540 (Believed to be in iMac) | i5 Processorsi5 56xxDual Core Processors. They have hypertreading and an integrated GPU, but no integrated memory controller, and no automatic overclocking feature. Popular i56xxi5 57xQuad Core Processors. They have an automatic overclocking feature and a direct 16x PCI Express lane into the CPU. No hyperthreading and no integrated memory controller and no integrated graphics. Popular i5 57xi5 750 (Believed to be in iMac) i5 760 (Believed to be in iMac) | i7 Processorsi7 8xxQuad Core processors. They have hyperthreading, and a direct 16x PCI Express lane into the CPU, and a automatic overclocking feature. No integrated memory controller. Popular i7 8xxi7 870 (Believed to be used in high end iMac) i7 9xxQuad Core processors. Has all features. Popular i7 9xx |
