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Intel to discontinue Core i7 920 & 940 CPUs
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 28th May 2009
Intel is planning to discontinue a number of Core i7 CPUs almost as soon as it lifts the curtain on Lynnfield on September 1st.
The models include, but are not limited to, the Core i7 920 and Core i7 940, while one source suggested that the as-yet-unreleased Core i7 950 would also probably get the chop a bit later.
Apparently, Lynnfield's performance is so close to the cheaper i7 CPUs that Intel is looking to move the focus of its LGA 1366 socket to just the high-end, workstation and SMP boards using the X58 chipset. It all sounds remarkably similar to what AMD did with the early Athlon 64 FX processors, which used Socket 940 while all other Athlon 64s used Socket 754.
In light of this, motherboard manufacturers have said that they're already working to adjust their X58 product lines to cater for the price range and market future LGA 1366 processors will target.
Discuss in the forums.
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We really, really need AMD to provide some decent competition to get Intel to bring down their prices and to give the consumer a better deal.
Which i7 CPUs are going to be left? Just the extreme edition? Sounds like their killing i7 off completely TBH.
"Lynnfield's performance is so close to the cheaper i7", does that mean the i5 will be more expensive than the i7, or was it a typo?
I agree, except that i7 owners could always add a Sata 3.0 PCI board if they really needed it.
Sounds like it, yeah. This is quite worrying, really - while I'm not likely to kill my i7 920 any time soon, if the only possible replacement for it is a chip costing in excess of £750 (more than 920/mobo/RAM/GFX combined cost!) I will certainly think long and hard before buying any Intel kit ever again.
We're not sure on price for i5 but it will certainly be cheaper than i7. What the sentence means is that i5's performance is so close to the lower end i7s - i.e. 920 and 940 - that they will become pointless products.
Apparently, the hex-core i7 will only be an extreme edition part as well, so i7 owners are pretty shafted on any upgrade routes, that don't involve major wallet torture:|
I hope Intel change their minds about that.
What should i do now? Wait for the new socket or grab a 920 and hope it won't die untill my next overhaul?
True. They stuck with 775 for a while, but even then when they released Core 2, they changed the specs so older boards didn't work.
I know AMD did this with the socket 754/940 going to 754/939... but creating a socket (1366) with a fairly broad range of processor prices on it, then killing off all but the very high end on it seems... daft.
after i read the article, i was going to hope on the i7 920 bus as soon as possible.
I'm thinking the same. Any coments on this?
An OCed i7 should last you a few years, and will be much cooler than an i5, do you really want the same processor as a future iMac owner:)
I'm becoming more skeptical about the notion of upgrading a CPU as the trend seems to be to change the socket with each generation. For those who bought Q6600, what upgrade is there that will actually make a difference? Seems to make more sense to build a well stocked PC and run it to the ground before building a new one.
so not too fussed to be honest ill keep my i7 until its mediocre but i will change my GPU every year to keep my graphics nice.
@ Turbo: Why will i5 be hotter than i7? What did I miss?
Cool as in Kewl.
This is a VERY good point! Well done :)
It's not killing it, it's simply focusing i7 on the super high performance workstation needs where it was intended originally. Triple channel is NOT a good idea for "mainstream" - we've seen triple channel kits cost less than dual channel DDR3 and DDR3 takeup for LGA775 is very low. i5 will be powerful, but still mainstream with 4/8GB of DDR3 so it will bring down prices of dual channel DDR3 kits quickly.
Yes - simply put, Lynnfield will have less L3 cache iirc and only two channels of DDR3, however we've already seen when Core i7 runs on dual channel it makes FA difference to performance clock to clock, and with less L3 cache Lynnfields could probably overclock better too (or, at least the memory controller will OC better - making up for the extra channel of memory).
Intel has highly aggressive prefetchers thanks to its (long route to memory) FSB era Core 2 series, but now with such low latency memory access multiple channels don't make a huge amount of difference on the desktop, only server where it will also offer redundancy and extra capacity.
If anyone thinks Lynnfield will be cheap, think again imo. The boards will be high "Core 2 price", but coming down within 6-9 months as the bill of materials gathers pace, and depending on how much competition AMD puts in (to bring down the cost of P55). Since LGA775 parts will also be around with G41/P43 - Intel will be forcing the hand of many of us (again) to fork out more for a basic core performance to work up from. No more £60 E5200 + £100 P45 board sorry - you'll be looking at £150+£180 CPU if I were to throw in my 2p.
That said, it's not a bad thing given the technology, but I think with COMPETITION from Nvidia chipsets and AMD CPUs it would make the industry far more consumer friendly.
I7 is so young, that running out and grabbing the tech seemed a bad idea to me from the get go, i knew it would shift considering it was workstation grade.
Basically by this time next year i would have finished uni, earning a better wage than i am at the moment on placement, and the Q6600 right now will be due a potential upgrade as it will be 3 years old at that point.
Of course unless microsoft make some changes we could all be shafted soon, currently XP and vista are limited to 8 cores and the way things are going 8 cores will be fairly normal 2 years...
(yes XP would bottle neck an 8 core beast due to 32-bit, but we will still be using it!)
i7 920 eqiuvalent Xeon = X5550 @ 2.66 GHz, a real bargain at almost 1,000 dollars or £740
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=996527&source=froogle
Not to mention that a lot of single LGA1366 motherboards don't support Xeon processors.
On the other hand... The CPU support section for Asus P6T shows "Core i7 950" and "Core i7 975".
Sorry man, you're looking at the dual-socket versions. The single-socket version is the X3520 and has the same MSRP. They got the same frequency as the 940 and 965 too.
If it does go belly up, i'd rather place some dosh in AMD kit and OC it, than a lot of cash on comparable intel kit.
Will have to wait and see what this gpu on cpu has as ups and downs yet.....
I still don't get why i5 couldn't be socket 1366 however.
I'm a bit gutted that there will be no new 1366 boards when SATA3 comes available however. I hate having PCI cards for stuff that could be on the mobo.
On a side note, isn't the enthuast market usually made up of theose wanting either top end performance or best performane at the lowest price? Thats why C2D was so good. An E2xxx could yeild 3.5gHz of performance. i7 may pverclock like a beast but if the price is elitist, then does it offer the value? Seems intel is splitting the market into top end (i7), mid range(i5), Enthuast (C2D) and lower end
Retracted. Apologies, never heard of the W3520, to be fair it is not even listed on Intel's sspec for 1366 socket Xeons, have some rep. To be fair, I doubt current consumer X58 motherboard will continue to be produced when the plug is pulled on the i7, which might bump the build price up a notch.
Have some rep for writing the best sentence this week.
So instead of paying £500+ for an i7 rig you now have to spend £450 for an i5 rig? Meh, my E6600 @ 3.6GHz will be enough until at least Christmas then. I was actually hoping for i5 being something like i7-for-people-on-a-budget. ;)
take care all
Is it good or bad?
Yeah, I'm having a hard time finding them as well on the regular sites and price guides, but the shop I use whenever I want server products like drive controllers and SAS cables and stuff have them, for the same price as the three first i7 SKUs. The 3.2GHz product is probably a bigger waste than the 965 since I'll bet my underpants it doesn't have an unlocked multiplier.
They also have 1.86GHz dual cores, 2GHz and 2.1GHz quad cores for dual sockets that are cheaper than the 920. Maybe they would do well as budget processors once overclocked - but we never hear much about them or read reviews. :(
:(
Like the current 150 to 400£ would not be expensive enough.
They ain't a charity either....
S754, 939, 940 AM2, AM2+, plenty of sockets and remember K8 pricing before C2D launch?
Forgotten socket 939 have we?
FYI - I had a great AMD socket 939 system BTW (which my folks now use).
Totally true - AMD have done this trick before, as I've mentioned. Killing off socket 939 was a serious irritation for me, particularly since I've got a spare 939 Athlon64 processor, but no board for it to go in. My A8N32/Opteron 170 combo is still going strong. In total time used, it is probably my longest serving gaming system, actually - it can still handle most games I throw at it, provided I don't mind load times being a bit longer.
This is the second... potentially third time Intel have done this: previous two being; socket 423 to 478 transition (P4) and socket 775 to socket 775 (when they changed the electrical specifications of the chips with Core 2.)
1. Thank god I didn't buy an i7 yet.
2. LGA 1156 isn't going to last long either.
I am also pissed that Socket 939, which was awesome, is now gone.. room for a ultra sucky AM2 socket with CPUs holding, and insulting the same name.
Exactly. That, or buy a new i5 mobo and CPU, and chuck in two thirds of the RAM you are currently using with your X58 motherboard. Should work out the same price or cheaper. IIRC, RAM itself isn't channeled, and it is all down to the board. If you had 4 sticks and a quad channel board, you could just plug them in and the northbridge does the work.
However, with the current way things are going with northbridges being on the CPU, in the future it might all depend on the CPU you use, and thus motherboards you buy will be channel limited by what socket is on the board rather than what chipset is on the board.
I have found the 920 equivalent much cheaper in the US, one site selling it for $300 but can't find it cheaper in the UK :(
Or should i just buy a 920, and hope it doesn't break?
Actually, that's a good question - are Intel going to keep some stock to cover warranty RMAs for 920/940/950's that die, or would they give you a shiny new 965/975 EE? Or would they say, "Tough, here's a new i5 chip (nearest equivalent) now go buy a new mobo."?
When my Opteron 170 was paired with a 4850, it coped with Crysis very well @ 1920x1200/High. Load times were quite long, but they weren't terrible. Shorter than the load times of Red Alert on my old P75 back in the day... (sitting for five minutes for one of the later levels to load...) I never tried GTA4 (didn't want all that GfWL, RSC etc on my comp.
for me im not fussed about this, all platforms die (although pissed that its this quick)
i wont be upgrading my CPU or mobo for at least 2-3 years now and by that time the i5 platform will also be obsolete anyway.
the 920 hammers anything currently out overclocks well and i dont except it to become a bottle neck anytime soon.
SATA 6GB/s isnt going to be out for a while yet so thats hardly a downside to the x58 platform anyway.
Worry about SATA 6Gbps when HDDs and SSDs can saturate the current SATA standard.
should i sell off my parts before i regrate it!
man i duno anymore! what the Hell intel! thought I7 was the NEW greatness!!! then you go and screw with me.
why cant they just not make the i5 keep i7! make more SENSE? no?
god dam...
it is bad new!
Need some expert advice!!?
I felt the same with AMD when with the Socket 939, and decided to go DDR2 and target the low end market instead of competing with Intel despite creating an Intel killer CPU.
The worst is since that decision, DDR1 RAM prices sky-rocketed and stop being in large production. (and now probably stopped). So now I was stock with 2GB of RAM, and lucky enough had a friend that had 1GB DDR1 that had no more use (as he upgraded his system) with by pure coincidence the same speed and timing, and I added them to my system.
So today if my CPU or motherboard (out of warranty now), brakes... well I am screwed for a new motherboard and CPU and RAM, despite being able to play the latest games with no problem except for Crysis and GTA IV.
I do think it will be easier to put it in perspective once we find out what intel is going to put on the market for the 1366 socket.
It's basicly a i7 920... but with better binning.
The rest is completely the same, and that processor isn't EOL yet.
Who cares about SATA 6Gbits/s? Burst speed on a 300GB Velociraptor barely exceeds SATA 1.5Gbits/s.
Yes the same was said with IDE... than poof no mode IDE development and faster HDD is made (and I include 5400 and 7200RPM HDD, beside 10000RPM and possibly coming up 15 000RPM). They don't exceed speed of IDE, but you can't find in IDE.
Now, I know what you'll say, but let me finish. We have SSD, which gets faster and faster (larger too), all at the same time cheaper; SSD 6Gbit/s would be needed. I gave it 5 years until we come close to the max limit. I don't know about you, but I don't trow away my old computer. It ends up being another computer or media center computer, desktop computer can easily last 7-8 years before they get really broken. So, as you can see this new SATA is interesting for the long run. Yes, you might say that when it comes to that end, I'll just buy a new SATA card, but what you don't see is that it's hard to spend money on something that you won't use everyday and that is very old; so you end up no doing it, and just have a computer in a shelf, or stock with a slow mechanical HDD, or paying the price of a slow SSD when for the same price a 2-3 times faster solution exists for the same price, and possibly more space.