Intel Nehalem Next-Gen CPU Previewed: 20-50% Boost Over Penryn

As images go I realise this isn't the most inspiring, but if you could scrape off the grey gunk – and you're at all interested in the state of play in the silicon market – you'd get a pleasant surprise.  AnandTech have managed, somehow, to get their hands on two of Intel's Nehalem processors, the next-gen CPU not expected to hit the market until late in 2008.  Based on the 45nm manufacturing process already seen in the Penryn chips, part of Nehalem's appeal is the potential for up to eight cores and up to sixteen simultaneous threads.  While the test rig AnandTech were using didn't exactly turn out to be the most reliable, it was enough to run some benchmarks on the 2.66GHz Nehalem chip.

In fact saying it was less than reliable is an understatement: the PCIe slot didn't work, Intel have locked down the chips to less than their full performance, and there were a variety of other reasons why the Nehalem processor could be excusably less than stellar.  So it comes as an appetite-whetting result to see 20 to 50-percent performance gains over Penryn comparison setups.

"We've been told to expect a 20 – 30% overall advantage over Penryn and it looks like Intel is on track to delivering just that in Q4. At 2.66GHz, Nehalem is already faster than the fastest 3.2GHz Penryns on the market today" AnandTech

Power consumption is only increased by a small amount, and that could come in for some fettling later on in the development cycle.  It's all enough to leave AnandTech mightily excited; their final words are basically a warning to AMD that they'll need something mighty special considering what Intel have up their sleeve.