Jetway and Biostar show Intel P55 mainboards. Cheap Core i5 on the way?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 2 March 2009, 17:58

Tags: Biostar, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Jetway

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Intel's Core i7 chips took the desktop performance crown from Core 2 Quad back in November '08 and, most likely, will keep it through 2009.

Entry to the Core i7 PC club requires the purchase of one of a triumvirate of chips, ranging from £240 to £800, and a motherboard based on the only supporting chipset currently available, X58, which starts at a not-so-tasty £160.

Intel will dilute the Core i7 brand with the introduction of cheaper chips and mainboards later on this year, and the chips currently goes by the code-name of  Lynnfield. Interfacing with the chipset via DMI instead of QPI and based on a dual-channel memory-controller architecture, the likely-to-be-named Core i5 will need a new supporting core-logic.

And here it is, courtesy of Jetway and Biostar.



The Intel P55 (Ibex Peak) chipset will provide support for the LGA1156 chips, and you can think of it as a cut-down X58 in most respects.

Vendors are likely to ship boards with two PCIe x16 slots that operate at x8 when in dual-card mode. Support for both CrossFire and SLI should remain intact, of course.


What we hope to see are chips costing <£150 and boards etailing for <£100. Combine that with the steadily-dropping price of DDR3 memory, and Core i5 systems should start cropping up at £599 for a base unit.

Expectations are that the new platform won't ship until Q3 2009, however. Saving up your pennies in expectation? Let us know.

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HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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HEXUS Exclusive - Breaking news of new Intel i5 CPU previously unknown :rolleyes:
Be fair: these are the first i5 boards we've actually seen. Up to now it's all been speculation and Intel hype…
I'm embarrassed to admit I thought it was a typo.. I'd heard nothing about Core i5…. but what I have now has not impressed me
Does anyone know how performance will compare to i7, C2D and PhenomII at this stage?

(Methanoid, sorry if you commented on this in your last post; I couldn't gather what you were saying.)