Socket 1155 (SandyBridge)

[Shaunno]

Its the new year and Intel have recently launced their new 2nd generation Core^TMprocessors.

The new socket that will be accompanying the release of the chips is the socket 1155 coupled with the new sandybridge chipset. (The socket 1155 is not compaitable with socket 1156 i5's and i7's)

The new range of CPU's will start at the low end i3's all the way up (yep you guessed it) to high end i7's. These chips will only support dual channel memory, however they can support upto 32GB of it, also these chips are able to handle more PCI-e slots@x16, around 4 PCI-e slots, on the high end boards with two of them running at x16 and two running at x8.

The CPU's themselves are much faster than first generation Core^TM chips not only can they compute data faster but the  memory bandwidth has also massively increased as you can see on the full review of the new i5 and i7 here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-2500k-and-core-i7-2600k-review/1

 

i7 2600k the latest and greastest from intel (for now)

In this upcoming year (around Q3) we will see another new socket LGA 2011 or socket R and is going to supersede LGA 1366. Apperently this socket/chip will be able to support four memory lanes (yes thats quad-channel) and upto 40 PCI-e 3.0 lanes. So look out for that one

Also in the works is the socket 1356 which is going to be a direct placement for the 1366 socket. The main difference between socket 1356 and 2011 is that socket 2011 supports 2 QPI connections whereas 1356 will only support one, the other major difference will be that the 2011 socket will support an additional two PCI-e 3.0 slots.

And finally the processor roadmap from intel this takes us all the way up to 2014.

[Thrill]

Very very nice, roll on Q3 !

[Henrawr]

Hopefully with these will come a decline in prices for the current range.