Thanks to the incredible bandwidth rich architecture, there was a lot of excitement in the market when Intel launched Core i7. This was the perfect tool for complex jobs like scientific computing applications, 3D rendering, etc. Never before had any Intel processor delivered such powerful performance. At this point of time undoubtedly Intel secured its position as the leader in the Central Processing Unit technology.
The Core i7 is not meant for average users. It requires specific types of applications to demonstrate its capabilities to the optimum. The target market of the Core i7 is high end businesses and consumer market. In the latter half of 2008, the first Core i7 processor was Quad core processor designed on Bloomfield architecture. The next year two new variants were added to the series namely the Lynnfield quad core processor (desktop) and the Clarksfield quad core processor (mobile). These latest releases came with some smart integration and clever engineering making the processors deliver faster speed, smaller in size, less noise and more energy efficient than all its predecessors.
The 1st generation of Core i7 (desktop) is based on Nehalem architecture and uses two types of sockets: LGA 1366 and LGA 1156. The models that use LGA 1366 socket do not have embedded PCI 2.0 controller as this component is placed on the north bridge chip on the chipset. The processor uses QPI (QuickPath Interface) which is a high speed bus with the speed of 4.8GB/s to connect to this chip. The default base clock is 133MHz for the Core i7 processors of this generation.
Basically, the Core i7 models could be broadly divided into two categories: the models that use socket LGA 1366 and came with triple channel memory architecture which supported DDR3 memory up to 1066 MHz and the models that use socket LGA 1156 and came with dual channel memory architecture supporting DDR3 memory up to 1333 MHz. These processor models have Hyper threading technology and are either quad core or 6 core processors. In short it means that the supporting operating system will identify the processor having 8 cores or 12 cores. However, only fifty percent of the cores are real while the other fifty percent are stimulated.
The Core i7 extreme models have QPI bus and run and run at a higher clock rate (3.2 GHz). As the clock multiplier and the Turbo Boost options are unlocked, the option for additional over clocking is available.