Intel Core i7 Nehalem 965 XE 3.2GHz review

Page 2 - Intel Core i7 Nehalem Architecture

Farewell FSB! It's about time we had integrated memory controller

One of the first things an hardware enthusiasts bumps into is the lack of comfort that the good old FSB provided. For decades now, ever since the dawn of personal computer age, the processor depended on the front side bus(FSB). The FSB worked on specific frequency, at which it communicated with the north bridge while it negated talks with everything else. When the CPU makes an request to the memory through the FSB, first the request gets to the North bridge, he translates it to something understandable to memory, then the answer from the memory returns again to the North bridge where it's again translated to something understandable by the processor and it is then and only then the operation is considered completed.

But AMD with the release of A64, moved the memory controller in the processor. That way their processors had MUCH better results with operations that depended intensely on the memory. That design though has a major flaw - putting the memory controller in the processor, you cannot use a memory of different type with it. The first A64 were for DDR, for DDR2 a new core was needed and newer one still will be needed for DDR3 when AMD processors become available. At the same time we've seen Core 2 with DDR3 memory for quite a while now - combo made available by merely changing the memory controller in the chipset. Though honestly most AMD X2 and Phenom processors make higher volumes data transfers with DDR2 memory than any Core 2 with DDR3.

Intel's decision to finally change the socket, to put in the CPU the memory controller (the perspective DDR3 was chosen) and make a big step forward in the evolution of their architecture is completely logical. Besides dual channel communication is available for more than 5 years now, so Intel made yet another step forward by putting 3-way memory controller in Core i7. Most users that can afford Core i7 use at least 2x2GB of memory anyway, thus with 3x1GB DDR3 costing about as much as 2x2GB, while having much better performance (in most cases) working with three channels things look peachy. Further still, most Core i7 motherboards are expected to have 6 memory slots (2 for each channel, just as it is now) and will allow use of up to 12GB of memory (6x2GB), which in simpler terms makes the scaling the system in time, when applications become more memory dependent.

By default Core i7 works with DDR3 1333MHz memory, but since for frequency change all you need to do is tweak its multiplier, several top memory manufacturers had announced triple channel DDR3 1600MHz and even few 1800MHz and 2000MHz kits (though to use the latter you will have to overclock).