March is the month of multi-core CPUs

Analysis: All about the number six, and more...

There hasn't been anything really new on the high end CPU front for a while, but that's all set to change this month.

It's been nearly a year since Intel's latest speed update on its high-end desktop, workstation and server CPUs from the Nehalem tribe, while AMD surely hasn't been any better, since the six-core Istanbuls still languish in the below 3GHz realm.

However, March will bring a bumper harvest for the performance afficionados, whether you're looking to upgrade your super desktop, set up new workstations or add many cores to your server farm. And, we're talking about both CPU vendors here, for the first time in a long while during the same month.

Intel's focus, of course, will be on unveiling its 32nm six-core range based on the Gulftown chip. The first half of March should see announcement of the high-end desktop entry, the 3.33GHz Core i7-980X, followed by the similar speed top bin dual socket Xeon 5600 series varieties. These should overclock just as well, if not better, than their quad-core predecessors in the same socket, yet will add half again more cores and cache within the same TDP. And, oh yes, those AEC crypto instructions, too.

Note that most LGA-1366 single and dual socket mainboards - after a mandatory BIOS update - should take the new chippery no questions asked. Keep in mind, though, that the Tylersburg chipset in both its X58 desktop and i5500 server varieties is getting new slightly improved revisions for the coming CPUs, so a new mainboard with the updated chipset will be beneficial for the buyer. The old high-end motherboard users may not have enough benefits from replacing those unless they also look forward to getting USB3, SATA3 and other little improvements along the way, too. It wouldn't be bad if those improvements included reverting to PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports on the mainboards to avoid the USB CPU polling waste of time, by the way.

Oh yes, you will see the first easily overclockable dual socket LGA1366 mainboard, from EVGA this time, definitely followed by one from at least one major Taiwan vendor, too. The EVGA entry is a spiritual follow-on to the Intel Skulltrail, including even those two Nvidia Nforce 200 PCIe bridges - which I'd personally rather dump - yet it provides the incredible 96GB memory capacity, obviously a target for workstation users, not just gamers. The board should be out about the same time as the dual 32nm six-core Xeons, by the way.

Also, note that on the desktop Intel will for now have only a single entry, the high-end 980X, without any lower-cost, slower bins. This way, the desktop LGA1366 high-end platform again has a clear performance edge over the LGA1156 socket, where the quad-core Core i7 870 was dangerously close to the i7 975XE at a much lower price. This move restores the 'balance' between these two platforms for market positioning, and things most likely will stay this way, without major updates, till beyond year-end, when the first quad-core GPU-enriched Sandy Bridge entry should replace the LGA1156 platforms first.