Nehalem Supports Triple-Channel DDR3
While AMD is shedding more light on the upcoming 6-core and 12-core CPUs, Intel silently discloses some more interesting facts regarding their soon-to-be-released Nehalem CPU.
It appears that the Nehalem tests were performed using only DDR3 1,333MHz modules, while the X48 can use DDR3 1,600MHz, so Nehalem could easily improve the bandwidth using 2GHz memory. But that won’t necessarily be the case, as Intel apparently decided to stop at DDR3 1,600MH with Nehalem, as well. I bet Intel will carefully take all these specs into consideration and up the support over 1,6 GHz by launch time.
Nehalem will also require a new chipset, the X58, which should handle up to four graphics cards in CrossFireX mode. Now, don’t expect to see 4 X 16 PCIe lanes and insane improvements, as sources are estimating only 32 lanes. The X58 chipset will feature the ICH10 which will connect to the X58 via Intel's DMI interface.
As an aside, Intel is also considering physics engine scaling, which might have something to do with Intel's purchase of Havok. Chances are that some sort of physics engine could be integrated into the Nehalem processor, and NVIDIA’s integrated PPU would therefore become redundant.
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