We've seen the future and it's full of new and exciting hardware for power users

So much in life is unknowable. Will the economy rebound? Hard to say. Will oil prices skyrocket? Maybe, maybe not. Will Brangelina add to their brood? Frankly, we don’t care. But one thing’s for sure: Technology is ever-changing and each year guarantees new advances for the PC user.

As we do every year around this time, we got on the horn with our industry contacts—experts in their respective fields—and pressed them for details about what new and exciting hardware power users can look forward to in 2010. Some of what we learned was expected (SATA speeds will double), some came from out of left field (six 30-inch panels on a single videocard?!), and some just plain make sense (like a Nehalem chip for the masses).

Read on to find out how your personal computing landscape stands to be altered in the year ahead.

Core i7 Goes Mainstream

Intel's latest troika of new CPUs brings Nehalem goodness to the masses

Nehalem for everyone! That simple sentence best explains Intel’s brand-new series of CPUs, which is sure to please budget users everywhere while confounding power users.

Why would a new CPU that gives you the best bang for the buck in town be greeted nervously? Because Intel’s new CPU brings with it a new socket as well as a new infrastructure. This new infrastructure is essentially a fork in the road that forces users to make a difficult choice: Save money today but get locked out of the high-end, or splurge today knowing that the budget CPU is damn near as good as the top-end part.

For the details on Intel’s new budget monster, savor our full report, consume the specs, and then digest the benchmarks to see just which path your next PC should take.

AMD Pins Hope on 32nm Parts

New Orochi core, based on Bulldozer, will see the light in 2011

Even before Intel released its first Core i7 last year, AMD didn’t really have a part that could compete in the high end. Now the company says it will get back in the ball game—but not before 2011.

That’s when its enthusiast Orochi chip is expected to begin shipping. Based on the new “Bulldozer” modular microarchitecture, Orochi will have four or more cores and 8MB of cache, and dump support for DDR2 in favor of DDR3. The company originally hoped to have Bulldozer out much sooner using its existing 45nm process, but has had to postpone the chip so it can be built on a 32nm process. AMD’s fab partner, Global Foundries, won’t actually have that up and running until next year.

For mainstream users, AMD plans to release a version dubbed Llano. Llano will have 4MB of cache and DDR3 support, and some versions will feature integrated graphics cores.

Until Orochi and Llano arrive, however, AMD will have to rely on its existing Deneb and Propos cores. The big question that’s up in the air is whether Orochi will introduce a new socket design or not. AMD isn’t saying and observers seem split on whether AMD can continue to use the AM3 socket for the redesigned chip. Reusing AM3 would make the loyalists happy, and AMD has been far more careful not to force its users to buy new motherboards, so AM3-compatibility wouldn’t surprise us.

Still, with a new budget Core i5 part already faster at far lower clocks, 2011 is a long time away for the AMD faithful.