mesiah

June 18, 2009 at 8:19pm

I think some people are confusing the i5 naming scheme with the lynnfield architecture. The simple answer is yes, you may want to wait, but not for the "i5." While nehalem will only be available as core i7 or core i7 extreme, lynnfield will be available as both core i7 and core i5. It is quite possible that lynnfield will outpace nehalem in areas such as gaming. The major difference between nehalem and lynnfield is that lynnfield does not use qpi and only has dual channel ddr3 support. Its been proven that neither of these technologies has any real performance advantage for the average computer user. In exchange for that you receive much more aggressive turbo modes and a less costly lga-1156 mother board (estamates are around $100 cheaper.)

 

Now, you can also get an i5 version of the lynnfield. The difference between the i5 and i7 versions is that you are limited to only 4 threads as opposed to 8, and some i5s will only be dual core, but quad core will still be available. Although it wasn't announced, I am willing to bet i5s will have much less aggressive turbo modes also. So, to sum it up, yes, lynnfields are probably worth waiting for if you arent doing extreme multitasking and are more focused on higher clock speeds and gaming performance. But I would stay with the i7 lynnfields over the i5s if you are looking for peak performance. I hope this cleared things up some instead of just making them more confusing :P