Intel Preps Nehalem for Late 2008 Release

Playing the waiting game often means your proposed upgrade stays stuck in a perpetual limbo, except for those rare times when the next best thing truly is right around the corner. It appears we've reached one of those junctures, and a trifecta of new Nehalem procs already have one foot nudged out the door and ready to run. Citing un-named motherboard makers, DigiTimes reports Intel will launch three quad-core Nehalem processors by the end of 2008. None of the new chips have been given official names yet, but expect clockspeeds to be set at 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz, and 3.2GHz. All three come with a TDP of 130W, 8MB L3 cache, and will reside on Intel's new LGA1366 socket. And speaking of sockets, expect new boards touting Intel's X58 chipset to hit the market at the same time, with claims of a 15 to 30 percent performance boost over the current crop of motherboards.

Image Credit: Intel