Posted 02/02/09 at 04:08:40 PM by Andy Salisbury

The Eurocom Clevo laptops have been the focus of a fair amount of attention since they were leaked last month. When the idea of a laptop sporting Intel’s Core i7 chip comes across one’s mind, they can’t help but be a little enticed.

Well, we’ve finally gotten some details on just what the 17-inch model of the Clevo laptop will have under the hood, and this certainly isn’t a casual user’s notebook. At the base, it’ll have the options of a 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz or 3.2GHz Intel Core i7. Storage wise, there will be three 500GB hard drives, adding up to a staggering 1.5TB of space, and 8GB of DDR3 for memory. And finally, the graphical capabilities will come in the form of an Nvidia G280.

There’s some speculation on just when it’ll be released, but Q4 of this year would be the safest bet. There’s still no word on pricing, but if start working out if you are looking to snag one of these bad boys – it all weighs in at a whopping 11.9 pounds.

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Posted 11/15/08 at 06:40:20 PM by Justin Kerr

It may have been little more than a cruel mistake, but Newegg certainly got our hopes up by showing Core i7 CPU’s for sale a whole three days before the official launch. The offending links and advertisements were quickly pulled from the site and now, little more than a handful of screenshots exist as evidence.

Core i7 is currently slated for launch on November 17^th and it appears as though we’ll have to wait until then to place our orders. Normally, this incident wouldn’t classify as news, but the Newegg slip up does give us a pretty good idea of what the retail pricing will be on the three new SKU’s. The site was offering the 2.66GHz entry level part for $319.99, while the 2.93GHz and 3.2GHz models were priced at $599.99 and $1069.99 respectively. UK customers are seeing similar pricing and power users the world over are waiting with egger anticipation to embrace the new architecture.  This isn’t surprising given that early benchmarks have the entry level Core i7’s mopping the floor with pricier, and higher clocked Core 2’s.

 So are you going to buy a Core i7 on Monday?

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Posted 11/03/08 at 11:00:00 AM by Gordon Mah Ung

Tick tock? More like ding-dong, mutha—shut your mouth. What baby? We’re talkin’ about Core i7.

Our apologies to Isaac Hayes, but if he were alive, we’re almost certain he would have been tapped to hammer out a theme song for Intel’s most significant CPU launch in, well, ever.

Why is this CPU more significant than the 8088, Pentium, or Pentium M? As the second new chip produced after a series of embarrassing losses to archrival AMD, the Core i7 will answer for the world whether Intel is prepared to ride the momentum of its Core 2 launch with another winning chip or if it’s content to rest on its laurels, as it did with the Pentium 4.

Core i7 also represents a major new direction for Intel, which has stubbornly clung to the ancient front-side-bus architecture and discrete memory controller for years. Indeed, with its triple-channel integrated DDR3 memory controller and chip-to-chip interconnect, the block map of a Core i7 looks more like an Athlon 64 than a Core 2 chip.

Intel actually has three quad-core Core i7 CPUs ready: the top-end 3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme Edition, the performance-oriented 2.93GHz Core i7-940, and the midrange 2.66GHz Core i7-920. For the most part, all three are exactly the same except for clock speeds, multiplier locking (only the Extreme is unlocked), and QuickPath Interconnect speed. See the chart on page 42 for details.

The bigger issue is how Core i7 performs. To find out, we ran the Extreme 965 against AMD’s fastest proc as well as Intel’s previous top gun in a gauntlet of benchmarks. Read on for the results.

Continue reading for our comprehensive review and benchmarks!

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