Jason Dunn
06-10-2008, 07:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3326&p=1' target='_blank'>http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipset...aspx?i=3326&p=1</a><br /><br /></div><em>"Two years ago in Taiwan at Computex 2006 Gary Key and I stayed up all night benchmarking the Core 2 Extreme X6800, the first Core micro-architecture (Conroe core) CPU we had laid our hands on. While Intel retroactively applied its tick-tock model to previous CPU generations, it was the Core micro-architecture and the Core 2 Duo in particular that kicked it all off. At the end of last year we saw the first update to Core, the first post-Conroe "tick" if you will: Penryn. Penryn proved to be a nice upgrade to Conroe, reducing power consumption even further and giving a slight boost to performance. What Penryn didn't do however was shake the world the way Conroe did upon its launch in 2006."<br /></em><br /><img border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1213119479.usr1.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br />Intel has had a "tick tock" strategy for years: the "tick" is a relatively minor, but still important improvement in their CPU (such as moving from 65nm down to 45nm), and the "tock" is a big leap forward (such as a new microarchitecture). Nehalem is a big step forward, and based on AnandTech's early preview, we're going to be seeing 30% to 40% improvements in a variety of areas such as media encoding. I can't wait!