At a news conference in Taipei, Intel showed off a range of new stuff, including several high-performance desktop and low-cost server processors, the new single chip P55 chipset and a range of products from third party manufacturers that support the new Intel technology. On the processor side, the company showed off two new Core i7 processors, Core i7-860 and Core i7-870, and the first Core i5 processor, Core i5-750.
The new desktop chips were formerly codenamed “Lynnfield,” and are based on Intel’s Nehalem microarchitecture, providing very high performance for digital media, productivity, gaming and other resource hungry tasks. All three are Halogen-free, Lead-free and feature Intel Turbo Boost Technology. The Core i7 processors also support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology.
The new Core i7 and i5 processors are the first Intel processors to integrate both a 16-lane PCI Express 2 graphics port and two-channel memory controller, enabling all input/output and manageability functions to be handled by the single-chip Intel P55 Express Chipset. The P55 Express Chipset is the first from Intel to be composed of one chip, not two.
Result for: hips
Following a number of complaints at the revelation that Sony imposed a block on Intel’s Virtualization Technology (VT) in some VAIO models - which is present in the Core 2 Duo chip that ships with affected VAIO notebooks - Sony has promised The Register that it will make an effort to clarify the policy more clearly on its websites.
Customers were unhappy to learn about the limitation in the VAIO BIOS after buying a model which Sony recommends for the upcoming Windows 7, because it blocks Windows 7’s XP-mode. It is a feature that has received considerable media attention and put some minds at ease about going with Windows 7, so it isn’t inconceivable that customers who saw Sony advertise VAIO notebooks for Windows 7 assumed they could use this feature, even if they didn’t know the VT technology is included in the CPU.
If they did know, then they most likely would have been unaware that Sony has disabled it since its advertisements fail to declare the fact. “I’ll take the action to be clearer on our site that VT will not be enabled,” Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert promised The Register.
He said the Vaio Z series would be “top of the list” for getting VT support in the US but said he could not comment on getting the BIOS of Sony VAIO’s in Europe working with VT.
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Microsoft has come out in defense of the much-anticipated Windows 7 operating system after a number of blogs and other sources flaunted a discovered bug as a potential “show-stopper”. Some had reported that a bug with the operating system’s CHKDSK utility could delay the planned rollout, which is being watched closely as hopes are high of Windows 7 providing a much needed jab in the arm for the PC industry.
Screenshots of the Windows Task Manager depicting the CHKDSK process eating up several gigabytes of memory (apparently leading to a BSOD in cases) have circulated around the blogosphere, but Microsoft is denying that the bug is in the Windows software. Instead, Microsoft is pointing at a chipset controller issue as the culprit and advising customers to update their chipset drivers to the latest versions providing by the motherboard manufacturer.
Microsoft’s Windows division President Steven Sinofsky said that the company has not reproduced the crash or experienced any crashes with CHKDSK in any measurable number. “While we appreciate the drama of ‘critical bug’ and then the pickup of ’showstopper’ that I’ve seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level,” he said.
He continued: “Bugs that are so severe as to require immediate patches and attention would have to have no workarounds and would generally be such that a large set of people would run across them in the normal course of using their PC.” Sinofsky went on to say that this is not a big issue but that Microsoft will continue to pursue and investigate any issues with Windows 7 if/as they arise.
