We have a little song we sing here at APH Networks. It goes along with the tune of Taio Cruz's Dynamite radio hit that plays every five minutes on every North American popular music station. "I put my foot down to the floor sometimes / Saying VTEC / Just kicked in yo. / I want to mount my laser jammers on / Saying VTEC / Just kicked in yo." (Which replaces the chorus, "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes...") I put my foot down to the floor sometimes. If you look at the products Intel has been spewing out to the mainstream and enthusiast markets in the past five years or so, "foot to the floor" is a pretty good description with regards to the incredible performance you are getting for the money, as compared to computer equipment in general, say, just ten years ago. When we reviewed the Intel Core i5-750 quad core desktop processor last year, its performance easily eclipsed the king of the hill $1000 Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 released just a couple of years before. For $200. More than a year after the release of Lynnfield Core i5 and i7 processors, Intel is back again with their latest release of code named "Sandy Bridge" processors. The bad news is that the traditional overclocking method by raising the processor's base clock does not work with second generation Core CPUs, because the new CPUs use a single clock generator controlling the speed of all electrical buses. The good news is, if you are willing to pay an extra $10 and give up business oriented features such as Intel TXT and Intel VT-d, the company will happily sell you a K edition processor with an unlocked multiplier up to 57x. With your mom, your uncle, your next door neighbor and just about everyone else hitting at least 4.5GHz for some Core i7-980X smoking performance (Well, and two less cores, but how many do you really need anyway?) at a fraction of the price, my advice to you is to get your credit card out and ready right about... now. Possibly your car keys, if you are going retail. Still not convinced? That's okay. We have eleven pages of geek talk coming up for you next. Actually, just a slight update since I wrote everything before this sentence prior January 31st, you might just need to wait a bit on Intel's now infamous P67 bug, since you can't buy any LGA 1155 boards right now.



Link: APH Networks