IDF Spring 2007: PCs to be 40 per cent faster

Intel says the processors running your next PC will be 40 per cent faster than even today's latest Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors. We already know that Intel's new chip family, Penryn, will be here before the first sleet of the winter, but at the Beijing Spring Intel Developer Forum ( IDF ) the company unveiled yet more performance details about its new chip line, a die-shrink of the Core 2 processor generation.

Intel told us back in January that a more efficient 45nm process tech - the way the processors are made - together with new materials will increase power efficiency across the silicon.

"Welcome to the era of multi-core, an era in which all of our computing capabilities will multiply our own personal capabilities," enthused Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, in his opening address.

"This Beijing developer forum will show how our multiple innovations go hand in hand with evolutions in social networking, PC and TV entertainment, online commerce and other growing demands on the Internet," Rattner continued.

"Today, Intel is delivering a breadth of multicore processors worldwide and a product roadmap providing the incredible performance boost and energy efficiency needed to put the consumer more in control of the information age."

Patrick Gelsinger of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group talked about the performance of the new Penryn family. For desktop PCs, he said to expect increases of about 15 per cent for imaging-related applications; 25 per cent for 3-D rendering; more than 40 per cent for gaming; and speeds more than 40 per cent faster for video encoding.

The figures were attained using a pre-production 45nm Hi-k Intel quad-core processor running at 3.33 Gigahertz (GHz) with a 1333 Megahertz (MHz) front side bus (FSB) and 12MB cache, versus the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800 announced last week with all four cores running at 2.93GHz with a 1066MHz front side bus and 8MB cache.

Plans for other desktop products also filled the first day of the Beijing IDF, including an update to Intel's Viiv platform. The next-generation of the tech will be based on Intel's 3 Series chipset family, due before the middle of the year.

The new chipsets will have native support for Windows Vista 's DirectX 10 graphics engine plus support for DDR3 memory, PCI Express 2.0 and Intel Turbo Memory for faster boot times - the latter technology was previously codenamed Robson.