Com-Central.net

Intel is off planning the launch of its six-core Dunnington microprocessor, the last of the expected Core 2-based Xeon server chips before it switches over to the Nehalem microarchitecture capable of supporting eight or more cores. Dunnington, a Bangalore-designed successor to Harpertown, is still supposed to be relatively hush-hush but Intel has reportedly put three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on a die the size of a postage stamp and sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Like other Penryns, Dunnington still uses a front-side bus.

Dunnington slips into Intel’s Caneland platform and so uses the Clarksboro chipset. The dingus, which Intel has previously described as pin-compatible with the dual-core/four-socket Tigerton quad, will be two- and four-socket, meaning mainframe-like machines with 24 cores.

Intel is reportedly seeing how quickly it can get the little beast out. It was due before the first of the Nehalem chips and could appear in Q3, maybe even Q2. Dunnington doesn’t require the record two billion transistors that it takes to make Intel’s next-generation 65nm quad-core Tukwila Itanium, but it’s reportedly close.

- jackinrichmond

anyone buying a quad core needs to download/install the microsoft hotfix.. without it, cfs3 will stutter and hop around. once installed though, the difference is truly outstanding. whether the program was written for quad/dual core or not, the machine performs better - you can increase all of your quality settings to maximum and you can play at a higher resolution & dpi.