THERE WERE NEHALEM'S aplenty on the show floor at IDF, not quite as many as the keynotes, but more than enough to make a strong showing. The real question is how fast are they?

Intel was going out of their way not to put out any hard data, but at least one enterprising person, Paolo 'Green Sweater' Corsini managed to snap a few pics of the appropriate screens.

Nehalem workstation

The short story is that the boxes report as 2.53GHz but they are underclocked to 2.13. This lines up well with what we have been hearing for early silicon, and is quite a bit down on intended release clocks. Don't read anything into this, it is still quite early, and these may not be current steppings.

Reports of 3.2GHz boxes floating around are flat incorrect. The signs at the show were initially wrong, and people reporting that can't tell the difference between a Skulltrail or Harpertown box and a Nehalem rig by sight.

In any case, Nehalem is looking healthy and happy for this stage in it's life. Early reports of CSI problems have either been fixed or were incorrect from the start. There were enough stable 2S boxes on the floor to preclude catastrophic bugs, and with enough time for 2-3 more spins before release, even the little ones should be ironed out in time. µ

See Also
Nehalem sits cosily with 288GB on a dual-socket mobo