Intel’s 2012 Core i7-3820 CPU Reviewed and Thoroughly Benchmarked

Sometimes unreleased hardware has the habit of making its appearance out of nowhere and dropping right in the middle of a review, and this exactly what happened with Intel’s yet unreleased Core i7-3820.

The chip, which Intel will officially unveil in 2012, dropped right in the hands of the guys from Tom’s Hardware while they were drinking themselves “silly” in a bar hoping to scoop up a lonely Sandy-E.

With the Core i7-3820 in their hands, they proceeded with putting it through a thorough set of benchmarks to see what it is capable of, and the results of a few of these tests are available in the gallery bellow.

If you want to learn more about the CPU make sure to read the review. As far as pricing is concerned, a bar fly suggested this will be set at $285 (213 EUR).

Read more »

More AMD Radeon Tahiti 7900 Pictures Surface

AMD's Tahiti 7900 Radeon card, or one of them at any rate, has been spotted on the web just a day or so after the first pictures of a 7900 appeared. 

The video card can now be more closely studied, even though Advanced Micro Devices continues to, officially, withhold the information about it.

One thing we knew, up to now, was that this is one of the cards enabled by a high-end 28nm GPU that the Sunnyvale California company is working on.

Another apparent fact was that it has a memory interface of 384 bits.

The latter was confirmed by the new photos unearthed by VR-Zone, where the 12 memory chips are clearly visible.

There is something a bit more important about this leak, though: the power connectors.

Where the previous one had an 8-pin and a 6-pin plug, this one seems to boast two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors.

Thus, either this is a more advanced production sample, or the Radeon HD 7950 (not 7970) or perhaps even the Tahiti Pro.

That said, the new pictures show the Tahiti die rotated by 45 degrees and covered, partially, by a heatspreader.

Physically, the GPU is about as big as the Cayman but smaller than NVIDIA's GF100 or GF110.

Other specifications that can be gleamed from the leak include a 5+1 phase PWM, two CF connectors, dual BIOS switch and a TDP (thermal design power) of 150W to 225W.

Tahiti will be launched, or at least demonstrated, in January, 2012, during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012).

Some time after, the AMD Radeon HD 7800 Pitcairn will make its appearance, probably in February, as we said here.

In the meantime, more leaks are bound to happen, with or without the holiday season to interfere and make people pay attention to other things, like family and friends. And presents.

Read more »