Core Blimey! Intel Launches Core i3, i5 and i7 Chips

At an event held in Sydney on Thursday night, Intel launched their 2010 chip range. There was plenty on display thanks to the multitude of PC makers in attendance, demonstrating their latest wares, which were all equipped with Intel's shiny new silicon.

Intel's announcement ran the full gamut of PC chips, including 25 new CPUs, a bunch wireless N adapter and PC chipsets. According to the Intel bods in attendance, we can look forward to more than 400 notebook and desktop PCs from computer makers using the new silicon over 2010.

The big news from the event were Intel's brand spanking new CPUs, branded the Core family (the Core i3, Core i5, through to the Core i7). Components on the new chips are tiny (at 32 nanometres, we're talking electron microscope tiny) thanks to a new chip manufacturing process that Intel have invested US$7 billion on.

This is good news for PC buyers as PCs packing Intel's new hardware are going to be way more energy efficient, which translates directly into big improvements in notebook battery life and lower power bills for desktop PCs. Teeny tiny chip making processes aside, Intel have also bundled some pretty clever technologies that'll also result in some serious performance gains for new PCs.

Both the Core i7 and Core i5 processors have what Intel call "turbo boost technology" under their hood. It may sound like something you'd find on a used Jap import, but it makes a massive difference to PC performance by intelligently ramping up the CPU's speed on the fly.

The other hoopy piece of tech trickery Intel have also worked into their new CPUs is hyper-threading. This allows the processor to handle multiple threads of data simultaneously within each processor core, giving PCs a serious shot in the arm, especially when running multiple applications at the same time.

According to the Intel folks at the event, Intel engineers also worked closely with Microsoft to optimise the Core i3, i5 and i7 range for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The other big news at the event concerned graphics. Until now, PC manufacturers have had to use separate graphics chips on PC motherboards. This is all about to change as the Core i3, i5 and i7 all have their own graphics baked-in. The bonus for PC buyers is that the number of components needed to make a PC decreases, which in turn should translate into improved PC prices.

The integrated graphics demoed were more than up to rendering smooth HD video and delivering playable frame rates on most basic 3D games, but hard core gamers are likely to seek out an external video card to really take advantage of the raw grunt of Intel's new processors.

Assuming your PC has an expansion slot to take a graphics card, adding one will temporarily disable Intel's built-in graphics hardware.

Interestingly, the tricky and largely unworkable compromise that is gamer friendly notebooks with good battery life also looks set to improve thanks to what Intel calls "switchable graphics", which allows users who play graphics-intense games on gamer notebooks using separate high performance graphics hardware to then automatically switch back to Intel's more energy efficient integrated graphics for less graphically demanding apps as needed.

If the desktop, notebook and other PCs being showcased at the launch event by Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP and numerous other local manufactures are anything to go by, PC buyers in 2010 can look forward to slimmer, faster, more HD media savvy and energy efficient PCs sporting vastly improved battery life.