Intel Core i7 920 and 940 CPU review

Very occasionally it takes our own readers here at Elite Bastards to give me a slap on the wrist and remind me of some broken promise that I made, and our Intel Core i7 review is just such an occasion.  As our regular readers will doubtless have noticed, we've been using a Core i7 CPU for our test rig almost constantly since Intel's new architecture was released to the public, and on a number of occasions I've promised our own comprehensive analysis of the "Nehalem" architecture and its performance, before other issues and items have distracted me and left said review on the back burner time after time.

Well, here we are, almost six months late to the party, but better late than never, with our look over Intel's first Core i7 offerings from the desktop.  In this review we'll be taking a look at both non-Extreme Edition Core i7 parts, examining the performance of both the 920 and 940 CPUs to see what they have to offer against a run of the mill Core 2 Quad offering for anybody contemplating an upgrade at this moment in time, as well as discussing Core i7's underlying "Nehalem" architecture and how it differs from the Core 2 range of parts.