Intel’s Initial “Westmere” Processor Models Leaked

Want in on some juicy details about Intel’s upcoming Clarkdale (Westmere) processors? Well, wait no longer, thanks to a German e-tailer leaking most of the information people care about, including model names, frequencies, TDPs and even pricing. As a quick refresher, Westmere will be Intel’s first, and also the industry’s first, 32nm consumer processor architecture. That alone makes them special, but along with that also comes an integrated graphics chip, snuggled up right beside the CPU on the same subtrate.

This isn’t quite a “fusion” design, as both the CPU and GPU are separated, but both are located side-by-side  on the same chip, resulting in less room being taken on the motherboard. The first Westmere chips will come in the form of Clarkdale, the desktop PC variant. All Clarkdale chips will be dual-core, and for all we know right now, all models featuring an IGP may never move up to  quad-core ranks. The reason is space, so if it did happen, we wouldn’t likely see see it until 22nm. Fortunately, most people who are concerned over quad-cores are not concerned with integrated graphics, so this issue should effect almost no one. For the performance-hounds, the six-core Gulftown, based on Westmere, will be the next chip to look forward to.

At the low-end, Intel will be kicking off Core i3 with two models, the i3-530 and i3-540. What earns them their Core i3 moniker is the lack of the ever-popular Turbo feature, which boosts a processor’s overall speed by a fixed ratio when it’s under load. These two chips will be clocked at 2.93GHz and 3.06GHz, respectively, have a TDP of just 73W, and retail for $125.95 and $146.56.

On the Core i5 side, the company will be launching four models: Core i5-650 ($195), i5-660 ($213), i5-661 ($213) and i5-670 ($306). The latter is what Intel would consider its highest-end offering, thanks to its 3.46GHz clock speed, but the i5-661 will be the more appealing option for those craving the best graphics performance from an integrated chip, as the GPU is boosted from 733MHz to 900MHz. The rest of the line-up is also clocked at 733MHz, so the i5-661 will offer the best graphics performance out of all the launch Westmere chips. Of course, what matters is the performance in general, and that’s yet to be seen.

Coming to the i5 family of products, these processors support Hyper-Threading and you should see four threads in Task Manager. Depending on a model, Turbo will accelerate one core between 3.46 and 3.73 GHz, with the only odd model being i5-661. 661 carries almost identical specs if it wasn’t for the clock – integrated graphics works at 900 MHz and we would expect Intel to push this unit hard, proving that 900MHz clock is sufficient for acceptable 3D performance.