P55 chipset Core i5 motherboard makes an appearance at CeBIT

The eagle-eyed folks over at Hexushas spotted a Gigabyte GA-IBP at CeBIT. So what's so special about this board? It's a P55 chipset, socket LGA1156 motherboard for Intel's upcoming Core i5 processor.

Some background. The Core i5 is a Lynnfield processor which is itself based on the Nehalem Intel Core microarchitecture. It features an integrated memory controller supporting 2-channel DDR3, hyper-threading technology (which means that four cores translates into processing capacity for eight threads), features 8MB of Intel Smart Cache, and supports Turbo Boost technology and an integrated PCI-Express graphics controller. The socket for this chip differs from the LGA1366 used by the Core i7 (Bloomfield). So what's the difference between the Core i5 and Core i7? Core i5 CPUs don't make use of Intel's QuickPath Interconnect.

So, what's the big deal with Core i5? Simple, it'll allow consumers access to Intel's next generation microarchitecture at a lower price point than Core i7. What kind of price point? Well, boards should be around $150 and chips about $200. Expect these Q3 '09.

P55 chipset motherboards should also have a long arc, given that they will also be able to support not only the 45nm Lynnfield Core i5s but also the 32nm Clarksdale pieces which have the integrated GPU.

Windows 7 plus some new mid-range CPUs could help reinvigorate the flagging tech sector.