Intel Shows Lynnfield and Clarkdale Boards

Intel showed off the first motherboards using its upcoming Lynnfield and Clarkdale microprocessors at the Computex exhibition in Taipei on Tuesday.

The Clarkdale desktop chips will make Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture more mainstream, an Intel executive said.

Clarkdale will follow Lynnfield, a successor to Intel's first Nehalem desktop chips released last year. Those chips, called Core i7, are aimed at PC enthusiasts and gamers at the high-end of the market for desktop PCs.

"Clarkdale gives us that same enthusiast Nehalem architecture but with great graphics on the product and it gets to be more mainstream," said Rob Crooke, vice president and general manager of Intel's Business Client Group. "It hits a lower price point with integrated graphics."

Intel's show exhibit included desktops from Asustek Computer and Foxconn Technology equipped with Lynnfield and Intel's P55 chipset. Intel engineers played shooter games on the PCs.

Intel also displayed Lynnfield-powered boards from Taiwanese companies Giga-byte Technology and Elitegroup Computer Systems.

Clarkdale was on display in a board from Micro-Star International (MSI), which was being used to play high-definition video clips. The board used Intel's H57 chipset, though Clarkdale is scheduled to be released alongside the P57 chipset.

Clarkdale, which will be made using a 32-nanometer process, integrates graphics processing, one of the first Intel chips to offer that feature. The first Clarkdale chips will come out of Intel's factories later this year.

The 45-nm Lynnfield will ship around September, a company representative said.