After an intentional delay to cope with overstock problems, a number of sources in Taiwan have reportedly confirmed today that Intel's next generation Lynnfield chips and P55 motherboards will arrive in stores on September 1st. The so-called Core i5 parts come as mainstream variants to the Nehalem micro architecture, though unfortunately the use of a new socket (LGA-1156) sort of defeats the whole 'more affordable' idea for users seeking to simply upgrade to a faster processor.
However, there are some fundamental architectural differences between Core i7 and the new Lynnfield chips that Intel believes warrant this socket change. Namely that the cheaper Core i5 will feature an integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller, rather than triple-channel DDR3 on the higher end platform, and a DMI controller instead of QPI for communication with the Intel P55 (Ibexpeak) chipset.
Pictures and benchmarks of a prototype Lynnfield processor first appeared online earlier this week, giving us a peek at the level of performance these chips will offer, and now Anandtech has secured a Lynnfield sample as well and posted a more in-depth review. Meanwhile, there has been no shortage of P55-based motherboard previews around the web.