Intel’s long-awaited Nehalem chips are arriving in small samples at the end of the year. The first new architecture since the Core 2 Duo in 2006, the new chip boasts many exciting features including an integrated memory controller, a new bus architecture, wild overclockability and greatly-enhanced performance.
But, there’s one tiny, teensy little problem: All that high-performance DDR3 will more or less deep six the Nehalem.
While the JEDEC specification calls for voltages no greater than 1.5v, overclocking-happy memory manufacturers have been happy to push 1.8 – 2.1v for the new DDR3 standard. Voltages at these levels, now so closely tied to the chip, are apparently enough to permanently damage the CPU. Vendors are hustling to revamp and recertify their tri-channel DDR3 packages.
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