Gigabyte Invitational Editor's Day 2009 - Lynnfield / P55

As details of upcoming Lynnfield processors and P55 chipset-based motherboards hit the scene, there is a growing buzz within the industry about the effects of bringing Nehalem down into the mainstream market segments. While X58 and Core i7 performance dominates, complete system pricing has kept some average consumers looking to upgrade wistfully on the fence. That roadblock will likely be cleared by P55 as the companies involved eagerly expect to see widespread adoption of the high performing and relatively affordable platform.  

On August 18, 2009, Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, California was host to Gigabyte's Invitational Press Day. The affair promised to provide an informative look at Intel's Lynnfield processor, along with the P55 platform. Representatives from Gigabyte, Intel, and Kingston were available to provide demonstrations and answer questions on their upcoming technology and product line-ups.     

Gigabyte's high end P55 motherboard

	Tony Liao - Gigabyte Vice President Greeting speech
	Dan Snyder - Intel PR Manager Intel Keynote: Lynnfield technology
	Mark Tekunoff - Kingston Senior Product Manager P55 memory performance demonstration
	Francois Piednoel - Intel Senior Performance Analyst Lynnfield demonstration and Turbo technology
	Colin Brix - Gigabyte Technical Marketing Manager Smart 6 demonstration and motherboard line up
	Charles Wirth - Xtremesystems.org Owner P55 overclocking demonstration

After a brief greeting and introduction by the Vice President of Gigabyte, Tony Liao, we got right into the important details as keynote speaker, Francois Piednoel of Intel, covered Lynnfield technology and its performance benefits. Francois spent some time explaining the advantages of the new platform as well as Lynnfield's Turbo feature. Basically, Intel has refined their Turbo mode technology to provide even more performance for threaded applications and he explained  how consumers will benefit from these advancements. A new application was also demoed in order to show CPU clock variation in real time, which allows users to monitor Turbo technology at work. The tool is called TMonitor and is available to download for free right here. We aren't allowed to steal the thunder of the upcoming Lynnfield reviews by talking about specific numbers but the performance increases over Core 2 looked impressive and the energy savings will likely be a major selling point too.