Over at Anandtech they have acquired some Intel Core i7 920 processors with the new D0 stepping and is in the middle of testing it to see if it brings any noticeable improvements, especially in the overclocking department. They have a big article coming but got so eager after seeing the first results that they just had to publish a preview first, now available for everyone to read
“The first test results just blew us away and we wanted to share one particular result today. We are still testing and will have a full article up in the near future featuring a variety of motherboards and cooling choices…”
There is no doubt that Intel’s manufacturing process has taken another leap forward and since the Core i7 family also has an integrated memory controller it’s not just the overclocking potential of the processor that has improved, but also the overclocking of the system memory.
These early results seem to point to that D0-stepped processors will require an overall lower voltage to achieve higher frequencies, and in the end also higher top frequencies.
