Change is coming soon. Technology has continued to evolve at break neck speed. The speed at which technology evolves is partly driven by increasing demands from the marketplace. Everyone wants more powerful systems that are highly reliable and can run faster. Hardware and software manufacturers are working in tandem to bring the next generation of computer systems to a whole new level.

It all starts from the CPU (Central Processing Unit). The CPU is like the heart of the system. Without a powerful "heart", other components cannot realize their full potential. Intel has recently announced the release of the Core i7 processors. This family of processors is radically different from previous generations. They are all quad core processors, with each core having dual threads. That means the CPU will appear to the operating system as 8 processors. Talk about power!

With more powerful processors, other components of the computer system have more processing power to utilize. An enthusiast will surely ask, "But what about the memory?" The memory of a computer system is another critical component that affects the overall speed of the system. If the memory is not upgraded, there will be a bottle neck, and even the fastest of CPUs will be rendered ineffective.

The Core processors support triple channel DDR3 memory. Memory manufacturers like Gingle have announced releases of triple channel DDR3 memory kits that are fully compatible with Intel's Core i7 processors. Furthermore, for enhanced memory performance, Intel has decided to mount the memory controllers directly onto the processor die. A high speed link is available if another processor wants to access the information on the memory controllers on another core. This means that instead of the processor having to retrieve information from external memory controllers, the processors now have direct access to the instructions. This improves performance dramatically.

Tests ran by reputable technology websites have showed improvements in all areas - graphics processing, CPU processing, and higher reliability when overclocked.

Of course, given the raw power offered by the new Core i7 processors, a better architecture has to be available to allow faster communication between the different components. For this reason, the Core i7 processors can only be used on motherboards with the X58 chipset. In other words, whoever wants to upgrade to the new Core i7 processors will have to give up their old motherboards.

The X58 motherboards support Intel Quickpath Interconnect. This is Intel's way of establishing faster communications between the various components.

The new motherboards also features support for high speed hard drives. Both internal and external disk drives can run up to 3GB/s.

Seagate recently announced the release of the Savvio 15K.2 second generation, 2.5″ hard drive. This new generation hard drive can run at 15,000 RPM (twice the speed of traditional hard drives) and can save up to 70% in terms of power consumption. For server farms that use many hard disk drives, the energy savings can amount to something substantial.

Everything appears to be pointed in the right direction - faster systems, higher reliability, and more cost savings. Enthusiasts have a lot to cheer about.