Intel Partners See 'Easy' Upgrade Path With Xeon 5600 Chips

One word to describe upgrade opportunities around Intel's new Xeon 5600 series of server and workstation processors? "Easy," said a number of Intel system builder partners following Tuesday's launch of the chip giant's Westmere-class series of quad-core and six-core Xeon chips.

"It's a complete drop in to the existing platforms, which is great," said Todd Swank, director of marketing at Burnsville, Minn.-based system builder Nor-Tech. "With just a BIOS upgrade needed, it makes it easy to upgrade our current Intel server offerings."

Swank, like many Intel partners in attendance at this week's Intel Solutions Summit (ISS) in Las Vegas, said a simple swap-out of last year's quad-core Xeon 5500 series chips for a new six-core Xeon 5600 series part would deliver "an automatic 30 percent increase in performance."

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