OK, lets see what is so great about the i7...

Intel replaced the dated FSB with a few unidirectional point to point connections (QuickPath)... Good for bandwidth, except that it is nothing new... A good example is HyperTransport used by AMD. The basic concept was around 10-15 years ago, perhaps even before that (though I can't think of examples).

Intel reintroduced HyperThreading, which can make the CPU more efficient and execute more instructions per a clock cycle... But HT is meh, Intel tried it in their Pentium 4s and then chose to do without it in their Core CPUs for some reason (probably it was not worth the effort considering the performance gain).

HT (generically SMT) is nothing new, again, even in the days of the P4. IBM got to SMT in 2001, I think, and the concept has been around even before that (DEC/Compaq did work on it back in 1998).

HT itself is a bit overhyped anyway. Does anyone remember the hype with HT when it was in the P4? All those Intel ads about how great Intel was, that they, through sorcery that us mere mortals couldn't comprehend managed to get a whopping two "virtual cores" on one die! Except performance wasn't that good... 10-30% improvement is not the same as what two cores will get...

The i7 has an on-die memory controller which supports six DIMM slots. OK, so the CPU can access the memory faster for better performance, but the idea is old. Cheapish CPUs for industrial use have had on-die MCs for around 20+ years, quite a few CPUs had on-die MCs before AMD got around to using them, which is one again, before Intel.

One particularly bad thing about the memory controller in the i7 is that it doesn't have ECC support, which is important in computers when RAM is plentiful as it helps stop the RAM from becoming corrupted. Likely hood of corruption increases when you have more RAM.

The i7's L2 cache is of concern, it is not even an improvement over a previous Intel design. 8 MB of cache shared between four cores and eight threads ("virtual cores" by HT) is a bit scary. Hyperthreading doubles the memory bandwidth and cache capacity requirements. Sharing one L2 cache between four cores, eight threads is not good for both.

Knowing Intel, they probably went with "lower cost, easy design" when they chose to use a smaller shared cache, which is good for the customer, but then, it restricts HT's potential, which means you are paying more for something which doesn't work as well as it could, so you could pay less for something else (if that makes sense).

So, yes, the i7 is fast, and I would like to have one, but the hype isn't justified.

Of course, I haven't really been paying too much attention to the i7 (Intel will probably replace it next year with another model, and the hype will start all over again), so if I got something wrong in my half-rant half-amateur analysis, do tell me! :p