Gulftown review

Nuwidol · 23 Nov 2009 at 12:43

Just read this over at pclab.pl. Not a bad little test of an engineering sample.

They said at the end that the chip wouldn't be good for gamers. Don't know where they get there ideas from. The chip clearly beats all other architectures at similar clocks...

http://pclab.pl/art39718.html

JonJ678 · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:18

The conclusion regarding gaming is that a few % improvement in frame rate for a processor which is expected to cost over a grand is a very poor rate of return.

Thanks for the link, good to see it working on a variety of boards.

setter · 23 Nov 2009 at 13:27

Tbh ive seen no real benefits in games with my i7 compared to the q9550 and q6600 i had previously, the number of games that even use 4 cores is so small, let alone 6.

Random Guy · 23 Nov 2009 at 15:05

setter said:
Tbh ive seen no real benefits in games with my i7 compared to the q9550 and q6600 i had previously, the number of games that even use 4 cores is so small, let alone 6.

I have to disagree. Compared to my old Q6700 at 3.2 GHz, my stock-clocked i7 feels smoother in the games that I have played since the upgrade (mostly Unreal 3, but then again, we are talking about Unreal Engine 3.0 after all, so a lot of related games).

Greebo · 23 Nov 2009 at 15:11

As for whether i7 gives you a performance boost in games depends on your graphics card.

Recent reviews especially with 58xx in xfire or 5890 show quite big boosts from running an i7 over the q9xxx cpus.

However, since the gulftown is from the same stable of cpu's, there will be little improvement unless a game uses/needs all those cores.

setter · 23 Nov 2009 at 15:16

Random Guy said:
I have to disagree. Compared to my old Q6700 at 3.2 GHz, my stock-clocked i7 feels smoother in the games that I have played since the upgrade (mostly Unreal 3, but then again, we are talking about Unreal Engine 3.0 after all, so a lot of related games).

Both my q6600 and q9550 were clocked at 3.8ghz, i still have the same gtx 280 graphics card though, perhaps with a more modern card such as an ati 5 series things may be different.

Geek. · 23 Nov 2009 at 15:31

many thanks it's a good read.

Sylver123 · 23 Nov 2009 at 17:02

I wonder how Gulftown will perform with two of Nvidia's upcoming Fermi graphics cards in SLI or 3-Way SLI, as i7 is known to give better gaming performance advantages when used with multi graphics card setup.

Nuwidol · 23 Nov 2009 at 19:56

JonJ678 said:
The conclusion regarding gaming is that a few % improvement in frame rate for a processor which is expected to cost over a grand is a very poor rate of return.

I realise that its going to be a very costly CPU but looking at the benchmarks it out performed everything else. This instantly gives it appeal to a lot of people.

That OC potential is just insane as well. Going by those preliminary numbers with a beta bios it looks as if few lucky people will more than likely be able to approach a 24/7 OC of nearly 5GHZ.

Greebo · 23 Nov 2009 at 20:03

Nuwidol said:
I realise that its going to be a very costly CPU but looking at the benchmarks it out performed everything else. This instantly gives it appeal to a lot of people.

That OC potential is just insane as well. Going by those preliminary numbers with a beta bios it looks as if few lucky people will more than likely be able to approach a 24/7 OC of nearly 5GHZ.

I agree but apart from the extra overclocked speed these won't help with games unless tri sli/xfire but their speed will help in other areas hence the outrageous price of around £1000 over here.

Guess it will be "serious" people with an application which needs all this power and hardcore enthusiasts who have 4 x 5870 in xfire who will buy one to claim overclocking blagging rights.

And maybe the odd rich person with more money than sense.

As much as I would love one there is no way I would spend more on the cpu alone than what my current entire system costs!

Big.Wayne · 24 Nov 2009 at 01:28

Thanks for the link!

That's the first and last Gulftown review I read heh!

macca672 · 24 Nov 2009 at 02:17

Greebo said:
Guess it will be "serious" people with an application which needs all this power and hardcore enthusiasts who have 4 x 5870 in xfire who will buy one to claim overclocking blagging rights.

hehe tad overkill for drawing willies in MS paint

OP thanks for posting, was an interesting read

xGaffner · 24 Nov 2009 at 06:43

Wow that power consumption and overclocking ability is seriously impressive.

drunkenmaster · 24 Nov 2009 at 07:20

Overclocking could be misleading as what you could get in a game that doesn't load all 6 cores fully, and whats stable with all 6 cores at 100% load will be pretty massively different, not least because 2-3cores at 50% with possibly 2-3 cores turned off completely will have massively different temps/power output than 6 cores all fully loaded.

Certainly interesting though, is there any intention for Intel to make 6 core versions on the i5 platform, or is this a strictly always going to be expensive top end and i7 setups?

Have to say I've been out of the loop on mobo's/cpu's to some degree because I've found little to no gain in upgrades over the past year or two. Not really sure what Intel's plan is for the next couple years. Been looking into whats out now/soon as my mobo is being a bit crap and replacing an AM2+ board seems stupid at this stage, but after seeing current mem prices(considering I use 8gb mem and got that for all of £75 several months ago) I think I'm going to be waiting a while for sensible prices again.

Jimmy23 · 24 Nov 2009 at 07:40

Thanks for the link was a good read.

maddness · 24 Nov 2009 at 08:23

good "but undoubtedly wallet bursting" stuff, are we looking at £999?

Admiral Huddy · 24 Nov 2009 at 08:31

JonJ678 said:
The conclusion regarding gaming is that a few % improvement in frame rate for a processor which is expected to cost over a grand is a very poor rate of return.

Wouldn't the frame rate be significantly held back by a combination of the monitor being used and/or the efficiency of thread programming in the game. Wouldn't this contribute to the poor rate?

VoG · 24 Nov 2009 at 10:11

maddness said:
are we looking at £999?

i'm guessing between £750 - £1000

HighlandeR · 24 Nov 2009 at 20:40

The benchies arent all that even a bog standard Core i7 750 is close so its like comparing a £140 chip to a 1k chip and performance still similar in games/general situations, its the 32 nm process dropping the temps/watts thats impressive to me.

I know there doing 32nm Corei5 dual cores for early next year but why not the quads...... that would have been rather amazing imo, think of the watts/coolness of that chip!

rjk · 5 Dec 2009 at 09:46

i dont understand why intel send ES chips to people who blatantly break NDA the second they recieve them

surely these people must understand that they would be blacklisted for future releases by doing this?

i saw Bit Tech had one, and they photographed it, at least they respected the NDA.
then i see shamino benching one on a classifiedX4 and it makes you wonder what makes him different to anyone else?

gulftown is going to be epic, thats a given
we all know its not aimed at games but then neither is i7 really, the average gamer still only uses a dual core system [according to steam stats]
we need to see the number crunching capabilities of gulftown to really highlight its benefits over standard nehalem cpus.