Intel Nehalem Preview/Benches - Slaughters Core2

[FatRakoon]

IBM PC combatible (Ok im oldschool and dont like the phrase Wintel)

At last... Someone who speaks my language.

Unfortunately however we might like to "Honey" over it, we cannot deny the fact that its still an intel design of the Z80, so as much as I too hate the term Wintel or even worse, the term Intel Compatible, it is in fact just as correct as IBM Compatible.

 

[Corasik]

At last... Someone who speaks my language.

Unfortunately however we might like to "Honey" over it, we cannot deny the fact that its still an intel design of the Z80, so as much as I too hate the term Wintel or even worse, the term Intel Compatible, it is in fact just as correct as IBM Compatible.

Actually the Z80 was designed by Federico Faggin who had previously worked at intel on the 8080 processor. It was software compatible with the intel 8080 chip, but offered better performance and additional features.

The 8086 is the real entry into IBM and the Clones, a true 16bit chip, designed so that 8080 code could be easily ported, but not compatibile that you could actually copy 8080 source code and expect it to work. IBM took the cheaper hybrid for its first PC the 8088, it was a cut down 8086 core, but fitted with an 8bit interface to permit cheaper 8bit motherboard and support chips. But software wise it was the same as an 8086.

Honestly quite astonishing how fast our PC's are, while still being remarkably backwards compatible with the original IBM PC. But sure it has held back the general acceptance of more radical processors.

To be honest Intel were never far behind the motorola 68000 series. 286v 68020, 386 v 68030 etc etc etc.... Most would consider the Motorola's had a slight performance edge, but it wasnt massive.

As already said, its software bloat, lack of optimization and an extremely feature rich, but bloated OS which really limits performance of PC's.

 

[Corasik]

Should be gratefull that IBM insisted that Intel gave the blueprints of 8086/80286 to AMD.. IBM didnt want to have to rely on just Intel as the source of their processors (Although in the early days I dont believe IBM actually bought a single AMD processor). The clones on the other hand benifited quite greatly from amd's 8086 and 80286 processors, which were 100% compatible (naturally build from intels blueprints), and a fair bit cheaper.

Wonder where we would be today if AMD hadnt been in a position to quickly develop a rival compatible processor. Perhaps due to performance limitations we would have completely abandoned x86 IBM Compatibility altogether!

 

[Randell]

What I am saying is that back then if the example PC ran at 500MHZ and the tasks given to it were entered at the speed the user could enter the information. The PC did the job near instantaniously.
Using todays PC, the user cannot enter the information any quicker and the PC even though its processing power is not just 3000Mhz but many times that and yet the tasks that the PC is asked of are not really all that much quicker.

Am I any clearer?

you're not taking into account processing intensive tasks that have sped up though are you? I'll excluding gaming and other 3d apps, which drives a lot of development. Take MP3 and video encoding, HD playback etc tasks that do use the processor power we have now, that are faster or now pssoible than an old CPU's. Yes modern PC's are overspecced for home web browsing and word processing, but I appreciate how much quicker and faster I can view photo's, edit video's rip CD's etc. But my Dad still uses his win98 500mhz PIII as it is good enough for his use!

 

[Stelly]

my god that is quite fast... I think that I will have to get myself one of these

Stelly

 

[Stelly]

Oh the hypocrisy!

You've just bought a quad, which is still hardly utilised outside of specialist applications such as rendering or encoding, then criticise those who'll dare to buy Nehalem for just wanting to "have the latest thing".

When Nehalem arrives, how will those buying it be any different than you are buying a Q9450 now!?

couldnt have put it better myself

Stelly

 

[nikebee]

I know all that, but in an office, you will not be encoding DVDs, listening to MP3 and recordign a TV program will you?

No but in work I regularly have Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Fireworks, VNC, SQL Server Management Studio (with about 20 or more tables open), 3 Visual Basic projects, Firefox with numerous tabs, Internet Explorer with numerous tabs a fair few Explorer windows open and a fair whack of notepad files open all at the same time.

Moving away from that sort of job role, our staff on the sales team and first line support team regularly have about 10+ Internet Explorer tabs open, 3 Booking Systems open, Excel with numerous workbooks or spreadsheets open, and a few Word Documents open too. That said, there is also AntiVirus software running in the background...

The added bonus of having a faster processors, more memory and in general better computers has helped even the most basic user become more willing to do multiple things at the same time.

While not everyone will be burning/encoding/programming/designing/writing all at the same time - I would wager that their ability to have multiple Word documents open, Spreadsheets open with other software at the same time along with more background processes... has helped them no end in their jobs.

 

[nikebee]

Oh the hypocrisy!

You've just bought a quad, which is still hardly utilised outside of specialist applications such as rendering or encoding, then criticise those who'll dare to buy Nehalem for just wanting to "have the latest thing".

When Nehalem arrives, how will those buying it be any different than you are buying a Q9450 now!?

Absolutely spot on

I may or may not be getting Nehalem around release. My Q6600, 8800GTX and 4GB ram suits me perfect for now for what I use it for

If prices are right then I may be persuaded to purchase after a few weeks/months and I'll move my current setup into my HTPC, and flog my current HTPC setup

 

[FatRakoon]

Snippety-Snip

Ok, I see.

Im not opening my eyes at all am I? - Not really.

I still say that for the vast majority of users out there, the power of a PC is quite often more than they truly need, but yes, I also see what you mean now.

 

[Fop]

FatRakoon, the fact is, PCs are getting more powerful, and software gets heavier - look at the install sizes and lengths of say Microsoft Office 2007, etc... I tried installing it on a 4 gig HDD, 128 mb ram copy of XP with some AMD processor, and i couldn't cos of a lack of free space that occured when i needed to also install XP SP2...

I'm pretty sure Vista with it's unneeded services and all of that will boot up faster than a windows 95 pc...

for example, look at Vista's minimuim requirements. And compare them to the minimum requirements of Windows 98... What does it say to you that i can apparently run windows 98 on my phone (HTC wizard, go to XDA_developers.com for proof, it's somewhere there) but i can't run windows vista?

As new software comes out, it becomes heavier and heavier and needs more powerful to run. Game install sizes can explain this easily. Not to mention, as Easy says, we are getting more PC savvy and starting to multitask more.

That's just MS and lazy programming though, some bloat is inevitable, but look at Linux compared to MS stuff and see the difference.

And at the end of the out side of gaming, graphics work and very specialist use (protein folding), you can do most home type things more or less as fast on a PC from 2001 as you can on a modern one today (although you'll have to use a different OS).

 

[platinum87]

Might be still worth buying a multi/fsb locked cpu then.

Still a shame they won't overclock though. I think I would spend £300-£400 on a 2.66Ghz unlocked Nehalem if I thought under decent cooling I could get it up to 3.6 - 3.8Ghz.

are you serious? that isnt fair, only us maniacs over clock anything, normal people dont, it wont hit there profits!! guess we will have to frame intel for some sort of terrorist activity and have them shot by the CIA


PS.. has any1 used insanely clocked pc to boot win 98. should be faster than vista?

 

[kppanic]

"I really don't know...

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...42/ai_18449855

I do agree that a DEC Alpha was 2x - 3x floating point perf compared to a Pentium II... but then..... imagine trying to... run any kind of software that was available back then on this RISC... as a matter of fact... today... ewwww...

Yeah, I'd expect a $30,000 Alpha system to outperform a $3,000 Intel system, yup."

If you don't really know - keep your uninformed opinions to yourself

you don't quite get it do you, this is a CPU thread - Dec's chip was cheaper and faster - it's RISC design was far ahead of what Intel could deliver - even today Intel's faster design is pretty slow compared to something like IBM Power designs...

I could get a Alpha based PC for roughly the same price as a Pentium Pro based PC- they were't $30,000 (the workstations perhaps but not the PC's).

it's a real shame we're stuck with Wintel... imagine a world running Power5 4.7Ghz based Linux PC's - my world anyway, thats what we run at work (ok servers not pc's) this stuff absolutely slaughters what Intel can bring to the table! its a shame they don't put them in PC's anymore

But that's where it stops. DEC's Alpha was a winning RISC design over Intel's CISC. But that was it, and that's why no one uses Alpha anymore. It's just like saying OHOH my CELL on PS3 is OMFGWTFPWN your Core2Quad at folding!!!! kk.. Relax there a bit, you know?

The market demanded CISC, and still requires CISC. If you raelly raelly wanted the Power to be the mainstream PC... You'd have to change EVERYTHING else - something absolutely we're not ready for.

I, just like you, know what other CPUs are capable of, and i did own an Alpha ws way back in the 90's. I am not an inherently non-Intel CPU bashing person. =p

To sum up, you just can't say that Alpha's RISC design was superior and therefore should have taken over Intel's CISC.

 

[elpedro]

What kind of price drops are we going to see with the Core2 CPUs and 775 mobos? I mean if they are gonna plummet in price, would it not make sense to build a cheap DDR3 system using Core2 and as Nehalem hits mainstream, swap out your mobo and CPU?

I've been sceptical of holding out for Nehalem, my budget isnt massive (£700-£800 for a full build) and I'm wonder if what I just said makes sense? Even if you were to get 3 gigs of DDR3 and say a GTX280 - plant them on a Nehalemm mobo and CPU in a years time and your still gonna have a tasty PC.

Nehalem release time

• q6600 - £100?
• Asus Maximus Extreme x38 - £120?
• GTX 280 - £350?

 

[PikKOn]

I guess this CPU would require a new mobo + RAM right? So I am currently running a Duo which would generally mean I would need to invest in a new Mobo, RAM, CPU and perhaps PSU...

 

[kppanic]

I guess this CPU would require a new mobo + RAM right? So I am currently running a Duo which would generally mean I would need to invest in a new Mobo, RAM, CPU and perhaps PSU...

it looks like you can use DDR2 or DDR3 depending on the mobo manufacturer. As for the socket, yeah it's an LGA1366 so your current Core 2 motherboard won't work.

 

[PikKOn]

But wouldn't these CPUs be tailored towards DDR3? I realise DDR3 will be slow at first due to timings but will slowly improve... but I read somewhere that DDR3 is suited for these CPUs. Getting DDR2 would kinda be a step back...

 

[kppanic]

But wouldn't these CPUs be tailored towards DDR3? I realise DDR3 will be slow at first due to timings but will slowly improve... but I read somewhere that DDR3 is suited for these CPUs. Getting DDR2 would kinda be a step back...

But the catch would be that you have the freedom to keep the DDR2 RAM until one is comfortable to upgrade to DDR3. I don't know much about DDR3 performance yet, but the keyword here would be that DDR3 will slowly catch up. Maybe it won't be a bad idea after all, as the DDR3 price will settle eventually.