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Octo core - when? for intel and AMD i mean

Intels should be out before the turn of the year.

Tho it will almost certainly be server-class chips first.
 
I'm fairly sure Nehalem will launch as four and eight core chips.

Aren't they also meant to have hyperthreading?
 
if the server ones are due later on this year, then hopefully 1st or 2nd Q next year for consumer ones.

a better question might be, when will 8-core cpu's from either company be affordable?
will AMD release 'straight' 8 core chips or will they all have one GPU core?

there is so much info out there that's contradictory, it would be nice to consolidate the info.
 
Even though I'm the one pointing out that 99% of people get no use out of more power most of the time, its very true that people that need massive cpu power will be drooling at the thought of better chips.

However Nehalem is a ARCHITECHTURE that scales from 2-8 cores, its launching with 4 cores only, and only the extreme edition in 2008. Lower end quad cores in early 2009 which means more than likely 8 cored version not till mid 2009 at the very earliest. Not sure if they are planning 8 cores on 45nm , or if they are waiting, I think 32nm is the next stop? with the power of mem controller onboard 8 cores worth of power and mem controller on 45nm might be a bit OTT.

Skulltrail, as is, won't be available for Nehalem, certainly not at launch. Nehalem is on a bodged xeon chipset, the platform will need a new chipset and its very unlikely you'd get anything too soon. Yorkfield skulltrail, or any dual or more xeon setup is probably the best bet for pure power at the moment.

Anyone that recommends waiting for them for ANYONE who basically games, is giving crappy advice though. Frankly I'm not sure Nehalem will even be giving much of a performance boost at all over yorkfield, maybe better scaling when using that 4th core at 100% as 2 or 3 cores tend to scale very well right now, but the 4th maxed out, maybe slightly bandwidth starved by then.
 
Seems like they will still be making single cores:

4340-neh6b.jpg
 
Frankly I'm not sure Nehalem will even be giving much of a performance boost at all over yorkfield, maybe better scaling when using that 4th core at 100% as 2 or 3 cores tend to scale very well right now, but the 4th maxed out, maybe slightly bandwidth starved by then.

We'll see. Nehelem will be the second version of NGMA, unlike Penryn its not just a die shrink of Conroe. It should be more like the jump from Pentium to Pentium 2 etc. Hopefully we'll see improvements clock for clock on single threaded applications.

The integrated memory controllers, and improved bus between cpu and peripherals should all boost performance.

The return of Hyperthreading should bring some performance gains to heavily multithreaded applications. Who knows what the IPC will be, intel could be including additional decoders over Conroe's 4. The higher the IPC, the better the gains from Hyperthreading, so it could easily beat the old P4's 25% gains.

The unified cache for all cores will certainly help scaling of multithreaded applications, but hopefully Nehelem will offer worthwhile gains on singlethreaded applications as well.. Afterall, intel have to keep AMD under pressure, and Phenom is pretty much clock for clock a match in performance for Conroe(Kentsfield), so Intel will want a faster more efficent processor incase AMD sort out their clock speed/power consumption issues.
 
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