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When is the next jump?

ac1d1ty

ac1d1ty

ac1d1ty

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26 Jan 2007
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2,462
I've been out of the running for a bit of time, so apologies for the possibly stupid question.

I've seen things like the i5 and i7 floating around for a bit of time now, and whilst they improve nicely on the now defunct lga775, I must confess that I am hungry for a bigger stepup.

When is a "proper" new release coming? Eg something that is going to actually offer massive improvements (eg C2D replacing p4 netburst).

Cheers
 
gulftown has been confirmed to work with the 1366 Mobos but if they realise the chip itself at £800+ is going to go nowhere near most of our rigs so depends what you mean next upgrade
 
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Yes but won't gulftown show its muscle in just a few applications that are already able to support so many cores? I would say while it will offer performance increases in apps like Max, Maya and other multimedia creation tools l don't see it offering any major performance jumps on the majority of apps we are currently using.

I would say that Bulldozer has the potential to offer something performance shuttering but since we don't have many details on it we don't know for sure.
 
Lol, I am naught but a humble student, so next jump for me is one that is a sensible price (eg i7 920 pricing region).

Is Gulftown the only thing on the near horizon? :( Sounds quite boring tbh
 
When we are all sucked dry and everyone has either quads or hexa core systems. Then we might see them after that I hope. Why would they sell themselves short of revenue. ??

McT
 
i5 has only been around for 4 weeks. I know that computers move on quickly but not THAT quickly!

Expect sandy bridge architecture in 18-24months perhaps?

Most of the upcoming cpus are mainstream parts, i.e. cpu + gpu parts
 
32nm presumably. Whenever intel get around to releasing it.

The issue is that since the e8400, processors have been quicker than home users need. Until a version of windows comes out that changes that, there's no real motivation to upgrade. Hence 6/8 core server chips being developed, since servers still want more speed.

I think what you're looking for is solid state drives. They're far, far better than hard drives, and largely undiscovered because people say "how much per gigabyte? **** that" instead of looking at it in absolute terms. I'd rather a dual core intel with an ssd to an i7 on a hard drive.
 
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Whilst the product has been around for only about a month now, it has been in the news etc for months hence why somebody may think has been around for a while.

Other then gulftown which I can't see many people picking up then next from Intel will be die shrinks of the lynnfield and nehalem processors, hardly exciting, but lynnfield has only just hit the stores.

lga775 will still be around for a while, so hardly defunct.
 
DavieJG said:
i5 has only been around for 4 weeks. I know that computers move on quickly but not THAT quickly!

Expect sandy bridge architecture in 18-24months perhaps?

Most of the upcoming cpus are mainstream parts, i.e. cpu + gpu parts
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I know i5 has only been released relatively recently, what my question was asking is when we are going to see a proper change in architecture (eg P4-------->C2D).
 
At the moment all Intel are talking about is die shrinks, whilst i9 is going to be a 6 core processor, I don't believe it to be a different architecture as such to the existing nehalem architecture, just slightly tweaked to allow 6 cores instead of quad.

We are only just at the beginning of the current architecture from Intel.
 
ac1d1ty said:
I know i5 has only been released relatively recently, what my question was asking is when we are going to see a proper change in architecture (eg P4-------->C2D).
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I'd really like to know this as well. For gaming purposes i'm finding it difficult to warrant buying a new setup over my 775 quad rig, despite that i'm still tempted (probably just because its newer tech and i've got the itch for new stuff now).
 
"Intel demos next-next-gen 'Sandy Bridge' chip 6:06PM, Wednesday 23rd September 2009
Intel CEO Paul Otellini has showed that the first 'Sandy Bridge' silicon is already back in Intel's labs and happily runs Windows 7 and simple video encoding tasks. Apparently, it's been back in the labs for about a month.

'Sandy Bridge' is Intel's next-generation micro architecture and is based on Intel's 32nm process.

Otellini stopped short of giving any details on core counts or clock frequencies - they'll be saved for a later date. 'Sandy Bridge' does introduce some new CPU instructions, though, which all fall under the AVX instruction set.

This is a 256-bit instruction set extension to SSE and is designed for applications that are floating point intensive, such as multimedia, scientific and financial applications.

Given that Intel will be shipping its first 32nm 'Westmere' processors later this year, we're expecting to see the company introduce the first 'Sandy Bridge' chips towards the end of next year."

So the next architecture is sandy bridge in approx 18months. What sort of gains this will present is totally unknown.

If you already have a 775 quad setup then there is no need to be in any hurry to upgrade.
 
I see no reason why 99% of people need more than an intel quad core on 775 at the moment. Gaming performance is much more to do with gfx, and there are few monsters of games out there at the moment, with the next gen looking a way off still. Some professionals and people encoding etc might well benefit, but really it doesn't seem worth it yet.

We're in a different world from the ever growing power of P4s and c2d. People are demanding increased efficiency, lower power and more lightweight operating systems (public's reluctance to adopt vista, 7's optimisations). A massive increase in processing power isn't needed.

With clockspeeds reaching a plateau, and multi-core CPUs soon to become saturated (can't get enough cores in the chip, pointless without multi-threaded apps), a new way of processing will probably be the next leap. I don't quite understand the intricate details, but I'm sure it will be a move towards further integration and use of GPU-style chips (parallel processors?) to increase productivity.
 
JonJ678 said:
32nm presumably. Whenever intel get around to releasing it.

The issue is that since the e8400, processors have been quicker than home users need. Until a version of windows comes out that changes that, there's no real motivation to upgrade. Hence 6/8 core server chips being developed, since servers still want more speed.

I think what you're looking for is solid state drives. They're far, far better than hard drives, and largely undiscovered because people say "how much per gigabyte? **** that" instead of looking at it in absolute terms. I'd rather a dual core intel with an ssd to an i7 on a hard drive.
Click to expand...

Interesting points, especially wrt SSD's. In PC's there's normally so much hyperbole about relatively small increases in performance that when people start talking about a "night and day" difference between SSD's and regular HDD's you take it with a pinch of salt. However, I would have to say that as long as you have a half decent dual-core processor and 2GB of memory, then by far the biggest improvement in day-to-day performance and useability you will see is by changing to a SSD - the benchmarks really don't convey how quick and instant opening/switching between apps and multi-tasking becomes (obviously if you are a gamer things are different). I really can't stress this enough - £2-300 does sound like an awful lot, but I actually think you are getting good "bang for your buck" compared with changing MB/CPU/Memory.

The point about processors is actually more dependant on what you use your system for. If you do any video encoding then there are significant performance gains from going to from dual core to quad core - almost two-fold - and therefore 6 or 8 cores will certainly be welcome. I think the problems for other apps e.g. games is that despite dual core having been around for years now, not that many really take full advantage of two cores, nevermind 4,6 or 8. When that starts to happen CPU performance is going to become more important again.
 
Nocky24 said:
I'd really like to know this as well. For gaming purposes i'm finding it difficult to warrant buying a new setup over my 775 quad rig, despite that i'm still tempted (probably just because its newer tech and i've got the itch for new stuff now).
Click to expand...

I agree. Having a C2Q I see no real point in upgrading to i7, sure the architecture changes and HT returns, but apart from that theres no real change. Its still 45nm and 4 cores, the same as I already have.
 
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