New Intel processor generation, any comments?

amplid · Aug 24, 2008

Just something I picked up on the net. The new intel core i7, supposed to be faster and much more energy efficient due to 'power gates' (non-active cores shut down automatically). Any comments by the more experienced users?

Next-Generation Intel PC Chips to Carry Intel Core Name

Amplid

Brian the King · Aug 24, 2008

imo they're not bull****ting. Look at what Intel did going from Pentium D to Core 2. Much faster, cooler, efficient, etc.

Day24 · Aug 24, 2008

the preliminary benchmarks I've seen have them at at least 20% more powerful at the same clockspeed.... sounds like AMD is falling further and further behind....

skunksmash · Aug 24, 2008

Two, four, or eight cores

- 731 million transistors for the quad core variant
45 nm manufacturing process
Integrated memory controller supporting DDR3 SDRAM and between one and six memory channels[citation needed]
Integrated graphics processor (IGP) located off-die, but in the same CPU package[5]
A new point-to-point processor interconnect, the Intel QuickPath Interconnect, replacing the legacy front side bus
Simultaneous multithreading, which enables two threads per core. Simultaneous multithreading has not been present on a consumer Intel processor since 2006 with the Pentium 4 and Pentium EE.
Native (monolithic, i.e. all processor cores on a single die) quad- and octo-core (8) processors[6]
The following caches:
- 32 KB L1 instruction and 32 KB L1 data cache per core
- 256 KB L2 cache per core
- 2-3 MB L3 cache per core shared by all cores
33% more in-flight micro-ops than Conroe[7]
Second-level branch predictor and second-level Translation Lookaside Buffer [7]
Modular blocks of components such as cores that can be added and subtracted for varying market segments[8]

Event demonstrations at the Shanghai Intel Developer Forum showed A1 silicon Bloomfield-based Nehalem processors at IDF running at 3.2 GHz. This processor had 32 KB L1 instruction and 32 KB L1 data cache, 256 KB L2 cache per core, and 8 MB of shared L3 cache.[9]

Pictured below is a real production wafer of Intel Nehalem
now called Intel Core i7.

lol...... how much is that worth!!

View attachment 6060

Fumz · Aug 24, 2008

Nehalem, aka i7 is a beastly cpu, true enough, and whether or not you get one, especially now because of their cost, will depend entirely on what you do? If you run a bunch of cpu heavy apps, then it makes sense; however, if your machine's primary function is that of a gaming rig, then I would forget about i7 for a while. It's just not worth it... for a couple reasons.

The primary reason i7 isn't worth it for gamers is because today's games aren't cpu limited, they're gpu limited. Any cpu, Intel or AMD at or above 3GHz is more than enough cpu to run any game to date and for the forseeable future. Secondly, there aren't many games that can take advantage of multiple cores. Some may be coded for multi-core, but that's not the same as being able to efficiently use multi-cores. Developers still have a way to go in that respect... meaning, dual core cpu's are still more than adequate for any game running.

If you're going to spend coin seeking better game performance, get a new video card. If your boss want's you to crunch a ton of numbers, have him buy you an i7.

MadBull · Aug 24, 2008

To be honest I have gripes about the whole idea that "more cores are better."

1.) Right now most people have two cores, and for 90% of the users out there, we use around 5% (20% at peak) of its power doing daily work, surfing and watching movies. For the gamers, having four cores is absolutely not better than two, because of one simple fact: games prefer higher clocks. simple fact two: future games will be GPU reliant, ie. Cry engine. Currently most games that are "optimized for two cores" have most of the work running on one core, and then the leftover work for the second core (ie. loading music). Is that really full utilization of your cpu AND money?

2.) Now we have eight cores. Just how many of those cores are going to be idle 90% of the time? Vista is said to spread the workload over all cores, and even in this case your asking your cores to work at under 5% its capacity. And ask yourself this question: was it worth the price tag to buy a machine that just idles itself and is never used like how it was intended to?

3.) Power consumption. I know its 45nm and even OCing those cores would likely come under 1.3v from what i hear, but still there are eight cores in here, and most people won't stop at that. They want 3 GPU's, 4 Hard Drives, 6 Fans, and God knows what else. In the future of computing shouldn't we be looking for more efficient computing solutions? I dont want my computer running like a small oven drinking 1000W of electricity every hour adding to my electricity bills!!! All to do what exactly? Play Crysis 2? Ridiculous!

So for these reasons I'm against the whole octo-core movement (unless you genuinely need it to run your business servers) because for the general public, we don't need them. Buy into them if you must, call me a hippy but I'm looking forward to a much cleaner more economically friendly CPU to power my computers.

amplid · Aug 25, 2008

Yeah, I'm not planning to buy one, I can't even buy a new GPU (look at mine...:s

). Just wanted to see what you guys thought of Nehalem. Many different opinions:D

Amplid

03hdfatboy · Aug 25, 2008

I mostly use mine for gaming and (cough) ripping DVDs, and I rarely see mine go over 25%. So having more cores is not better unless ya just want to have the latest and greatest.
Just my 2 cents

Adrian Wainer · Aug 25, 2008

Fumz said:
The primary reason i7 isn't worth it for gamers is because today's games aren't cpu limited, they're gpu limited.

Except Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX, which is a CPU limited game but you're right about pretty much everything else, though I presume that the new MS train sim will have the same charactoristics as FSX as it is using the same engine.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

johngalt · Aug 25, 2008

MadBull said:
To be honest I have gripes about the whole idea that "more cores are better."

1.) Right now most people have two cores, and for 90% of the users out there, we use around 5% (20% at peak) of its power doing daily work, surfing and watching movies. For the gamers, having four cores is absolutely not better than two, because of one simple fact: games prefer higher clocks. simple fact two: future games will be GPU reliant, ie. Cry engine. Currently most games that are "optimized for two cores" have most of the work running on one core, and then the leftover work for the second core (ie. loading music). Is that really full utilization of your cpu AND money?

2.) Now we have eight cores. Just how many of those cores are going to be idle 90% of the time? Vista is said to spread the workload over all cores, and even in this case your asking your cores to work at under 5% its capacity. And ask yourself this question: was it worth the price tag to buy a machine that just idles itself and is never used like how it was intended to?

3.) Power consumption. I know its 45nm and even OCing those cores would likely come under 1.3v from what i hear, but still there are eight cores in here, and most people won't stop at that. They want 3 GPU's, 4 Hard Drives, 6 Fans, and God knows what else. In the future of computing shouldn't we be looking for more efficient computing solutions? I dont want my computer running like a small oven drinking 1000W of electricity every hour adding to my electricity bills!!! All to do what exactly? Play Crysis 2? Ridiculous!

So for these reasons I'm against the whole octo-core movement (unless you genuinely need it to run your business servers) because for the general public, we don't need them. Buy into them if you must, call me a hippy but I'm looking forward to a much cleaner more economically friendly CPU to power my computers.

03hdfatboy said:
I mostly use mine for gaming and (cough) ripping DVDs, and I rarely see mine go over 25%. So having more cores is not better unless ya just want to have the latest and greatest.
Just my 2 cents

The great thing about multiple cores, though, is that, while maybe not able to achieve epic overclocks, they have the backup power and wherewithal to do a lot of other stuff - such as running / supporting virtual machines / desktops.

A person who wants to do *nothing* but gaming should quite possibly not consider quad cores and beyond, but those of us who use the PC for things other than just gaming have every need to sacrifice some OC ability to run (and truly run) multiple apps OOB - and Multiple OSs, and other things like this.

Adrian Wainer said:
Fumz said:

The primary reason i7 isn't worth it for gamers is because today's games aren't cpu limited, they're gpu limited.

Click to expand...

Except Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX, which is a CPU limited game but you're right about pretty much everything else, though I presume that the new MS train sim will have the same charactoristics as FSX as it is using the same engine.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

For the most part, yeah, but I would not be surprised to see this becomes an issue more and more with the advances in CPU technology. I foresee other games making more and more use of the CPU as the games become more and more interactive.

amplid · Aug 25, 2008

Bottom line is, everything changes (especially computers :sarc:

) and we'll just have to keep waving the money to keep up..

Haha:D

Adrian Wainer · Aug 25, 2008

MadBull said:
3.) Power consumption. I know its 45nm and even OCing those cores would likely come under 1.3v from what i hear, but still there are eight cores in here, and most people won't stop at that. They want 3 GPU's, 4 Hard Drives, 6 Fans, and God knows what else. In the future of computing shouldn't we be looking for more efficient computing solutions? I dont want my computer running like a small oven drinking 1000W of electricity every hour adding to my electricity bills!!! All to do what exactly? Play Crysis 2? Ridiculous!.

Hi Mad bull, I get your point about people going over the top with their rigs but for the people who are determined to build ever bigger rigs, they would still do it the same whether they had a 386 processor or Nehalem extreme edition, like I object to three and four way SLI and Crossfire because you put in a lot of extra cards and they often don't do a hell of a lot more. As for disc drives I currently have five and I soon will have seven but they are in racks so there is only one drive active at any time. I think I might go for the Nehalem because the my Athlon 64 939 4800 dualie has real issues with MS Flightsimulator FSX and even my FS2004 can run slowly when there is detailed custom scenery, a very detailed aircraft and it is flying over photorealistic terrain.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

amplid · Aug 25, 2008

Adrian, surely there's another CPU (MUCH CHEAPER) that can do the job of Flight Simulator? If I'm wrong, please instruct me:D

Amplid

Fumz · Aug 25, 2008

Adrian Wainer said:
Fumz said:

The primary reason i7 isn't worth it for gamers is because today's games aren't cpu limited, they're gpu limited.

Click to expand...

Except Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX, which is a CPU limited game but you're right about pretty much everything else, though I presume that the new MS train sim will have the same charactoristics as FSX as it is using the same engine.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

I'm not entirely convinced? :confused:

Threads like this suggest that the problem with Flight Sim is the game, not the hardware: Anyone have a GTX 280?
There are actually quite a few threads to be found on how to optimize this game... didn't read them, just gave them a cursory scan, but this page also looks like it might help? Flight Simulator X - Flight Simulator X: Performance tweaks

amplid · Aug 25, 2008

Fumz I think xguntherc has one. Or is it a 260?..

PM him maybe

Amplid

Fumz · Aug 25, 2008

Yeah, Gunther has a 260, but the point of the thread was that guys who're running less than the latest and greatest do not have problems getting very good fps in that game, and that there's some inherent problem with the game that prevents it from taking advantage of overclocked hardware, which is why overclocking seems to have no effect on performance; thus, the conclusion that the game is cpu limited. However, because guys with lesser hardware are able to run the game much better, this lead me to the conclusion that it isn't really cpu limited, but rather there's some defect in the code. It's all explained in that thread.

Adrian Wainer · Aug 25, 2008

amplid said:
Adrian, surely there's another CPU (MUCH CHEAPER) that can do the job of Flight Simulator? If I'm wrong, please instruct me:D

Amplid

I do not know if you are well up on flight simulator [ so sorry for boring you if you are ] but whilst with the out of the box package it is quite similar in some ways to other games, for people who are very interested in flight simulator, they use it very differently to play than people who just play it casually as a game. They generally treat the Flight simulator out of the box package as if it was an operating system and hang on lots and lots of add-ons as if they were application software.

/products/b707/img/screenshots/vc/v_6f.jpg

YouTube - The PMDG 747-400 Promotional

YouTube - TATRA Photo Scenery / FSX

http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/review/horvfr/horvfr.htm

so that if one takes FSX e.g. one has road traffic on major roads, a realistic number of arrival and departures of AI aircraft and AI aircraft in transit and the correct types too [ when an add-on is installed ], a faithfull reproduction of a complex aircraft like a 747 [ when the add-on is installed ] real-world weather with ultra realistic clouds [ when add-on is installed ] on-board aircraft radar [ when add-on is installed ] and correct ground elevations [ when add-on is installed ] and photographic scenery [ when add-on is installed ]. And when one considers the load on one's computer, one must remember that a 4real World modern Boeing 747 would pack a fairly hefty data processsing capability and whilst even the best aircraft sim add-ons do not reproduce all the functions of a real aircraft, the processor has to do lots of stuff that are not done by a real aircraft's computers e.g. controlling all the other air traffic, so really FSX and even FS2004 when they are loaded with extras are major efforts for even state of the art hardware.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

MadBull · Aug 25, 2008

I dont mean to sound like a grouch, I am all for people building custom (and beastly) rigs because this kind of flexibility gives power to the users. And I totally support that. But Now that we are starting to see dual core GPU's and octo core CPU's, will these become the standards of the future? When you are told by the manufacturer that you should buy a quad core because its better (in their biased opinion), then you lose out on this kind of flexibility! They eventually might even stop supporting single cores and we as users lose out on a chance to build second cost-effective rigs for our home theatres or our family members. We can't just keep pushing for "bigger is better" when "better" only comes out of the mouth of Intel, IBM, AMD, etc. You know what I mean?

[edit] A little off topic but if anyone here has played the Caesar games, that's another well known CPU-limited game. It has something to do with individual AI for every citizen has to be calculated every second. And at some point when your population goes over the 10k, 14k, 20k, etc limit you start to see "stupid AI" where prefects stop watering fires and engineers stop comming out of their huts.

So in that sense multiple cores is likely better than single cores if games like Caesar were optimized to use all the cores simultaneously to calculate AI. But I think its not that easy in reality.

Adrian Wainer · Aug 25, 2008

Fumz said:
Adrian Wainer said:

Fumz said:

The primary reason i7 isn't worth it for gamers is because today's games aren't cpu limited, they're gpu limited.

Click to expand...

Except Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX, which is a CPU limited game but you're right about pretty much everything else, though I presume that the new MS train sim will have the same charactoristics as FSX as it is using the same engine.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Click to expand...

I'm not entirely convinced? Threads like this suggest that the problem with Flight Sim is the game, not the hardware: Anyone have a GTX 280?
There are actually quite a few threads to be found on how to optimize this game... didn't read them, just gave them a cursory scan, but this page also looks like it might help? Flight Simulator X - Flight Simulator X: Performance tweaks

Yeah the problem with the tweaks is that because there is such a huge volume of add-ons for FSX it is basically impossible for the folks that create the tweaks to test anything more than the basic game with them, and really if you like add-on feature x or y you might find it does not work with the system tweaked.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

Adrian Wainer · Aug 25, 2008

MadBull said:
But Now that we are starting to see dual core GPU's and octo core CPU's, will these become the standards of the future? When you are told by the manufacturer that you should buy a quad core because its better (in their biased opinion), then you lose out on this kind of flexibility! They eventually might even stop supporting single cores and we as users lose out on a chance to build second cost-effective rigs for our home theatres or our family members. We can't just keep pushing for "bigger is better" when "better" only comes out of the mouth of Intel, IBM, AMD, etc. You know what I mean?

Not that long ago I was looking for a processor for a computer I was then building which had an Athlon 939 socket, when 939 was still AMDs current socket and the price of dual cores from AMD was just huge, then AMD introduced the 940 AM 2 socket and Intel just after introduced the Conroe and the prices of AMD dualies fell like a stone, so I was able to get a 939 4800 Dualie at a great price for the motherboard I allready had bought. Now I can't see why you are worried Madbull in that e.g. the price of dualies is so low now, that it makes it reasonable to fit them in stuff like home theatres and the dual core performance will come in handy if one is decodeing hi def video for the home theatre.

MadBull said:
[edit] A little off topic but if anyone here has played the Caesar games, that's another well known CPU-limited game. It has something to do with individual AI for every citizen has to be calculated every second. And at some point when your population goes over the 10k, 14k, 20k, etc limit you start to see "stupid AI" where prefects stop watering fires and engineers stop comming out of their huts.

So in that sense multiple cores is likely better than single cores if games like Caesar were optimized to use all the cores simultaneously to calculate AI. But I think its not that easy in reality.

Well a big problem with multi cores is that unstructured activity such as games are a difficult thing to use effectivly with multicore processors and the really only successful use of multicore for a single application is the like of video decodeing and graphic rendering.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

New Intel processor generation, any comments?

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