Intel 3.40EE & 3.60E - LGA Arrives

MBR writes "MBReview has taken a quick look at Intel's new high-end LGA775 processors, the 3.40GHz Extreme Edition, and the 3.60GHz 'E,' now known as the 560. They've covered some of the questions about pin frailty of the new LGA socket, as well as cooling issues that might arise from these new processors." ("LGA" stands for Land Grid Array, which moves pins from the processor to the socket it sits in.) Update: 06/19 20:50 GMT by T : Reader Chi-Energy points out that besides the new processor packaging, Intel has also just released its i925X and i915 chipsets, PCI Express and DDR2 DRAM for the desktop, and links to this review showcase with benchmarks at HotHardware.

Comments

What should we be concerned about?

[irokitt]

I'm not as worried about frail pins as I am about the amount of heat these things push out, the size of the new heatsink/fan assemblies, and the noise they put out. I thought Socket 478 processors were hot, but LGA Prescott processors run even hotter, which makes me think Intel has a point when it says we should switch away from the ATX case factor and adopt BTX for Intel chips..

That said, are the Extreme Edition processors still selling for $900 USD a pop? Hardly seems worth the extra money for gaming, although a server that wants to survive Slashdottings could probably use one...

Re:New pins

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather replace a CPU with a broken pin than tear apart my case and pull out the tray to replace a motherboard.

A CPU can be replaced in just a couple of minutes. A motherboard would take much longer, depending on your case type, how many cards you have, and all the various types of things you're going to have to unplug from it and plug back in.

BTX (which includes LGA) standard resisted

[Synkronos]

Apparently the BTX form factor (of which LGA is a part) has been heavily resisted by many Taiwanese chassis, mainboard and heatsink manufacturers.

But what's new here? Word has it that this time round, the Taiwanese heastink, mainboard and PSU manufacturers - and quite a lot of them it would seem - are being rather less than enthusiastic or co-operative, about the sweeping changes and support that Intel is asking, nay demanding, of them.

I'd be interested to see if Intel can actually strong-arm them into it

Wow, look at the length of the 3.40 EE bar!

[Jeremy Erwin]

Oh, wait. It seems that none of those bar graphs include an origin. Never mind.

Re:Wow, look at the length of the 3.40 EE bar!

[ameoba]

Yeah..

nothing like a graph that makes a 10% difference look like a 90% gap.

Re:Pictures of the socket

[Aphrika]

here's a couple of pictures.

For a more comprehensive overview of the whole BTX, DDR2, Socket 775 and PCI Express malarkey, I'd recommend having a look here. Interesting stuff.

another crap review

[phrasebook]

I'm sick of reading reviews that compare new products with other new products. Example on MBReview: comparing P4s that are all pretty much brand new, all expensive, hardly any difference between them. I want to see how it stacks up against my P3-866, not another P4 that I've never even seen. At least throw an older proc in there for comparison. Same with video card reviews. I don't give a hoot how the Radeon 9600 compares with the 9500... how does it compare with my GF3? FFS these reviews suck. At least throw in an older chip just for a relevant comparison. And stop mentioning how Quake 3 is getting old but is still useful: "this benchmark is slowly progressing towards an archaic stage". STFU. Who keeps regurgitating this crap.

Re:New pins

[JPriest]

A few points: $150 is reasonable for a motherboard, the above listed processors are likely to run closer to $450 and $900.

If 6 minutes of your time is worth $300 - $750 then you obviously make way more than I do.

AMD is going to start using the same technology. When Intel does it, it is a pain in the ass, when AMD does it, it's innovation.

Besides, you have to be pretty careless with your hardware to break a pin.

Best for use only in winter

[Sivar]

According to Sandpile.org, the 3.4GHz Pentium IV Prescott can use up to 127W, and has a typical power usage of 103W (when browsing the web or reading email).
In my opinion, it is rediculous for a single processor to single-handedly run up your power bill. That's like having two light bulbs on 24/7 (assuming you keep your computer on), not to mention the power needed to cool your PC, let alone your house's air conditioner.

I would take a VIA chip for low-performance stuff, and an Athlon64 for performance computing. support 64-bit software including 64-bit Linux distributions, are faster than Intel's best even running 32-bit software, and they have a maximum power usage of 89W. Because of Cool'n'Quiet mode, they spend most of the time running at 800MHz consuming about 30-35W and generally not requiring a loud and abnoxious cooling fan.

It is actually impressive what the chips can do at 800MHz. You can play a full screen DVD at 1400x1050, and the CPU usage tops out at about 5% (at 800MHz). If, of course, you run something that requires more power, like a video game or a compiler, the processor instantly switches to full speed. Handy, that.

Re:Best for use only in winter

[Anonymous Coward]

That 103W figure of yours is bullshit - at least how you've understood it. That's the typical maximum power consumption, or what Intel call the "Thermal Design Power". While web browsing or reading email, power consumption is down around 30W. You need difficult-to-design test vectors to push the CPU beyond the TDP, and unless you know what you're doing, you're unlikely to get more than a couple of watts beyond it.

One way to prove this to yourself is to simply remove the heatsink from a running Pentium IV Prescott system. Shock, horror: it will continue to run, only slowly. That's the same slowly the system silently goes into and out of depending on the CPU load (it takes about 10000 CPU cycles, or about 3 millionths of a second, to get into or out of this state.) Now: try web browsing or reading email while it's running like this. Tell the difference? Didn't think so. You might notice a _slight_ slowdown (when rendering a complex page, for example): that's because without the heatsink on, the CPU won't go back into the "normal" S0 power state.

So, just as a Pentium 4 doesn't dissipate 103W without a heatsink installed, so to does it not dissipate 103W if you're not doing anything.

This can all be found in http://developer.intel.com
Handy, that.

Re:New pins

[Too Much Noise]

There are some points you're missing about this.

Who's paying for the RMA? if the natural life span of the pins is about 8 insertions (as the mobo producers seem to claim), then there would be a large number of legitimate breakages that get sent back to the mobo manufacturer. Now, they can either replace the CPU socket (not very funny, I think) or throw away the whole mobo, including the rest of the perfectly good components on it[*]. As oppose do just discarding a defective CPU if its pins break.

[*]like the spankin' new and expensive Intel chipsets. I doubt $150 will happen anytime soon as a mobo price, as even the chipset estimated price seems to be above that. I also doubt mobo manufacturers getting too many returns due to bent socket pins will be very happy about all this - remember, their margins are quite slim these days. The least hurt by this is probably going to be Intel itself.

Your AMD jab is a troll. As far as they stated so far, the Opteron socket stays put for the foreseeable future (meaning at least one year). They will have no incentive to move to a pinless package unless it shows some solid advantage. Even Intel might have to back down on this if the hw producers get to unhappy (and they already have enough grief with the BTX form factor).

Finally - pins break. It's called mechanical stress. How many times do you think you can 'carefully' insert and remove a CPU in its socket before some pin gives in? At least, for the old sockets, all you had to do is match pins and holes ; now, with only point contacts, bending can come so much easier.

Intel 925 chipset feature

[rumpledstiltskin]

One of the most useful things about the 925 chipset, IMHO, is the interesting possibilities it offers for SATA RAID. Say you want the performance capabilities of RAID 0, but at the same time, you need the redundancy for RAID 1. let's also say that you can only afford two SATA drives.
the intel 925 chipset has native support for a mixed raid, where you can create a raid 0 partiiton across two hard drives, using only part of the hdd capacity on each drive for the raid 0 partition. the rest of the unpartitioned space can be set aside as a raid 1 partition. that way you can install the OS and other non-critical files tha can be lost to the raid 0 partition and get the performance, but if one of the drives fail, you can store your important stuff on the raid 1 partition. I'm trying to find a controller card that will do this functionality, but I can't find anyone that claims to explicitly support it. the only reason I know about the 925 features is I got a chance to play with a pre-production board. definitely a cool feature.