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Intel Dual-Core Systems Begin Shipping Monday
ThinSkin writes "The wait for Intel's dual-core processor is over, that is if you're willing to fork over some dough for a Dell or Alienware system bundled with the chip. Intel just announced that Monday marks the first day dual-core systems hit the market with Dell's Precision 380 workstation and its next generation Dimension XPS desktop, which start at $2,999. PC Magazine got a chance to play with the XPS system and came away quite impressed."
At least cooling won't be a problem.
Is just that -- a review of Dell's XPS Gen 5, rather than a review of Intel's dual core, actually. Still,I guess there's a bit about dualcore.
HP was, and still is taking orders for Dualcore Opterons systems:
http://theinquirer.net/?article=22553
This is my sig. The post is over.
I still haven't found anything that truely taxes my existing 3.2ghz P4. Games push the video card, not the CPU... I'm sure servers could benefit, but I don't see a major improvement in end user experience for these gaming systems.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
What a massive co-incidence that Dell threatened (again) to look at supplying AMD chips just days ago. Not.
I wonder if the threats did them any good, or if Intel have now got so used to the cries of wolf that they called Dell's bluff? Intel probably told Dell to shut the hell up or miss out on the launch.
pic.
but 4000 bucks.. well, it SHOULD be impressing.
but seriously though.. it seems like a "thank you mates! were so happy we actually GOT this thing and not having to just do a paper review on your paper launch".
just check these:
"
Subratings (out of 100):
Video: 100
Gaming: 100
Music: 100
Photo: 100
"
ok.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The system doesn't quite hit the perfect 60+ frames per second score in Doom 3 at 1,600-by-1,200, but no single graphics card solution has so far, and 40 fps is still quite playable.
Yeah, but Athlon 64 SLI graphics card solutions have. Oddly enough, PCMag only directly compares this Intel Pentium EE 840 box with an Intel Pentium 4 EE 3.73GHz box. Any hard-core gamer who buys an Intel dual-core machine to play his SINGLE-THREADED GAMES instead of an Athlon 64 dual video card SLI box is beyond hope. Torch your money responsibly, kids.
Dell and Intel get 100% from PCMag for "Best Bribes Paid". Geeze.
over their regular single CPU offerings for those of us that run multiple apps, but I truly would like to see the real heat/performance numbers, and whether the rumored performance throttling is enabled on these. If not, how bad is the heat generation?
From what I've read up to now, AMD's solution will outperform Intel's offering with significantly lower heat dissappation, making it a double winner. However, testing shipping units will finally quantify these processors. Can't wait for AMD's unit to ship and get compared.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
These are hitting the market but won't be shipped for a few weeks - or so I gather from what I read in TFAs. By "Hit the market" they seem to mean "vendors are taking orders" which - to me - seems meaningless.
AMD claims not to do this in one of the articles:
""'t is important to note that AMD only announces products when we are able to immediately begin shipping for revenue and that we have been shipping dual-core AMD Opteron processor production samples to customers and partners since January,' the statement added."
I guess we'll just have to see if AMD actually has products available at their release or if they're just doing the same thing Intel seems to be doing here.
MS already has plans for your second core.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
HP has dual core Opterons in blade servers. You really have to dig through their website, but availibility was listed as 4/14...now shipping dates could months from now, so who knows.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
The UltraSparcIV is a dual-core chip. Been shipping for quite a while now - maybe even more than a year.
And just like the first UltraSparcs from about a decade ago, it's also fully 64-bit....
Is not the single thread performance or how fast can you finish task X. ;)
Its responsiveness of the system. I'm using A64 3000 and I get annoying stalls on system level.
The CPU spends time with the backside thread, while I would love it working on UI, there is annoying stall. Multiple CPU:s according to reviews remove those issues. And don't say having 20% higher processor clock speed is going to help, its by simple fact that CPU was just doing something else at a time I would of loved it to handle UI events. Having 2 cores means, that responsiveness of a system is greatly improved, atleast until people write most of their applications to tie up more than one core
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Oh man,
I can't wait to get dual cores on my desktop. And to me the biggest advantages are responsiveness and better multitasking.
I really dislike how unresponsive my computer gets when I'm doing something computationally intensive, such as maybe ripping a CD.
I would also love it if my firewall and antivirus protection could be offloaded to another processor.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
I've got a dual processor system. They don't cost that much more than a single... you won't pay a premium for a new "dual core" box, but you'll still get all the advantages of a fast responsive system. p. In my opinion, dual cores are for businesses whose rack space is at a premium and gamers with spare money to burn.
Agile Artisans
winxp to processor1 : please open this window.
P1 to winxp: No I'm busy, ask P2
winxp to P2: open this window
P2 to winxp: ask the other lazy sod
winxp to all: please or I'll BOS
P1 and P2: go on then, we don't care
user: ?
CPU - Xenon's CPU has three 3.0 GHz PowerPC cores. Each core is capable of two instructions per cycle and has an L1 cache with 32 KB for data and 32 KB for instructions. The three cores share 1 MB of L2 cache. Alpha 2 developer kits currently have two cores instead of three.
Here are the other specs. GPU - Xenon's GPU is a generation beyond the ATI X800. Its clock speed is 500 MHz and it supports Shader 3.0. Developers are currently working with an alpha 2 GPU. Beta GPU units are expected by May and the final GPU is slated for a summer release. The final GPU will be more powerful than anything on the market today; in game terms, it would handle a game like Half-Life 2 with ease. System Memory - Xenon will have 256 MB of system RAM. Keep in mind that this number should not be equated to typical PC RAM. The Xbox has 64 MB of system RAM and is a very capable machine. Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X. Memory Units - Xenon will use 64 MB to 1,024 MB memory cards. 8 MB is reserved for system use, leaving a 56 MB to 1,016 MB for user data. Hard Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon's hard drive is optional. 2 GB of the drive will be used as game cache. The final drive size is still being determined. Camera - Xenon will have a USB 2.0 camera. It's capable of 1.2 megapixel still shots and VGA video. Photos can be used in-game and for gamer profiles. The camera can also be used for video chat. It's unknown if the Xenon camera will allow for EyeToy-like gameplay. Developers are currently using a simulated camera driver. Sound Chip - Xenon does not have an audio chip in the traditional sense. Decompression is handled by hardware, while the rest of the chores are handled by software. DirectSound3D has been dropped in favor of X3DAudio. The former was deemed too inflexible.
If anything these will be more like the DualCore G5s comming up in the the future for the PowerMac G5s.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Yes. The next Nintendo console will be PowerPC-based, and the PS3 will use the Cell, which is PowerPC-based (I think). The PS3 also claims to be using multiple CPUs.
What I can't understand is how these companies are planning to deal with the enormous amount of heat that will be dissipated from a multi-CPU system, and not make the console sound like a jet engine at the same time. Anyone able to shed any light on that?
"nice" was meant for this.
With Linux you can also use "chrt" to specify that some task is "realtime": it will always get as much scheduling as it wants (make sure it will not loop endlessly though).
With all the spyware running on boxen these days, it's finally nice to have a CPU dedicated to spyware thread processing.
Why should users prevent and remove the stuff when they can just throw more CPU cycles at it just to keep the PC responsive?
And yes, the whole premise behind this is absurd. But people often have and do throw money at a solution out of acts of being lazy/responsible when it comes to system maintenence.
Life is not for the lazy.
You complain that Dell is over priced while singing the praises of Apple in the same breath? How very amusing! I can't believe you even presume to be serious about this.
At $2999 for the Dell, and $2999 for a dual G5 2.5GHz from Apple, I would say Apple has the value here. But if you rather, you can buy the Dell... I am saving my pennies for the Apple.
I don't get it
Yes, you obviously don't. Hyperthreading is not in any way like a dual processor or dualcore processor. On a HT processor you still can have threads waiting and not doing anything because another thread which is using e.g. the single FPU that the system has. If two computationally heavy threads want to run, they have to wait for their turn on the single FPU. And that is just one example for HT. On dualcore and dual processor systems you have everything doubled, which is a Good Thing.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
You're comparing Apples to Dells here...
According to the article, the Dell has a 20" LCD, a Radeon x850, a dual layer DVD+/-RW as well as a DVD-ROM drive, 500GB of disk and 1GB of ram, a 5.1 surround sound speaker system and has dual TV tuners. An Apple dual G5 configured that way? For $3,000? I'd LOVE to see that. Coming even close to that runs well over $5000 without the speakers or TV tuners.
And this Dell is STILL a rip off!
We're Sorry We're unable to process your request. Please check back with us soon to customize this product, or click below to continue shopping Plus the customer service rep was clueless.... http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/nodata.aspx ?cs=19&kc=6V411&oc=XPS5PC&x=10&y=11
Each company will deal with the problem in its own distinctive way:
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Dude, I'm not comparing a single Proc PIV against these things. Part of my job is to decide which hardware will be bought for mid sized mission critical application servers (like the V40z and the V490/890).
And Sun Sparcs at the moment simply do _not_ offer a good price/performance ratio, simply because this CPU is so damn slow, at it has been that way for a while. Please pay Spec or TPC a visit to inform yourself about this stuff.
Someone please answer this question for me: Why? Why does the average consumer need a dual-core processor? For that matter, why does the average consumer need a dual processor configuration at all? Are the people buying $3000 dual-proc G5s just being elitist?
My point is this. Let's see what the average consumer does with his computer:
- Surfs the Internet
- Reads email
- Watches DVDs
- Plays music
- Plays games
- Maybe does some work
Note that among all of those things, people rarely do them all at once (and I am not talking about the Slashdot population that does work, listens to music and has browser windows open all at the same time).
Games are the only taxing item there, and most PC games are not even multithreaded. Gamers that buy the Alienware system are literally just wasting cash.
On top of all of this, no matter how much you do, your CPU spends quite a bit of time (upwards of 85%) in the idle thread (aside from you SETI@Home people).
When you put all that together, it makes little sense to buy a dual-core CPU for your desktop PC.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.