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Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955
BSG Man writes "Intel's 3.46 GHz Pentium Extreme Edition 955 dual-core processor launches today, and
HotHardware has a full review with benchmarks on Intel's new i975X Express
based D975XBX motherboard. This processor is based on Intel's 65nm (or .065 micron) Presler core with 2MB of full speed, on-die L2 cache dedicated to each core, for
a whopping 4MB of total L2 cache. As expected,
the new Pentium Extreme Edition 955 scores well in encoding, desktop
business and a few professional rendering tests but overall it's given a run for
its money by AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual-core processor, especially in gaming
scenarios."
Wow, you managed to use "it's" and "its" in the same sentence, and both correctly. A /. first!
Is this a launch launch, or a paper launch?
I kinda got tired of reading about product launches that you couldn't go to a store and buy.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Pentium Processor Extreme 955
Price: $1,112.37 - $1,393.49
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4GHz, Toledo, Dual-Core, 2x1MB L2 Cache, Socket 939, 64-bit Processor
Price: $780.74 - $1,185.00
More run, less money, it would appear.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
When I read about that 4 MB of L2 cache, I recalled that my Atari ST had 0.5 MB of regular RAM back in 1990. I'm probably too sentimental...
What games actually take advantage of those dual cores?
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
With AMD, continuously beating Intel in both price and performance, it just pisses me off to see them exclusively sell Intel processors. Even in their highend gaming rigs, they use the Extreme Edition with no option of getting an AMD processor. That's just pathetic. Think of how cheap their boxes could be if they didn't force you top buy Intel and Windows.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Any use of the word "extreme" with regards to a silicon chip is wrong.
That said, I will withdraw my statement if this processor parachutes off of cliffs.
Yeah, it's news. Old news. The news is: "PC Processors continue to have approximately 25% as much L2 cache as big-iron competitors". Or less! When UltraSparc got to 8MB, IIRC you couldn't get more than 2MB on a PC and 1MB was the usual limit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
RISC architectures need large cache, because the penalty for a miss is high. x86 CISC->RISC cores don't have this problem (and do less work per MHz) because the translation to the inner RISCy instructions has already sorted out the data access issues.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
No doubt, given that it's a Hot chip.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
About time Intel made a processor that gives the AMD 64 a run for it's money. But even though the new processor is using a smaller process, more L2 cache, and faster clock speeds, the AMD still comes out on top. Makes you realize how far ahead Intel is in technology, and yet how far behind they are in quality. I garuntee the next AMD X2 chips will feature the same 65nm process, and once again it will take Intel 1-2 years to make something that even comes close to it's rival.
(Thanks to PG&E I had to type this twice. Incompetant mother fuckers)
google.slashdot
They should preface these things with RSN or ADN.
Odds are you can get it, just not when you want it and when you are ready to buy it something else will be announced and you'll go back to start. This is why I had a Pentium (I) for so many years. I finally jumped off the fence and bought an Athlon 2600+ and two years later have a 64 bit MB to go into the box (if only I could bring myself to do it.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The "Extreme" edition is marketed to gamers?
You don't say.
From the answers that have appeared so far, obviously not many. The problem is, for the longest time game developers didn't benefit much from developing highly threaded games. Most PC's couldn't take advantage of it, so why make the game that much more complex to benefit a small subset of people. AMD is _really_ pushing dual core, and in another couple of years, dual core presence will be substantial. At that point, developers _will_ have reason to spend time threading their games.
From what I can remember, ID will thread their games (they are also one of the few left that will still use opengl, that's also why you can get ID games on Linux). I don't think many game companies at this point though do either.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I take it you've never met the kind of PHB who, while cutting costs and headcount, always finds enough money to redecorate his/her office and have the latest power-user box on their desk.
I did work at at a few jobs where the boss didn't have some absurd toy beyond his/her requirements, but there usually was someone in the organisation who did and it was rather blatant. Sharp managers make sure those who do the actual work have the better tools.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What I find interesting is: a few years ago the fastest processor you could buy ran at about 3.1 GHz or so. Now it's around 3.5 GHz. Ten years ago, the processing speed was doubled every few years. What is keeping the speed around 3.5 GHz? Is it the processor itself, or the electronics around it that can't be made faster? Or is there no demand for faster processors? (I can hardly imagine that!)
-- Cheers!
What's next? Will AMD come out with Fast Asynchronous Redundant Technology?
I love that the Quake4 mainstream settings showed that each of the test systems ended up being GPU bound. That kinda makes it hard to take any of the graphics-based benchmark numbers seriously.
I wish the article reported numbers for the Intel chips that compare results with hyperthreading enabled vs. disabled. On servers, we routinely need to disable hyperthreading because it slows things down.
Personally, though, I don't think it matters much. I can't picture me plunking down my own cash for an Intel-powered system any time this decade.
Price?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Sounds like something you'd do in the gym, but how do you quad pump a bus? I gather your somehow sending 4 databits for each bus clock-cycle.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is this because its thrashing the L2 cache, or some other reason?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
But even that's a big understatement if you looked at the actual benchmark results. Neck and neck? Come on! Please, editors, accept submissions that aren't misleading.
i suppose next your you're going to tell me 2 + 2 = 4? WHAT?!
They already have, just not on dual-core parts. Expect major reduction in clock speeds on Intel CPUs once they migrate away from Netburst-based chips towards more efficient designs such as Yonah, Merom, and Conroe.
Conroe is the chip to watch.
That's been bugging me as well, but the fact is, no, the majority of the uses people have for computers, especially in the office, just haven't changed in ten years. Sure, the types that would buy anything with the name "Extreme" will drop a grand for an erg or two more power just for bragging rights, but with everyone else, what's the point when your eleventy billion Ghz processor is idle 99.99999999% of the time?
Intel Launches Pentium Extreme Edition 955; meanwhile, AMD points and laughs.
More at 11.
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
You do realize that there are only minor differences between Athlon64s and Opterons as well as Pentium 4s and Xeons (the EE chips were originally Xeons (with their huge cache) but put into the consumer level pinout pacakges.
gawd that's so, like, last century dude.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Rumor has it that Dell has instructed their ODMs to start producing motherboards for AMD chips. Whether or not this will ever actually happen... Who knows?
Fight psychopharmacological mccarthyism. http://www.norml.org/
Any use of the word "extreme" with regards to a silicon chip is wrong.
Its probably named Extreme because it generates and extreme amount of heat.
heat dissipation.
... "diminishing returns" does that mean anything to them? Why not a 32MB cache!!! 128MB!!! a gig!!!
Well that and the ALU is really crap still. Sure it does well at bulk data movement tasks but compiling/crypto it's a useless core.
That and for the love of god
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
First, the fastest overclocked Intel processor was something like 7 GHz, so it is evident that the electronics are capable of substantially better performance.
Second, the new Intel chips are hyperthreaded and multicore...
The biggest limitation is moving data around, not the CPU itself. Adding HyperTransport, DMA, etc, to the CPU itself would be a Good Thing, as would doubling the width of the data bus.
Executing all possible paths is not efficient when combined with hyperthreading, as you're wasting processing elements. Probabalistic branching (where you only follow one branch, but it's the most likely) would seem more efficient and would free up more elements for better threading.
I don't believe registers are ping-pong buffered, but it would save having to wait on writes if you still need to do reads because of the difference in timing from multithread execution.
Nobody uploads microcode to CPUs, but everybody runs code that would be efficient if run internally on the CPU. It would be good if the OS could upload atomic architecture-specific hardware operations into the CPU as pseudo instructions. Save having to hunt through physical memory for common tasks that will likely fall out of cache if you rely on that.
Processor overheating is a big problem and keeps the speed down. Processor casing simply isn't optimal for keeping the internals cool. It wouldn't be hard to improve the heat transfer from the chip surface to the casing surface.
Processors aren't made from optimal materials. If you're using silicon, for example, you want something that is single isotope, stressed and allowed to crystalize slowly. It's substantially cheaper to produce flawed silicon wafers, but they will never perform as well.
Along with this, I've learned that the reason aluminium is the most popular for CPU interconnects and copper is second, with silver unused, is problems with silver being too reactive and copper being only just managable. If they could find a way to prevent the silver from reacting with the rest of the CPU - should be possible - then you'd improve speeds there, too.
Electron leakage is a problem, as it also imposes a speed limit. Not sure how you'd prevent it, but there might be ways to limit the problem. Electrons have spin. It is certainly possible to polarize something by spin, and it is certainly possible to filter by polarization. There MAY, therefore, be ways to limit the impact of leakage and therefore ways to bypass the speed limit such problems would otherwise cause.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Oh, the irony. A review of a Intel Highend processor by "Hot Hardware". All we need now is a review of the Athlon X2 by a group called CoolTech or somthing.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
...the French are planning on using the new Intel chips to trigger fusion reactions purely from the heat output...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually, one of my favourite processors from the late 80s - the transputer - had onboard memory for exactly that purpose. You could slap on 4 gigs of external RAM if you wanted, but you could actually throw quite respectable applications into the CPU itself and never have to worry about data busses again.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't give a rats ass about gigahertz anymore, nor about megabytes of cache. Every CPU they still sell has "plenty" of both, and everyone is using clusters in the real world.
What I do care about is the watts, heat and JigaDollars that it costs to power and cool the thing. Especially with rooms of 100's of them.
Just got the parents both Mac Mini systems. Cheap, quiet, AND cool. No more IE Virus Engine® or Outlook Spam Engine® is just an added bonus.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
... I'd sweep the whole P4 line under the carpet and forbid anyone to mention it anymore.
:) ).
I'm saying this as a P4 owner and avid fan of Intel CPU's. But honestly nothing will impress me from Intel until they release their dual-core Pentium M chips for desktop (i.e. what Yonah is, except not for laptops
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what the Intel PR ratings mean? or are they just arbritary numbers?
955 doesn't really mean anything to me.
At least AMD tries to base theirs off something tangible.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
I'd love to use this on workstations.
Make shit compile faster.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
That is so awesome it makes me want to drink a Pepsi Max and go heli-snowboarding.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Lot's of Intel gear has kept my coffee warm over the years.
Nothing like snacks being sold while a bloody opponent is being carried off the arena
I think I still have Speedball 2 on PC-CDROM somewhere, and now I want to install and play it again!
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
I thought that was "Cole's Law", also known as thinly sliced cabbage covered with mayonnaise. So ... which wastes more energy -- a software engineer driving to work and back every day, or a software engineer telecommuting over an 8 MBit/second broadband line using a "workstation" containing two Pentium Extreme Edition Dual-Core Hypethreaded (let's see ... isn't that eight logical?) processors and 2 gig of RAM?
-- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky http://linuxcapacityplanning.com
scores well in encoding, desktop business and a few professional rendering tests but overall it's given a run for its money by AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual-core processor, especially in gaming scenarios
Let me get this straight - we have double the cache, 3.something GHz of speed and two cores, just so that I can start Outlook faster ?!?!?
The real market for any typical high end machine is in gaming and rendering. Sure there will be a market for people who use these machines for "encoding" but if it cant compete in a billion plus gaming market that pretty much drives a lot of hardware innovation, I'd say this thing is a waste of time for Intel.