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Core 2 Extreme 40% faster than Pentium EE 965?
Marc writes "As far as I know, this is the first time that Intel has talked about what we can expect from its new gaming CPU, Core 2 Extreme. For once, there is no word on power consumption on this new chip, but Intel talks about raw speed and a 40% gain over the current 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition 965 - which would be rather impressive and could indicate a problem for AMD. In this interview with TG Daily, Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust. Gamers, this appears to become the most exciting year for you in a long time!"
The demo system Intel is showing at E3 features a Core 2 Extreme processor, which, judging from past pricing strategy, will cost slightly over $1000, as well as a Quad-SLI graphics card (i.e. probably two dual Nvidia graphics cards at around $1000 each).
Now, when you build such a high-end system you probably wouldn't skimp on the case ($200), motherboard ($200 & up), memory ($300 & up), power supply ($100 & up) and peripherals, either, so let's allow another grand for these things and you wind up with a $4000 PC.
Put in a Blue-Ray drive (expected to cost around $1000 initially) and you just hit 5 grand.
I'm not a Sony fanboy, not by a long shot, but comparing a 5 grand PC to a 1/2 grand PS/3 does seem a tad unfair, now doesn't it?
And yes, a quad-SLI system with a Core 2 Extreme *is* expected to blow the doors off a PS/3. No surprise here.
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
Although one must wonder why AMD would be scared of a 5.2 gHz rather than a 3.7 when CPUs that fast are never, ever the system's bottleneck. Seems like a lot of posturing.
Because the ugly x86 instruction set acts as a form of compression, x86 code is more dense and fits more easily into the instruction cache than RISC code. The overhead of translating x86 to internal RISC is basically fixed and is therefore getting smaller each process shrink. It's already negligble. For this reason, the ugly x86 instruction encodings are now an advantage! x86 also gained an additional 8 registers and a cleanup with AMD64.
I've read over the article albeit briefly and I find myself thinking that the quote in the summary is total hype for a chip, sure a PS3 will cost about 600, but I seem to recall those EE chips being as much if not more and given that this chip is newer then the P4ee's no doubt it will cost even more. And that's not counting the cost of video cards etc.
I'm not impressed even by their marketing numbers. When I bought my 386 it was way more than 2x the speed of my 286. My 486 was at least twice as fast as the 386, ditto the Pentium, K6 and Athlon.
40% faster? Who cares. Especially for games.
2 is always smaller than 3 - even for larger values of 2.
. . . until next year. : )
harmonious design
It doesn't matter what Sony or intel come out with, neither company is likely to convert PC gamers to console gamers or console gamers to PC gamers.
Then again, what do I know? I fall into the "has too much money/buys them all" camp.
The article summary states:
"Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust.
but then I also see in the article:
"[I don't know off the top of my head] the number of polygons it can draw versus a Cell, but I think it's going to be higher, because there's a lot more bandwidth on the quad system than on the Cell system."
That doesn't sound like much of a claim to me.
I would expect in actuality we would be seeing something like a 60-70% increase in speed. A company like Intel would probably estimate conservatively so as to not over-hype a new product.
..that using the word extreme should be illegal?
x86 isn't less efficient. In some cases its even more efficient- you need less cache on common instructions. And some very complex things can be done in silicon with 1 instruction, saving overhead of multiple instuctions. FOr example, memcpy and memcmp are single instructions.
x86 is more complex. Its much harder to write a decoder for, and more difficult to debug the hardware. That adds cost (and a lot of extra transistors in the decode phase). But its a matter of complexity and cost, not efficiency.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Bull... I believe the wii controller and the ps3 controller look quite promising for fps games. It's not quite mouse keyboard, but it might have some real potential.
I'll be a convert soon. Sick of throwing money at my PC.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I used to think this, too, but Macintosh Universal Binaries regularly see the Intel side both have bigger code and use more RAM (gcc codegen for both sides). I don't know why this is, but I'm wondering if the suggested instruction ordering, alignment, and such to optimize for Intel's latest processors eliminates the old advantage.
E pluribus unum
When I bought my 386 it was way more than 2x the speed of my 286.
:(
Depends on your software and your hardware.
Did you have a 386DX40 or a 386SX16? I had a 386SX and my friend had a 286, Wolf3D.EXE was the same speed on both computers
There's a bit more design elements going into a PS3 than just the raw pixel pushing. I still don't see many FPS games on a PC that can do let 4 players play on the same computer screen.
today is spelling optional day.
AMD's Athlon 64 is 36% faster than Pentium 965 EE in UT2004 http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&m odel1=238&chart=71&model2=329
Is Intel's new Core 2 Extreme only as fast as AMD's FX-57?
Try leaving your refrigerator door open sometime, and find out if it makes the house hotter or colder :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because you are only buying 1 or 2 cpu's. When you are trying to stuff 20,000 into one room, you really start to care how much electricity and cooling it takes to run them.
given the investment that anyone makes in a computer system designed for gaming, how it is a "most exciting year" to be faced with the possibility of yet another set of continuing reasons to spend more money on yet more gear? wouldn't a really exciting year in gaming have nothing to do with new hardware and everything to do with cool, inspired and inspiring new games?
The demo system Intel is showing at E3 features a Core 2 Extreme processor, which, judging from past pricing strategy, will cost slightly over $1000, as well as a Quad-SLI graphics card (i.e. probably two dual Nvidia graphics cards at around $1000 each). Now, when you build such a high-end system you probably wouldn't skimp on the case ($200), motherboard ($200 & up), memory ($300 & up), power supply ($100 & up) and peripherals, either, so let's allow another grand for these things and you wind up with a $4000 PC. Put in a Blue-Ray drive (expected to cost around $1000 initially) and you just hit 5 grand.
Let's not, I don't want Blue-Ray. I don't want $1000 video cards, you can compete against PS3 with far less. You are effectively creating a gold plated PC that no one really goes shopping for, a tactic once commonly employed by Mac advocates. It was a bogus tactic then, it still is now. Peripherals, are well peripheral. You components are inflated. You can do the job with a $2500 PC and that is with name brand components, Antec case/PS, Intel mobo, Plextor, etc, and of course that $1000 CPU. And of course using today's prices. If you wait for when PS3 ships you could probably do just about as well with a $300-$500 Intel dual core, so we're really talking about a $2000 contempolrary PC.
The PS3 still costs a lot less, but now it is a reasonable comparison. Now folks can argue about practical issues, like will they get $1500's worth of value out of the computer with respect to non-gaming activities.
You'd have to pry my mouse and keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.. but on the other hand, this Red Steel trailer does make the first person gameplay with the Wii controller look pretty damn fun. (Then again, having to freeze time to tag each location to shoot the pistol is a cool effect, but it just makes me think how with a mouse you'd have those 6 shots off before the Wii controller had even tagged one of those guys)
No one buys a console because of the power of the hardware, they buy it for the games that are on it. Therefore the PS3 will be sold to those who play games that will be exclusive to the PS3.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Hm. I knew it was one of those.
Incidentally, the 386 DX 40 was the one AMD made. Intel was rather peeved at them for licensing the design and then making it run faster than the fastest Intel chip.
I'll bet you drive a nice big gas guzzling SUV, leave your windows open with the A/C on and never ever turn off lights in your house. Just because you do all that doesn't mean the rest of us don't think its stupid and certainly huge companies that buy thousands of CPU's care about power consumption.
The Intel Core Peregrine Duo versus the AMD Pulsaron64 X2 !!!
:-P
The most exiting round of CPU battles yet!
This sig rocks the casbah.
Ok so the clock speed rocks. But does the rest of the system keep up? The big advantage I see with AMD is Hyper Transport and the newly ratified Hyper Transport 3.0. You can have a THz CPU but if you can't feed it data/instructions it's just going to waste most of it's potential.
I'm not familiar with any possible new bus technology coming out with the new Intel CPU's, but based on my current experience with the latest Dell boxes (Intel) and our new Penguin Computing and HP AMD boxes Intel has a lot of catchup to do to outperform AMD and their whole architecture.
We are using these boxes as MySQL database servers with each server containing 100+ 500 MB to 50 GB databases attached to fiber channel disk arrays. These boxes are mostly doing I/O, but a fair amount of CPU is used for sorting/math done at the database level. The AMD boxes smoke the Intel ones.
Unless Intel also releases a whole new architecture that can compete with Hyper Transport the extra speed will most likely be wasted.
The problem with this is that power requirements will impact performance when you've reached a certain envelope. You can only reliably deliver so much power across the pins to a CPU and it's even more difficult to filter that power so that transcients/ripples don't cause all the signals that it powers to become noisy. At that point, you've hit a wall and can't make that processor run faster. So yes, lower power is important, because it means you can add more to boost performance.
I'm glad I'll finally be able to play solitaire at 800 FPS.
"Gamers, this appears to become the most exciting year for you in a long time!" Games on the PC are for 99% of the time restricted by the video card, only in rare cases the CPU will actually be the bottleneck, if you run a game at higher details (AA/AF) and resolutions you will put more strain on the VGA card, and an increase in CPU power will not translate into a boost in performance worth mentioning.
This silly -Os conspiracy is starting to annoy me. -Os is actually quite a lot faster in most cases. For the total borderline cases where -O3 is faster, you're supposed to profile and change it manually. -Os has all the optimisations of O3, except for those which bloat the code unnecessarily, such as 16-byte alignment of loop headers. This type of "optimisation" bloats the code and makes it _slower_ in most cases.
The idea that Apple uses Os to make IBM look bad is totally ridiculous.
Ok I've been keeping abreast of the whole new Intel chip, but readin the article does anyone else get a de'javou feeling? I seem to remember AMD bringing out their AMD 1700-2200xp chips with their low clock rates, and telling us performance mattered not clock speed. Intel then got carried away upto 3.7Ghz, telling us we needed faster and faster chips that cost 3 or 4 times the AMD ones.
AMD is finally ahead and while I don't do any network service work or place my PC understrain I've found the AMD64 3700+ does everything I would want, it doesn't slow down it runs everything very quickly and every game I own runs maxed out wiuth a decent frame rate. The one bottle neck in my system now seems to be windows itself (xp64 is an awful OS) and the hard drive access times.
Has Intel got lost in the 'MHz = l33t' attitude again? Or have they come up with something that competes with Hypertransport yet?
Well outside the MAC, Servers and your elite gamer can anyone see this chip selling? Its unlikely your average joe is interested eith the price tag being so high. The elite gamer seems to be a dieing breed, and does anyone know its performance against a AMDFX 62??
As for the 'who will buy a Sony?' comment, I will be, once the top notch one drops to around £200. My PS2 cost that and the years of enjoyment its brought me, coupled with the out of box games like singstar,buzz off etc show sony are thinking about me and my mates. It comes with Blu-ray since the 360 seems to be trying to pass itself off as a entertainment hub its lack of next gen drive is very very poor. Sonys Blu-ray, and general 'hype' seem to sugegst it can be a true entertainment hub that happens to play fantastic games. No i don't have a HDTV nor do I plan to buy one, but I'm pretty certain that the Movie industry is going to force this on us so would rather save the cash now and get it in my console.
the 20'000 aren't necessary in the same room to make a difference.
:it'll lowers their global bill).
If the 20'000 hardcore gamer that are living in the same city as you use 50W CPUs instead of 150W one, maybe they'll get 3FPS less on the screen, but on the other hand will consume 2 MW less.
Which will put less strain on the power plant, will be more ecologically friendly and will contribute less to the global warming.
(That's why enterprise are also interested in more eco-friendly CPUs
Same reasonning also goes for the SUVs. Appart from having a bigger toy than you neighbours, what's the point in using a vehicle that consumes more gaz and is less secure in case of crash than everyone else ? You're ruining the environnement with your bullshit. Not you as a signle person, but you as a member of the greater group of dummies who feel obligated to drive the car that looks the biggest and most impressive.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm so glad that AMD became a powerful player in the desktop PC and server market... not because I love AMD but because now we are really seeing some earnest competition and innovation. Before, we were happy with Moore's law, but then AMD beat Intel to 1GHz and the ensuing struggle for mind and market share has brought about some truly phenominal changes.
Keep up the excellent competition... maybe we can have a third player jump in with some new ideas? IBM? Sun? Let's see you what you have...