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Linux Hardware Looks at Core 2
Penguin Lover writes "Linux Hardware has just posted a new story on how Intel's new Conroe performs under Linux. From the article: 'Now is a great time to be CPU shopping because no matter which side of the isle you look on, you have great choice for both CPUs and motherboards. Along with Intel's chipset offerings, keep in mind that NVIDIA has the nForce series for Intel CPUs which would give you SLI support for all your Quake Wars and UT2007 gaming needs.'"
Isle? Come on /. editors! It's aisle!
The Core2 E6600 seems to be a nice bang for the money as it is right around the middle of the currently available speed grades and is the cheapest iteration with 4MB of L2 cache. It also seems to be competitive with dual core AMD products (my usual choice) that are substantially more expensive. It's definitely a buyer's market these days...let the price war begin! :)
To run a decent sized lcd at native resolution would be a start... but in all seriousness for anything other than gaming you're right, there's no real need to keep up with the cycle
which isle would that be?
Penguin Isle?
Isle be going now...
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
Compiling anything, encoding video, ripping CDs to MP3, large relational database queries, scientific computing, etc.
Oh, you meant for reading email and surfing the net? Yes, your hardware is fine.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I like the "NOW is a great time to buy..." argument for anything that improves steadily over time. Can you point to a time in recent computer history where "NOW" wasn't the best time to purchase a new rig? It can't possibly be news to readers here that the processor-power-to-dollar-ratio is at its best point ever, can it? It would be like saying "NOW is the best time to buy a new car", as if there has been a point in the last 20 years where the general trend of car quality has dropped, but even more ridiculous because of Moore's Law.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This only extends the constant battle between AMD & Intel. Intel comes up with something better than AMD...shortly thereafter, AMD comes up with something that beats that out...and so on and so on. While I have not personally tested any of the Conroe chips, I do have 2 linux boxes, one using an Intel P4 & the other an AMD Athlon64. Both run Ubuntu perfectly. Pretty much what I'm trying to say is simply that in a month or two, or when AMD comes out with their next line of CPUs, the discussion will just restart.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
> ripping CDs to MP3
Might be true, LAME isn't exactly a speed monster in high quality mode. On the other hand, oggenc/lancer is so fast it's almost silly. Upgrade to Vorbis, save money on hardware :-)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
There was one really important point at the end of the article that should not be overlooked:
Also keep in mind that AMD has yet to go to a 65nm manufacturing process.
AMD remains competitive with Intel, even though they are still at 90nm. Speed goes up and power goes down with die scaling! Now, clearly the Core2 is the fastest processor you can buy today, and Intel is (smartly) offering speed grades in the mid-price range in order to try and "buy back" the enthusiasts. But AMD will get a nice speed bump when they bring 65nm on line. Of course Intel is not standing still either, as they are aggressively moving towards 45nm.
I love capitalism.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The new CPUs may be great, the motherboards available now are good and fairly cheap, the video cards are as expensive as ever, but memory has went up in cost by $20 or more just in the last month. Now is not the time to upgrade to the latest & greatest. Get last year's (or even the year before that) best Linux-friendly hardware and buy used memory.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
"save money on hardware"
Especially iPods!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You'd buy generation-old hardware to avoid spending an extra $20?
We live in different universes. I think that I've been working too long or something and forget what it's like being poor.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Anyone got the SATA drives hanging off the 965 controller to be visible with Linux? I have tried Abit and Gigabyte Conroe boards with 965 (ICH8) controllers and neither show the SATA drives. And the PATA port isn't seen either :(
Can you point to a time in recent computer history where "NOW" wasn't the best time to purchase a new rig?
Say it with me now: Itanium.
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Confession is part of redemption.
I spanked my son the other night as a last resort. He cried and I felt terrible and I still feel terrible.
So there you have it.
Other then that, yeah, I am sure it will run UBUNTU but I doubt the X server will work.
I'm going to buy an e6600-based desktop in the winter, and I'm wondering if GCC will add tuning for the Core 2 processors. My guess is that '-Os -march=pentium-m -msse3 -mfpmath=sse' is the way to do it now in 32-bit mode, but there have been enough changes in the Core 2 to make for a new DFA profile, no? I thought they radically revamped the Pentium3 core, adding execution units and such.
I just rebuilt my Core (1) Duo laptop with the aforementioned options and it seems to get me the most bang for my buck.
From what I've read, compiling and running in 32-bit mode is still the best choice for now, the Core 2 is a lot better than the EM64T pentium 4 at running 64-bit code, but still not as fast as just using the 32-bit code (stuff like video encoding is happening in the 128-bit vector unit anyway, and I don't need more than 4GB addressable space).
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Yeah definitely save the money on the iPods, the iAudios are much better anyway. I suggest the U3 if you want a good flash-based Vorbis-player.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
yet as far as I can see. So low power AMD cpus is just a theoretical possibility.
Yeah, right. Voluntarily limit how and where you can listen to your music. Really smart.
I regret the day when I decided, in a silly stroke of idealism, to encode all my CDs with oggenc. Later, after getting frustrated by the lack of support for the format, I had to encode them all over again.
Face it. MP3 is a de facto standard and even though it's patented, what difference does it make? Does it stop you from listening to mp3 encoded music at home? No. Does it limit your options when purchasing a player? No.
Unless you're a flaming idealist and are willing to go through the extra mile and look for ogg-friendly players, there's no good reason to start using Vorbis.
The owls are not what they seem
To run a decent sized lcd at native resolution would be a start
A card two or three generations before that(tnt1 or tnt2) wouldn't have a problem running at a 1600x1200
His Gforce2 probably has 32 or 64 megs of ram, plenty for even a large LCD panel.
I'd probably be interested in upgrading that CPU before the video card, but likely have to do both as newer boards are using pcix over agp.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
There has been no, previous price war like this before, where the flagship products of both AMD and Intel are being heavily discounted.
>>> 'Now is a great time to be CPU shopping... you have great choice for both CPUs and motherboards.... keep in mind that NVIDIA has the nForce series for Intel CPUs which would give you SLI support for all your Quake Wars and UT2007 gaming needs
Umm nope. Iv'e been trying to buy the bits to make a no-compromises gaming PC and can't get anywhere at all.
Products that have been actually reviewed, benchmarked and advertised for weeks but are still not available to actually buy include:
* a retail core2 X6800 CPU (I want the official fan too)
* any motherboard with Nvidia 590 sli intel ed. chipset
* the fastest memory (corsair 6400c3)
and finally not yet reviewed but:
* the new Nvidia GPU that will do directX 10 (for vista comaptability)
If you were to buy a non-directx 10 top-end GPU now you'd be crazy.
The worst offender is Intel. I don't know why even now about a month after the core2 launch you still can't find a retail x6800 extreme anywhere. I'm guessing intel are just letting the big builders like Dell grab the entire supply still. Intel shouldn't just feed those guys without putting some out on the street too.
Drivers are needed to effectively use this under Linux, and Ubuntu is included. Ubuntu is a kid-version of Linux, mind you, so it's the last to get updated.
These programs may not fork() but they probably pthread_create() so I wouldn't go around saying that they are single threaded, esp the ray tracer.
What I found to be the most interesting finding is the performance of athlon64 and core2duo in 32 vs 64bit mode. Athlon64 have better 64bit performance/price even if they have slightly slower benchmarks. Also I think we need more benchmarks for low cost processors, you know the ones that average users purchase. I'm sick of benchmarks of ferrari's vs lamborghini's if you know what I mean.
I just checked the prices in Pounds Sterling at crucial.com/uk, and found that it had gone down since I last checked, a couple of weeks ago (when I noticed that it had also gone down from a couple of weeks previously. Your comment, therefore, surprised me. I finally tracked down the answer. The US Dollar fell sharply in the last month (the graphs against other currencies show similar pictures). The memory prices were probably the first to be affected, because those prices have a habit of fluctuating quite widely so suppliers tend to keep their inventories low.
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You don't game on Linux? I have Steam running under WINE. And RCT3. I still use Windows for Eve Online and BF2 though.
This is nice and all, but when is nvidia going to release drivers for X.org 7.1? I've been without real graphics drivers for about a month now, its getting old fast.
- Aetheral Research -
That's not how the smart kids do it; we encode to FLAC and then to whatever target format and quality level we need. Since oggenc2 supports FLAC as input, including the transfer of tags, it's all very comfortable. The safety of bit-perfect backups with the comfort of being able to pick and chose bitrates for the portable player. Golden.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
if all Core2s didn't have built-in TPM.
'fraid that rules it out for me.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Unfortunately, the only porn on the whole island is from the millionaire's wife!
>mp3 is the standard and although it has its flaws isn't all that bad.
The same thing can be said about Internet Explorer vs Other Browsers. "Bohoo, IE isn't all that bad. Installing alternative browsers is a pain (notice I said pain, not impossible). Bohooo, life is so hard, I might have to plan one step ahead, push one more mouse button, bohoo..". Man, that's just fucking lazy. Nobody said having a sense of quality and a little fire for what's right would be the easiest way to glide through life.
Feels pretty darn good to not be a punter of the mp3 licensing consortium though. YMMV.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The difference between the flagship AMD FX and the Intel EE is a full 28 seconds for video-enconding a sample video clip. I think these results are more pro-Intel than even the windows benchmarks.
Of course since AMD will hit back with 4x4, and Intel will surely follow up with Jet Propulsion, the only conclusion is: please move along. Nothing to see here.
P.S The photo of the processor is very funny. It's like a map of Egypt: civilisation on one side and desert for the rest. What's the empty area, electronics freaks?
I wouldn't say "for anything other than gaming". For example, if you're doing software development and testing on your own system, you may (depending on what the software is) want to have a decent chunk of memory, which might even require a motherboard upgrade from what GP's system has.
I believe that should be [sic].
Just so you know, Eve Online works under Cedega (and probably Wine, too).
If you use Exact Audio Copy in secure mode, like me, then this is pretty much a moot point. The bottleneck is the ripping speed itself, not the MP3 encoding. My AXP3200 encodes lame --alt-preset standard faster than my Plex Premium can rip.
Using Linux we're very lucky that we can build a kernel and applications optimised to our *specific* hardware utilising any special features and experience greater performance gains compared to users of most other operating systems say windows who are stuck with a generalised kernel that has to run on a majority of hardware from the last ten years and are stuck with a single set of binaries. Even with 64 bit windows most the applications you use will have to be run in emulation32 mode, so you won't get the same performance gains in the places you really need them, not explorer but video processing etc.
I have a Conroe E6600 running FreeBSD. Those of us who use FreeBSD often use the 'make buildworld' process as a poor-man's benchmark. With -j2, I am now getting 20 minute buildworlds, which is, in my view, remarkable for both the power and monetary budget of the machine.
AMD is apparently already making 65nm parts for Dell, supposedly available next month! See:
http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/1757/2/
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Wouldn't be the first time prices were crazy in Australia compared to the rest of the world. I just went to newegg.com which is a pretty good online retailer for pc parts. Price for a Athlon64 X2 5000 is US$639. Price for a Core 2 Duo E6600 is US$369. That's a rather wide price delta.
I'm interested in learning the linux os. I was wondering what would be a good computer to invest in to do this. I'm will be taking college classes to learn linux but i would like a head start. I also have a limited budget. So pricey ones are out of the question.
Actually the next round might be in about 6 months:
It is widely assumed that AMD will release its 65 nm parts early next year. That should trigger the next round of price cuts. In the meantime, I expect no major changes. The only reason for waiting another 1-2 months now is if you want a Core 2 Duo board with the next chipset stepping (the current one has a few bugs).
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So Intel and AMD are now tied in performance, power consumption, and heat. However, the caught-up Intels are brand new CPUs, so they cost more.
Staring at a white background [on a computer screen] while you read is like staring at a light bulb — Maddox
Core 2 Duo has much higher IPC than Athlon 64. A better comparison would be the $370 E6600 to the $830 FX-62.
There's also the Conroe-capable ASRock 775Dual-VSTA which can be had for $62 delivered. Not a top-performing board, but a great choice for a budget or transition system with support for DDR/DDR2 and AGP/PCI-E.
Before they were discounting older chips as they introduced new ones. This this time Intel has discounted the newly introduced chips and AMD had to match.
*This has not happened before.*
Maybe now Intel will come off it's high-horse and lower it's prices. I've been buying AMD chips for a long time. Not because I wanted AMD or didn't want Intel. It's all about the $$ for me. What gives me the most bang for my buck. For quite some time now, that's been AMD and not Intel.
I think Intel is overpriced and that they'll continue to loose marketshare until that changes. Intel...the writing is on the wall...shouldn't you learn to read?
2 cents,
QueenB
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