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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.
"save money on hardware"
Especially iPods!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
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
>>> '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.
if all Core2s didn't have built-in TPM.
'fraid that rules it out for me.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Hi,
I have a gigabyte ds3 mobo with core 2 duo 6600, using kernel 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 and patch from http://lkml.org/lkml/diff/2006/7/11/493/1 both the 4 x sata piix 2 x sata jmicron work fine, pata does not work at all, it is a known issue and should be fixed in 2.6.18, see lkml and mm trees for more info.
And a damn fine machine it is too.
AC
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.
AMD is apparently already making 65nm parts for Dell, supposedly available next month! See:
http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/1757/2/
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.