Slashdot Mirror
Intel's Penryn Benchmarked
Steve Kerrison writes "Intel's keen to show off its up-coming 45nm Penryn Core 2 CPU. HEXUS had some hands on time with the new processor to get an idea of how well it will perform once its released: 'Intel's new 45nm Penryn core adds more than just a clock and FSB hike, so much so that even a dual-core Penryn is able to beat out a quad-core QX6800 under certain circumstances.'"
If your app benefits from SSE4 optimizations, the gains compared to the current Core 2 can be giganormous (DivX encoder: +85% at equal clock). Otherwise, expect a per clock advantage of about 10%.
I wonder what under certain circumstances, means because I couldn't gather it from the article. Also, they simply looked at some systems pre-configured by Intel. Not great.
They finally applied some common sense, and are actually pursuing their performance per watt optimization path.
by engineering their chips for portables first, this means they can integrate the same chips into desktops and have the same kind of power conservation from desktop units.
additionally, by investing their r&d straight into laptop chips they dont end up having to spend extra later to re-engineer the chip for portables.
IMHO this is the first smart move from a lumbering corporate giant i've seen since toyota shipped compacts to the us in the mid 70's.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The Penryn core is just the first. Wait for the Teller core to come out. It's slight of hand techniques tricks you into thinking it has actually out performed other chips.
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
Firefox NoScript is the answer to all this kind of stupidity; I think it's worth using Firefox for NoScript alone.
Also, remind your hosts file that intellitxt.com is a synonym for 127.0.0.1
Yes, this is depriving hexus of advertising revenue. If they want advertising revenue, they should produce adverts which do not deeply infuriate their readers. Intelligently-targetted intellitxt might be actually usable, but to have every occurence of 'computer' hyperlinked to Dell's store is of no use to anybody.
Yes, laptops are dominant, or more precisely, power efficiency now matters. That's why Intel threw away the NetBurst/P4 architecture and developed Core from the Pentium M architecture. Laptops are more profitable, and people are starting to care about noise and power consumption in desktops and HTPCs as well.
This seems to be a new pattern for Intel. The Core processors were all mobile oriented, and the Core 2 introduced desktop processors, too. The mobile processors are now being treated as the flagship products. And for good reason, too. Intel seems to be the best when it comes to laptop chips.
Does it seem odd to anyone else for Intel to launch a new instruction set on a laptop CPU? Are portables that dominant these days?
Over the desktop? Not really, given how much the market has increased in recent years. The price of a laptop is not far over the prices of a comparable PC, hard disk space and GPU power is enough that most people don't have to compromise.
There's a few reason to have desktops:
1. Large monitors
2. Large diskspace
3. Better graphics cards
4. You want to tinker with it, upgrade etc.
But if you're not really falling into either of these four, there's not really much of a reason to go with a desktop, unless you know it'll be fixed in one location 90% of the time. Many people don't have a dedicated "computer area", they sit down at a suitable desk, use it then afterwards pack it away. Many people want to take it places, school, work, friends, cabin, road trips, whatever. Most people want that over the three 5 1/4" bays (DVD-burner and ???), four 3 1/2" bays (2-500GB disk + ???), 7 PCIe expansion slots (GFX card + ???) and all the other empty space they get in a desktop.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Or just use the AdBlock Plus extension, which blocks all the advert scripts without disabling any of the other scripts on the site.
It also has the advantage of blocking gif image ads on other sites that NoScript misses.
Well, I RTFA, and it was pointless. FTFA: "and we're absolutely adamant that the benchmarks were chosen to show the two Penryn-based CPUs off in the best possible light." -and- "Further, it's not an apple-to-apple comparison as both 45nm processors were clocked in at 3.33GHz and the QX6800 at 2.93GHz. Our requests for clock and FSB parity were politely ignored. " ...I appreciate the disclosure that it was in fact ruled by Intel and your requests were ignored, but with that, why did you do it then? If the whole thing is skewed by the manufacturer, you've just become part of their advertising campaign.
Intel set it up, they weren't gonna set themselves up to fail. Besides, isn't benchmarking supposed to at least resemble a scientific-like process? If you were going to benchmark you're own machines for whatever reason, would you set it up like this?