Intel Core 2 Updates, QX6850 and E6750

An anonymous reader writes "As AMD's Barcelona approaches, the price war between AMD and Intel continues. To spice things up a bit this week, Intel is throwing into the ring a number of new processors, refreshing the Core2 line-up. HEXUS reviews the high-end QX6850 and mid-range E6750: 'Now is a golden time for anyone looking to buy a new CPU, whether Intel or AMD. The latest round of price cuts means you can now get an incredible level of processing performance for little more than £100. But if your need to buy is not urgent, remember that Intel and its big rival are each promising new processors before the end of the year — AMD with K10 quad-core and Intel with 45nm Penryn-derived CPUs.'"

Comments

Unasked, unanswered question

[ceeam]

Have they fixed those bugs?

Re:Unasked, unanswered question

[Kjella]

Unasked, unanswered, uninteresting question. It has bugs, and so's every consumer CPU since before the infamous Pentium floating point bug because as the fix some, they get some new. Most of those are worked around in BIOS or in basic OS routines, and the Core 2 processors are neither worse nor better than the rest (AMD or Intel). I'm happy to keep AMD around for competition but this is just FUD against Intel.

Re:Unasked, unanswered question

[bernywork]

Yes and no,

Some of the bugs will be fixed, others won't. Every CPU has bugs, it's just a fact of life. These things are designed by humans, it's just going to happen. CPU errata happens with Intel (This is the Core2 link) and AMD. None of this is a major threat to most users, and they get worked around by most people pretty quickly. Microsoft have released fixes for the Core2 issue, as have Apple. I don't know whether there has been an update to the kernel for these yet, but I am sure they would get back ported by your distribution.

There is a note here and here regarding the Core 2 bugs, I think one of these might have even become a slashdot article at one point. The two links here both are referring to Linus' comment of it being "Totally insignificant", which given that he worked for Transmeta and knows a lot more about how the industry works, I would be putting a bit of faith in his statement.

As another poster said, keep up to date on your BIOS revs, as CPU microcode does have fixes for this stuff too.

Berny

Re:Unasked, unanswered question

[kestasjk]

So, I suppose you will blame the BIOS or the OS or anything _but_ _your_choice_ of CPUs when the security-related bugs that promise to allow any script kid to compromise your servers in unprecedented ways are exploited.

For me, choosing any CPU that has known security bugs to be used on any connected computer is reason enough to be fired. What security bugs? I don't know where people get the idea that there were security bugs in the errata Intel released. Theo said that out of 50 bugs "2-3" were "potentially exploitable", but as far as I know no-one has given so much as a proof of concept.

Saying that these bugs "allow any script kid to compromise your servers in unprecedented ways" is totally over the top.

• No-one has shown that any of the bugs contain any sort of vulnerability,
• no-one has shown that any of the hypothetical vulnerabilities allow remote code execution,
• no-one has shown that any of the hypothetical remote code execution vulnerabilities could be exploited in realistic scenarios,
• certainly nothing has been made available to script kids,
• and I don't even know what "in unprecedented ways" means in this context.

It is just FUD, until someone can actually point out a realistic code execution vulnerability, or even a PoC, even one that could be exploited in unrealistic scenarios, even a DoS, an idea, anything!

Another review and benchmarks

[mikemuch]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2158619 ,00.asp

QX6850 costs $999USD

[Organic User]

Just in case anyone is interested in buying a new QX6850 which features 3Ghz 8mb cache quad core processor with 1,333MHz FSB. It is going to cost you $999.

Re:QX6850 costs $999USD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, "early adopters" and all that...

BTW, is anyone else peeved at the notation "333 MHz (1333 MHz QDR)", as it was over at Hexus? I mean, the bus speed -- the data speed -- *is* really 1333 MHz, it's quite incidental that it is based on a 333 MHz source clock (using the "QDR" method of two signals half a phase out of sync and encoding at every falling and rising wawe edge, thus at four slots per clock tick). At the least it should be "1333 MHz (333 MHz QDR)" -- do these guys understand the tech they are writing reviews about?

Okay, I'm not *sure* I understand it either, but least the notation should be "1333 MHz (333 MHz QDR)" ;-)

More Details, Analysis Here, HH Review

[MojoKid]

HotHardware also has a full review up right here. They were able to take the new quad-core up to over 3.7GHz and show power consumption numbers for all the high end chips as well.

Marketspeak

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now is a golden time for anyone looking to buy a new CPU, whether Intel or AMD."

Read as:

For the love of God, PLEASE buy these things. The warehouse is full, it's bursting, it's...oh, the humanities...

Price cuts

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Just as a point of interest, when I was looking for new components around a fortnight ago, suppliers were were already listing high-end chips in the forthcoming E6x50 series at lower prices than even the mid-range chips from the older E6x00 range. The E6600 has been near the sweet spot on the price/performance curve for quite a while now, so if you're looking for a cheap upgrade, it looks like they'll be practically giving away E6600s and E6700s for as long as they last.

Re:Price cuts

[ubuwalker31]

I've never equated $222.90 to "giving away free" before...but in comparison to $999 for the QX6850, it does seem like a steal. Especially since I can't find the QX6850 on sale anywhere yet....

Re:Price cuts

[Emetophobe]

There's a planned price cut for Intel on July 22nd. http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4976

Q6600 2.4 1066 $530 $266
E6850 3.0 1333 - $266
E6750 2.66 1333 - $183
E6550 2.33 1333 - $163
E6540 2.33 1333 - $163

The quad core (Q6600) is getting a ~50% price cut.

Re:Price cuts

[OrangeTide]

Athlon64 X2 4000+ 2.1GHz (Brisbane-65nm) - $70

Yes, this low-end dual-core is half the price, but not half the performance. Therefor a real bargain.

Messing up their own market?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think, that with all the "pushing another processor in the market", they are making people to wait longer before they buy another processor. I'm looking for a new laptop, but sincerely, I'm still waiting so I won't fall in the same Core Duo/ Core 2 Duo trick. I bet lots of people are thinking the same way. So I'll wait at least until the T7000 series get cheaper (and also those 2G DRAM).

Re:Intel / AMD

[ShamrawkNRoll88]

Thats the problem with the computer market. You have to suck it up and just do it.
There's always something new and better and more shiny coming out next month.

Tom's Hardware

[Wicko]

Here is another by Tom's hardware, covers benchmarking the 6650 as well, and compares to all the current AMD and Intel chips in a whole wack of different benchmarks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/cpu_charts_ 2007/index.html

Real Benefits on the Low End

[dlevitan]

Anandtech has a pretty good article about these releases and also about the price cuts. This is looking great for me when I build a new computer in a few months (on which I'm planning to spend $150 chip from two years ago look pathetic. Oh well.

Of course, I'll need to figure out AMD vs. Intel. I just wish Intel had a better bus design. AMD has a good bus (HT) and Intel has the best chips right now. Maybe if they merged...

Re:Real Benefits on the Low End

[Almahtar]

Maybe if they merged...
Then we'd have a monopoly and both bus and CPU would suck! Sweet!

I wouldn't mind an AMD X2 BUT...

[TheLink]

But, the AMD X2s in the office have got the unsync'ed TSC problem (which causes stuff like time appearing to go backwards aka nonmonotonic time, which can cause programs to have problems). Sure in theory you're not supposed to assume they're in sync. BUT in practice on consumer-grade motherboards there's not much choice - often you don't get stuff like HPET or it's broken. Plus if your TSCs are synced, they are a better choice - the other timing methods are actually quite crappy[1].

So the workaround I use at work is to never let the cores idle and always run them at full speed. Boot linux with idle=poll.

Ironically, the AMD X2s supposedly use less power than the Core 2 Duos while idle...

Apparently AMD say they're going to fix the TSC stuff, and though it's been quite a while since they said that, AFAIK I don't think it's been fixed. So if I had to buy a CPU today for a desktop computer, it'll be a Core 2 Duo. The alleged Core 2 Duo security bugs don't appear to be being exploited by hackers all the time, whereas this AMD X2 TSC problem is always there.

I believe there are Windows gamers who are having problems with their AMD X2s and end up running the game/app only on one core and it's probably due to this TSC problem. Yeah the programmers shouldn't use TSC etc etc. But really what are their choices? See [1]

[1] Why can't the CPU + hardware + OS people get together and come up with something good for something as basic as time keeping?

As Vojtech Pavlik summarizes:
RTC: 0.5 sec resolution, interrupts
PIT: takes ages to read, overflows at each timer interrupt
PMTMR: takes ages to read, overflows in approx 4 seconds, no interrupt
HPET: slow to read, overflows in 5 minutes. Nice, but usually not present.
TSC: fast, completely unreliable. Frequency changes, CPUs diverge over time.
LAPIC: reasonably fast, unreliable, per-cpu

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/11/18/261