The Fastest Processor You Can't Run

auld_wyrm writes "Intel is trying to push the news of AMD's Barcelona launch out of the headlines with the release of the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770, a 3.20 GHz CPU that runs on a 1600 MHz front-side bus. It is the fastest consumer level processor that has come out, but don't plan on running it anytime soon. The ~$1200 price tag, and the lack of any motherboards that support a 1600MHz FSB will stop this unneeded answer to Barcelona from appearing in enthusiast's PCs for Christmas. Still, the benchmarks from this powerful CPU are something awesome to behold."

Comments

Just the things for Windows 7

[webmaster404]

Good thing technology is making big leaps as you are going to need this, a solid state 1 TB hard drive and around 20 gigs of RAM to make Windows 7 to run at even a Vista level!

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Hmm, don't rush out and buy it yet. This processor will only barely scrape the minimum system requirements for Windows 7 lower middle home basic word-processing and emailing edition. I'd wait for a little while longer.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

Remember when there weren't any non-workstation dual core processors yet and MS was saying you'd need one for Longhorn/Vista?

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

So would the "Disagree" moderation be +1 or -1?

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[kc2keo]

When Windows 7 is released I'm sure people will be throwing out good hardware that would otherwise be in a landfill. You can find me looking out for this hardware. I say this because I am putting bets that Windows 7 will have hefty system requirements just like Vista has. I've gotten some good hardware for free because of Vistas release. It also seems that the non-compliant vista hardware is sold much cheaper than it normally was.

Yes yes... I know what I just said is obvious and has been said a million times over.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

well, we need it for Vista, we still don't know what's going to be needed for Longhorn. After all, Windows 7 is barely a microstep towards Longhorn....

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[dave420]

I don't want to sound like a sitck-in-the-mud, and I'm a bit drunk, but why is this moderated "insightful"? Vista is fine on my pc, and it's no fantastic piece of kit. But then I guess that's the booze talking.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

As I recall at the time the dual core requirement was suggested we thought Vista WAS Longhorn.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

You and me both. Microsoft's crap software gets me more cheap, decent hardware than you'd believe.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when there weren't any non-workstation dual core processors yet and MS was saying you'd need one for Longhorn/Vista? Nope. Have any links?

I remember MS marketing whores saying Longhorn/Vista would run great on (take advantage of) dual-core processors, but I don't think they ever said dual-core was needed. Heck, MS's recommended (not minimum) system requirements for Vista Premium/Ultimate is a 1 GHz single-core processor.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither. You would post and say "I disagree".

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Yoozer]

But then I guess that's the booze talking.

All the benefits of the wobbly window effects Compiz gives you, without the performance penalty!

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree!

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Ox0065]

but the 64bit drivers for the solid state disk will make it work at the speed of a USB stick until you install the manufacturer's drivers, until once a month (probably on a Tuesday :-), it'll go back to working like a USB stick.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

No, *I* disagree, and so does my wife!

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Varun Soundararajan]

Then you will wait eternally. The last unconfirmed rumor from Redmond is that you need Google/Yahoo class distributed system to run their OS.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is fine, people should stop moaning about steep requirements.

I've used it on slow machines and it's been fine. Although my current PC is a quad core (3.4ghz quadcore with 1700 FSB infact, i.e. faster than the one in this article and it cost $300) so Vista obviously runs well.

This article is bullshit btw, tons of motherboards support 400FSB. Mine does 500 with tweaking.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Velcroman98]

I've been running Vista Business Edition now for 2 weeks on a Dell Optiplex 745 (E6700 chip) with 2GB RAM. Once I turned the User Account Control security crap off it's been a pleasure to use. Besides updates and new software installs I've only been forced to reboot once.

It's not as bad as all the /. members say. Corporate business users aren't running Vista yet; because all of their applications need to be certified to run properly on Vista before they will support it. It's the third-party vendor support that will make or break Vista, not QX9770 chips and a TB or RAM.

I understand this is a LINUX fanboy community (I run Debian on my crusty slow old laptop), but after a while it sounds like a broken record here.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

My point wasn't what was, but what is. Vista requires a dual CPU for anything approaching acceptable performance. Vista is much less than what Longhorn was envisioned to be. Windows 7 is more than Vista but far less than Longhorn, so who knows what it's going to require.

If truth be told, the WinFS system as described and given MS's coding history would require 1 dedicated core all by itself if not 2, along with at least a 2 disk RAID0 setup or an SSD. We're not talking about anything else there either, like AV, malware detection, the kernel, etc. Odds are those would take up another 2, so the quads might be able to run Longhorn, should it exist, but I doubt much else. (Yes, pure speculation, but having been through 2 iterations of the Cairo FUD machine and having seen the results, I'll bet I'm closer to the truth than MS would like to admit;)

I don't know that MS has another chance. If they had even a single vision involving technology instead of dollar signs, they would take Win64, strip it down and make it perform, and create a modular architecture with it, cleanly breaking with the past. Run Win32 code in VMs. Even if they successfully produced such a product within the year, would it be enough to keep people from jumping ship? I'm afraid the cat's out of the bag - MS has done everything it can to shove people out the door, and their efforts have been wildly successful. According to CIO.com, and several other publications, companies considering alternative desktops went from less than 1% in 2006 to 45+% in 2007, with 20% or so rolling out test systems.

I predicted in 2000 with the release of XP that MS had already peaked. They had some inertia that kept them going, but the signs were clear that the OS was bloating with no discernible improvements over Win2K (DirectX doesn't count - and it could have been supported fully on Win2K in an easier to use mode). Failures to launch Longhorn/Vista along with numerous security missteps, and then the horrible 3-headed abomination that actually appeared in the form of Vista have finally broken down the wall. MS will not completely fail, but its time as a 95+% monopoly is done. It failed in the server market already, and now the desktop market has opened to alternatives. If MS still holds more than 50% of business workstations by 2012, even in the US/Europe, I'd be surprised.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

It would be interesting to see just how many copies of Vista MS has to sell to make it profitable, and how many they've sold so far. They definitely seem to be faltering.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

What would be more interesting is to see how many they actually sold, and of those, how many are still on machines.

I know of several people who downgraded Vista either immediately or within a couple of weeks. Even the 2 that still use it after a couple of months, one's got it on a test server, the other is trying to justify spending the 3-5 days to downgrade over just buying a mac and dumping the entire MS line. Since he's going to have to replace hardware if he stays with Vista, the Mac solution is now tenable.

Another interesting fact would be how much Vista cost. Considering that they spent 7 years on it and threw away 3 or 4 years of effort and started over when .NET was proven not up to the task... I just wonder.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

That's an interesting number, but ultimately not really that important to MS, unfortunately. Once you've bought Vista they don't really care too much what you do with it. Now, if you buy Vista and are so turned off you decide to switch platforms, that's another matter.

Vista was expensive. Really expensive. By some reports there were 2000 developers working on it. For comparison, Apple has about 14,000 employees total. MS has about 80,000.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Whore...

You konw nothing about FSB

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[JCSoRocks]

Yeah... too bad your comment will never get modded up. :P

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

I think MS is very concerned about how many active Vista installations there are, considering the trends they're seeing. Their entire business model premise is that everyone will upgrade sooner or later, thus generating a large amount of churn. If no one upgrades to Vista, but they (businesses) have to get off of XP, then there's only one place for them to move - away from MS.

At this point, given the mindset, MS really only has one option: repackage Vista as a "home" system or dump it altogether, and keep selling XP/XP Pro to both gamers and businesses (see the gamer adoption rates about why XP matters there as well, Vista is less than 14%).

I thought there were far more than 2K developers working on it. From the descriptions of their convoluted build process, it had to be far in excess of 5K developers. They have tiers of branches for main functions of the kernel, for crying out loud! (There was a /. story about that a while ago - my mind boggled at the process they've adopted)

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

I think that was 2000 front line developers, back in the middle of development, not near the end. I expect there were probably at least twice as many analysts and designers who don't actually write code.

MS is perfectly happy with people running XP, so long as they pay the tax on their new computers in the form of a copy of Vista they never use. Or a copy of XP... it doesn't really make a difference to them. The question is, will the frustration with having to put up with Vista or use outdated XP cause people to migrate to other systems? With Windows-only apps becoming less common and Linux and OS X having better support for those that do exist, the barrier to moving away from Windows has never been lower. It might just happen.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

You're still seeing this as people paying the tax. People are starting to get wise to how to return their unwanted copies of Vista, meaning that there won't be a tax paid, and perhaps even a loss, depending upon how the money aspect is handled.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

I've heard of a few people browbeating a vender into selling them a computer without Vista, or accepting a return on Vista. Mostly geeks though. Do you think a tenth of one percent of people are doing that?

Also, the really important customers, businesses, like to be compliant with licenses. They really don't have a choice. They can use XP or they can use Vista, but they still have to cough up cash for the licenses. MS frowns on using those copies of XP you bought for your old computers on your new ones.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

Businesses own 'X' number of licenses, that they've already paid for. Those licenses are exclusive of systems. (That is provided they paid for the support/update subscription thing.) That's all they have to show. They certainly don't show a series of computer holograms (unless they're very small businesses)

So here's the kicker: MS doesn't want XP installed anymore. Businesses don't want Vista. MS has already been forced to extend the XP EOL term twice, and says they won't do it again. But wait, you can buy more expensive support options to keep XP beyond this current EOL. Businesses still don't want Vista. (See the push developing?)

That's why CIO.com's survey's went from <1% looking at alternative OSes to >45% considering them in less than 12 months. Vista's that bad, and Windows 7's roadmap is not going to make their core concerns go away and is actually a further enticement to look at alternatives.

Lastly, you have to look at what else is available. It turns out that Open Office has finally hit the "good enough" mark for the mass market majority. It's easier to switch to OOo than it is to O2007. That would be 2 strikes against MS. If you think this is not true, you haven't tried OOo. There will be the few for whom scripting in excel is still important, but for the vast majority, it won't matter.

And then there's the last bastion of MS hope: the Exchange/Outlook duo. The latter half, Outlook, certainly has gotten whipped in the past couple of years as a major security hole, and the O2007 "facelift" pretty much killed it too, IMNSHO. And it still suffers from the universal Office single thread I/O lock issue (just try opening a large attachment and doing anything else). Exchange itself is starting to get beat up some. It's a pain in the ass to deal with, backup, or pretty much anything else due to the JET DB underlying the POS. Then there's the issue of the deconstruction of MIME messages for processing and storage, and the inability to reconstruct it properly when needed. There are also the rise of several iCal standards based servers that are actually usable, and much much better email servers, along with the previously stated non MS server base.

Combine all those, and MS may be facing a 3 strikes situation, which would retire it to try again later. With Gates out of the way, and Ballmer most likely getting shown the door, MS might actually have a chance at reinventing itself, since it will have to compete on technical merit instead of contractual savvy, its past bailiwick.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

"That is provided they paid for the support/update subscription thing."

Precisely. So the business pays (or has paid) MS whether they run XP or Vista. From the simple financial point of view, MS doesn't care which you choose, they've got your money either way. They WANT you to switch to Vista so they don't have to support XP anymore.

I agree about the rest -- MS's monopoly has three pillars and they're ALL cracked. Windows is looking pretty tarnished compared to what else is out there, particularly as people regard the six year old XP as superior to Vista. Office is becoming much less of a lock-in than it used to be. Exchange/Outlook, well, I never could figure out why people are so attached to it.

The XP vs. Vista thing is a proxy indicator though. Yes, it might indicate that people are frustrated with ALL flavours of Windows and looking for alternatives, but as long as they're choosing XP and not Linux or OS X they're still giving money to MS either through buying Vista and not using it, buying XP outright, or buying upgrade contracts and not using them. The only direct leak in that system is the people who buy a computer without either and put an old copy of XP on it... which happens to be illegal, but more importantly it's something few people are realistically going to do.

I HOPE that people choosing XP over Vista means they're using it as a stopgap measure while they actively look into alternatives. If so, the real indicator will be a fall in MS installed base. Things like the Wal-Mart (or someone else?) Linux PC might be an early indicator of just that trend.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

For the Exchange/Outlook attractiveness: there was nothing else out there that combined the two. Wanted to schedule a meeting, email an invite. Wanted to move a meeting, do so and it automatically sent notifications. Wanted to see someone's schedule - easy. That last one pretty much disappeared around 2000 with Office XP, btw. Oh, and let's not forget the get an email about some information, want to schedule a meeting, drag it to the calendar and voila - instant meeting request. That integration is what made Exchange. If the Outlook client hadn't had it, Exchange might very well have been a foot note, as despite what MS claims, under the covers it violates several aspects of X.500 directories and in doing so should have been invalidated as a candidate for government systems way back in 97. That's another story.

Actually, MS wants you to "buy" another copy of their OS, retiring your old copy. Depending upon when you obtained your copy of XP, you may or may not have the right to use it on a new computer, and you may have that right despite what MS wants you to think. The only ones that are tied to hardware are the last couple of years of OEM shipments. Before that, you're free to do what you want, and actually, you're almost free to do what you want even with the OEM versions, if you're smart about it and didn't install WGA or SP2. But we're not talking about the average person that can accomplish either of those feats, so your point mostly stands, even though its through ignorance and not legal ability.

The choice of XP over Vista is definitely an indicator. It means MS won't be able to create their usual OS churn, because no one will upgrade, those machines bought in the last 4 years will in many cases continue to serve their owners instead of their owners being forced to upgrade because they got a docx document that they can't read and need an upgrade for (the thing that happened starting with Office 95). Also, it's not so much what "people" choose to do, but what businesses choose to do. If people start seeing other systems at work and go wow, this is easy or neat or not so different, then the door's been kicked wide open. That is MS's nightmare, and I'm sure it keeps Ballmer up at night. I think he's already realized he's lost the developers, despite his rant. They're all working in Java, Ruby, PHP, and other non-MS technologies. I'm sure he's got heartburn. He's getting a lot of pushback on DX10. XBox is a failure by all measures except some skewed metric involving only installed base. (Ok, I've got 20 million units sold!!! But I lost $100 per unit, and I only make $50/unit average back on licensing fees...Oh and warranty work costs me another $100/unit. Yep, sounds like a success to me.)

MS could fix itself, but it requires a step similar to Apples move with OSX, and given the glimpses of their culture posted throughout the web, it's doubtful they'll be able to pull it off. They're so big that it's going to take a while to bleed it to the point people will realize that the behemoth is half dead, but they'll see it happen soon enough. And only then do I think there will be enough shake ups in the company to make a difference. It will be interesting times indeed for those inside MS.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[ceoyoyo]

"so your point mostly stands, even though its through ignorance and not legal ability."

All right, nice chatting with you. Night.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Gr8Apes]

You do realize that was through the people's ignorance, not yours, right? The out of context quote made me ask....

But you're right, it is time to call it a night. Have a good one

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Bert64]

Interesting those people unable to use OOo due to their scripts, are usually due to the scripts being in a proprietary language rather than OOo lacking equivalent capability.
OOo has very good scripting support, with support for at least 3 real languages (plus one oo specific language) and the ability to reasonably easily parse the files outside of the oo application.

If you had lots of scripts in OO, it would be even harder to migrate to MS.

Re:Just the things for Windows 7

[Bert64]

Updates and new software installs should only force you to reboot if there are kernel changes being made, possible with updates but highly unlikely with third party apps...
And you were still forced to reboot for another unspecified reason?

Since upgrading my mac to Leopard, i have rebooted once for the 10.5.1 update, which updated the kernel.

Huh?

[Bryansix]

How do you benchmark a processor when there are no motherboards that support it?

Re:Huh?

[RailGunner]

There are motherboards that support it. Just not "production" motherboards.

Re:Huh?

[SteWhite]

It's worse than that even - the processor doesn't exist yet either!

Intel had them overclock an existing Core 2 Quad Extreme to perform the "benchmarks".

Check out the article on Toms Hardware Guide:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Intel-QX9770-X48-X38-QX9650,review-29749.html

Re:Huh?

[realmolo]

You don't. You just issue a press release.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

by copy and pasting the benchmarks supplied by intel's presskit.

Re:Huh?

[HowIsMyDriving?]

The board that the CPU was tested was either a pre-production model that Intel supplied for the tests, or was overclocked by the testers to run at the speed that the CPU FSB can support. Since no MBs officially support that FSB speed, I am guessing that Intel supplied the MB, but I have seen MBs run at at 1400 FSB even though it was not officially supported by the manufacturer.

Re:Huh?

[mabinogi]

According to the Anandtech review they gave them a real (though pre-production) CPU, and only had them overclock an existing motherboard - merely overclocking an existing processor wouldn't account for the massive differences in power usage.

Re:Huh?

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

The new issue of Maximum PC has a hands-on as well. They tested one in a Asus P5E3 motherboard.

Re:Huh?

[Wavicle]

How do you benchmark a processor when there are no motherboards that support it?

Simple, you test it on a motherboard that supports it. "But wait," you say, "the article said no motherboard does." Yeah, they often get it wrong, welcome to slashdot. While Intel does not have a chipset that officially supports 1600MHz, there are X35 boards out there from manufacturers such as Asus and Gigabyte that have bumped the FSB frequency anyway. Somehow, even under load, the platform is stable.

Re:Huh?

[rapidweather]

Guess I don't need to be asking what the bogomips are.
They would probably be so high I would not be able to comprehend it, or translate it into what sort of improvement the new processor would have over my current 700 bogomips setup.
Would probably be overkill, since Firefox stalls anyway on some web pages with all sorts of extra advertisements, etc. that have to be fetched. Want to see, however, since a big, fast processor might just be what's needed to suck the required content out of all of the various servers to complete the web page to the "done" point. What I am seeing with Firefox may just be my dated processor/mb setup. Once, I took a Mac LC II, and fixed it up with a Quadra HDD, with Mac OS 7.5.3, and then tried to surf the web with the LC II. Got turned away from most servers, since I had a processor the size of a postage stamp. Government text-only weather pages downloaded OK, but that was about it for the LC II.
If this new processor gets to market, the web page designers will really load their pages up with all sorts of content we have to download to get the page to the aforementioned "done" point.
Several reasons to toss our current hardware and upgrade, Windows wants more power, Bill Gates said it would. Not just "Windows", but the applications that run on it.
Also, the internet content will require more powerful computers to be able to view the web pages. That is not so much of a problem, yet.

Re:Huh?

[try_anything]

Guess I don't need to be asking what the bogomips are.

Coincidentally, I was wondering if it was fast enough to finish the infinite loops that Firefox kicks off in/with/involving X.

(Yeah, yeah, I know it's *really* the Firefox add-ons or the naughty websites I go to... porn sites aren't a fair test of stability because they're shameful, and Firefox is a delicate flower that wilts in the presence of immorality, or poorly-written plugins. I'm just drunkly bashing my favorite browser. I abuse her because that's how much I love her, goddammit!)

Re:Huh?

[julesh]

So presumably this isn't a production motherboard?

Re:Huh?

[the_lesser_gatsby]

It is, but the X38 chipset is 'officially' 1333MHz max. It has to be overclocked to reach 1600MHz (apparently fairly easily but with boatloads of latency on the DDR3). Only with X48 will 1600MHz be supported.

benchmarks

[wizardforce]

where are these benchmarks you speak of and why did they create this processor without a motherboard that is available for actual use?

Re:benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

Any way you want to. In fact, I just benchmarked a homebrewed processor at 5ghz. Its made out of paper and isn't supported by any motherboard, but I swear the numbers are correct. For good measure, I'll say its consumer grade and call it a record.

Re:benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

The x38 chip set does support 1600 mhz FSB... http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280+1070731640&Configurator=&Subcategory=280&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Re:benchmarks

[Harmonious Botch]

I, fir one, welcome our new motherless overlords.

Re:benchmarks

[CannonballHead]

Motherboards will catch up to the processor. Same reason computer games have graphics "abilities" that pretty much no one can see because it's too taxing on the system... eventually, you'll be able to run it.

Re:benchmarks

[wilsonng]

Well, if the speed limit is 65 mph, why do people make cars that can go 200 or 250 mph? why all the extra horsepower? If there are no speed limits on processor speed, I would expect the manufacturer to continually push the envelope. whether the 'rest' of us needs it is another question -- but there should be a good many who will need it and willing to pay a few extra hundred for it, I reckon. After all, why create computers with hundreds or thousands of processors running hundreds of teraflops?

Re:benchmarks

[julesh]

There is a motherboard available for actual use. TFA is talking bollocks.

Re:benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever modded this interesting obviously didn't RTFA.

For my testing I used the Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard based on the X38 chipset to run the QX9770 and it ran without an issue. I was even able to run the Corsair XMP DDR3 modules at 1600 MHz without an issue and we saw big memory performance gains because of it.

tag this post as

[russlar]

!overkill

Re:tag this post as

[Trillan]

Indeed. There is no "overkill"; there is only "open fire" and "I need to reload." ((Thanks to Schlock Mercenary.))

Re:tag this post as

[peragrin]

damn no mods points So I reply with this

30. A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go

Re:tag this post as

[urcreepyneighbor]

Over... kill? What's that?

Re:tag this post as

[Heembo]

Overkill is like when you drop a 500lb bomb on a Iranian orphanage because they might grow up to be terrists' someday.

Re:tag this post as

[ravenshrike]

Hey, you all saw it, that orphanage attacked me.

Re:tag this post as

[urcreepyneighbor]

Dude. Seriously.

There hasn't been a single orphanage attacked because the occupants "might grow up to be terrists' someday".

While I can't remember an orphanage being attacked[1] (except the Beslan School Massacre, but that was done by Islamic terrorists and it's obvious you're going to ignore Islamic terrorism), I'll play along:

Was the orphanage intentionally bombed? If so, bombing an orphanage - if it is occupied by terrorists - is justified. The deaths of any civilians can only be blamed on the terrorists, since the orphanage wouldn't have been bombed if they hadn't occupied the building.

-or-

Was the orphanage unintentionally bombed? If that is the case, then - hey - welcome to the real world: innocent people get killed in war. In the example you provided, ultimate responsibility lies with the Iranian government and Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, Ahura Mazda, or whoever else is in charge at the time - for being nuts enough to start a war with the good, old United States of America.

Obviously, the level (a fiver) of force (dropping said fiver on the occupied orphanage) isn't overkill.

In a nutshell, don't fuck with the United States of America... and everything will be fine. :)

[1] I'm sorry I don't spend all day mentally jerking off to left-wing blogs that document each and every "atrocity" the oh-so-evil United States of America has "committed" in Iraq & Afghanistan, so I will admit that - maybe - an orphanage was destroyed sometime in the last decade. But, hey, maybe ET did crash near Roswell.

Re:tag this post as

[Heembo]

Dude, I was just joking around - there was no political message or bias intended when I wrote that message. Now I'm a sick fuck for joking about bombing orphanages, I'm down with that. But don't mess with my political views - especially since I'm not nearly smart enough to have any with even a little validity.

Re:tag this post as

[urcreepyneighbor]

It was a knee-jerk reaction on my part. Sorry if I was a little over the top. ;)

Re:tag this post as

[Anonymous Coward]

As an basically uninterested party who happened to look at this thread for other reasons, let me just say this:

Sorry if ?!?

That's all. Carry on. :)

Re:tag this post as

[Trillan]

/me starts to eye you uneasily :)

shame on you, intel

[andreyvul]

still no integrated memory controller
shame on you, intel

Re:shame on you, intel

[Chlorus]

And why is this a problem? The integrated controller has apparently made little difference in actual benchmarks. I suppose next you'll post "shame on them for not having 'true' quad core", despite that not making any difference either? Besides, isn't Nehalem slated to have an integrated DDR3 controller?

Re:shame on you, intel

[Achromatic1978]

Besides, isn't Nehalem slated to have an integrated DDR3 controller?

I hope not. My hard wood floors hate it enough when I play, let alone if it was a part of the motherboard. I hate to think how long my nice new computer would last that way.

tag this comment as

[Anonymous Coward]

st00pid

Still Waiting

[jimmyhat3939]

I'm still waiting to hear Intel's response to AMD's latest SSE announcement, which to me sounds like a complete rewrite of the x86 instruction set.

Anyone know anything about this?

Re:Still Waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way they would fundamentally change the ISA. Backwards compatibility is hugely important, as Intel discovered with Itanium. It's probably just an expansion of SSE2.

Re:Still Waiting

[hedwards]

I may have misunderstood, but I thought that AMD just added 4 extra instructions to form SSE4a, if that is the case what will most likely happen is that AMD and intel will cross license the instructions, and in the future all of the instructions will be available on both lines of processor. Well, perhaps not all of them, but certainly the ones that are useful will.

More likely its just FUD to try and scare people away from the competition. From what I've read, the SSE4.1 isn't terribly useful either. Neither appears to be a must have on its own, and in both cases it appears that any performance benefit is going to be far out weighed by other factors in the processor.

Re:Still Waiting

[jimmyhat3939]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE5 It's like 46 base instructions. I don't even know why they call it "SSE".

Re:Still Waiting

[rrhal]

Perhaps, in a brilliant marketing move, AMD will call it 3D NOW!.

Re:Still Waiting

[Iron Condor]

This is so OT that it hurts my teeth to type this, but... backwards-compatibility is one thing, but a complete lack of development on the core ISA is a rather different one. I have no idea what AMD or Intel are doing to SSE these days, but if one of them could backport some of the technologies involved there to the cores, where a simple indirect add still consumes the same number of processor cycles as it did back on the Pentium-II, it would speed up a lot of existing software in a way that is entirely backwards compatible with the exception of programs that rely on the number of cycles for a given instruction for timing reasons. Which is not what should be running on a general purpose CPU anyways.

Re:Still Waiting

[imgod2u]

It's congruent with the gradual changes Intel has made to make the processor a vector-processor. This is simply the next step (FMAC).

Re:Still Waiting

[Tom Womack]

I expect Intel to ignore it entirely. The SSE5 proposal rewrites quite a chunk of the instruction set and would require a complete redesign of the processor pipeline, and Intel's competitive position at the moment is such that there's no need for it to do the work; they will argue that, if you want that kind of vector processing, you should get one of their Larrabee vector processors.

There is no particular guarantee that AMD will survive long enough actually to produce any processors using this planned SSE5 instruction set; it's for the chip that comes after Barcelona, and Barcelona is a year late and much slower than anyone had planned.

Re:Still Waiting

[jo42]

Don't you mean: 3D NOW! REALLY!!

Reminds me of stuff

[ackthpt]

Reminds me of all that stuff I read for years in Pop Science and Pop Mechanics -- ultra cool stuff you'll never lay your hands on. Well, this will be available, but probably not for 6 months. Meanwhile, I'm not about to upgrade my mobo for it anyway. I work in Photoshop on an Athlon 64, the cheapest one available about a year ago, and it's still no issue of speed, memory is the problem, having enough of it. Need mobos which can hold 16 GB of memory, not faster CPUs.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[magarity]

Need mobos which can hold 16 GB of memory, not faster CPUs
 
Then go buy one. NewEgg's motherboard search has 'max supported memory' as an option where there are 2 that support 16GB and 3 that support 32GB. And that's in the consumer grade motherboards. You've been able to get that kind of memory support in a server class motherboard, that really doesn't cost much more than a consumer one, for years and years now.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[Fulcrum of Evil]

This reminds me of the AMD I just got - the mobo took 4 dimms up to 2G each, so a bog standard (Supermicro) board can run 8G ram. Had I been willing, any dual AMD board is capable of 16G, with DIMMs running about $140 each. The problem is that dual boards usually need EATX, which won't fit in mid towers, generally. Oh well, Dual core with 8G is still really nice.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[Shadow-isoHunt]

Try tyan. www.tyan.com

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[dafradu]

Yet they don't have 8GB sticks to make a 32GB system.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't come to Slashdot for an opinion on any hardware in the last 5 years.
As we have seen before they argue that we only need a crank wheel and some good old imagination to get everything working.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[dynomitejj]

How are you going to run Windows with 16gb of memory ? Linux can handle that, but my laptop has 4 gb of memory and I've got to put boot switches to get it to recognise all of it. The only way I can think of to take advantage of that kind of memory and still run windows apps is Linux with crossover office running photoshop. There is still probably a limit on how much address space a process can take up. Anyone have anything to add ?

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[__aawdrj2992]

32 bit Windows XP and Vista only can access up to 3.2GB of RAM. 64 bit Home Premium supports 16GB, and 64 bit Ultimate supports 127GB. Not sure about specific *nix operating systems, but you stated you need to run Photoshop. The only way to get over 4GB of RAM in a Mac is to buy a Mac Pro, and the 8GB and 16GB upgrades will cost you your first born child. (Of course, you could buy third party RAM and do it for a more reasonable price.)

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[AnimeDTA]

...Photoshop on an Athlon 64...

I'd guess he's using a Windows flavor. Unfortunately MS supports only up to 4gigs of memory up through XP on non-server OSes. Vista has different levels of memory support based on the edition you get (8gigs on Home Basic, more support as you go up from there).

I'd say the motherboards available support just the right amount of memory as it relates to Windows, or maybe its the other way around...

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[dynomitejj]

Sure, go buy one. How are you going to get Windows to recognise 32 gb of memory ? Linux will, but you can't run Photoshop on Linux unless you use something like crossover office. Then, you think you can have photoshop open and using .... oh let's say... 8gb of memory ? I'd love to see a screenshot of that !! I think there is a limit on how much memory and single process can use. You can do VMware and have several machines running on that hardware, but that's no fun.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[dbIII]

There are boards out there with ridiculous numbers of memory slots - look at the supermicro stuff that can do 16 way with 4 x quad opteron CPUs and seem to have half the board covered in memory slots. These boards are moving down towards consumer prices. I do numerical processing with commercial software that really doesn't cluster well so eventually will get something similar and people doing stuff with home video will eventually be using things like this.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[julesh]

Yet they don't have 8GB sticks to make a 32GB system.

So get a motherboard with 8 slots then.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[julesh]

I think there is a limit on how much memory and single process can use.

Yes, there is, it's 3GB on Windows (2, unless you know how to make the config changes to enable 3).

That's not to say photoshop wouldn't benefit from more than 3GB of RAM; it uses a tile cache on disk which would be sped up if it were in disk cache.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[julesh]

Unfortunately MS supports only up to 4gigs of memory up through XP on non-server OSes.

On 32-bit systems, yes. XP 64-bit edition supports 128GB.

Re:Reminds me of stuff

[Tom Womack]

16GB of memory is possible on any dual-Xeon motherboard using eight 2GB FBDIMMs, and on most dual-Opteron motherboards using eight 2GB DDR modules, though some of the older, cheaper dual-Opteron boards only attached memory to one CPU. Some systems (the Sun X4150 server and X6250 blade, Supermicro's X7DWN+ board) have sixteen memory slots and support 4GB FBDIMMs, though those are horribly expensive - it's much cheaper to go from 16GB to 32GB by replacing the motherboard and processor and buying eight more 2GB FBDIMMs than it is to replace eight 2GB FBDIMMs with 4GB FBDIMMs.

Must be some boards

[edwardpickman]

Boxx has anounced machines using this chip so I'm guessing there are boards just the first run aren't available to the home builder.

Works on intel X38 chipsets.

[Zymergy]

FTA:
"...The Intel X48 chipset is a refresh of the X38 chipset aimed at the high end desktop market. It will be the first chipset to support 1600 MHz FSB parts (though current boards do as well in some cases) and will have unlocked bus ratios for improved overclocking ability. So there really isn't much change from the X38 chipset -- and in fact most X38 motherboards aimed at the enthusiast will probably support 1600 MHz FSB processors anyway. For my testing I used the Asus P5E3 Deluxe motherboard based on the X38 chipset to run the QX9770 and it ran without an issue.... http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=484

Sounds like many existing Intel X38 chipset mainboards will work with the QX9770, and I'd bet Intel's DX38BT can run it, (but probably at FSB 1,333MHz) http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DX38BT/index.htm

Re:Works on intel X38 chipsets.

[Traa]

I just put together a new box using the Asus P5E3 Deluxe. Funny thing is that I considered that motherboard to be a decent high-end board, not state-of-the-art. It's affordable, fully featured and apparently capable of the next gen chips.

Nothing dramatic, but surely the topic poster is incorrectly claiming that Intel is hyping a chip that can't be expected to work in the market.

Re:Works on intel X38 chipsets.

[Anonymous Coward]

But then would have to stop nagging about mainboards that support enough RAM. ;-)

Mandatory

[andreyvul]

Liquid cooling is now mandatory for the fsb now, before it goes the way of the Prescott.

tag: epeen

[Nimey]

This chip is pure E-peen for Intel, especially since nobody can fully take advantage of the ruttin' thing.

What everybody wants to know

[spaceyhackerlady]

Does it run Linux?

Re:What everybody wants to know

[TeknoHog]

Yes. In fact, Linux on this CPU can run infinite loops in five seconds.

Re:What everybody wants to know

[andreyvul]

What about 4 infinite loops (1 per core)?

Re:What everybody wants to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Thats when the watchdog timer starts barking.

Is it me

[aztektum]

Or is Intel moving away from any sort of street cred they only started getting back with the Core 2 by seemingly flogging the Mhz myth again?

Nerds know better and your typical "user" doesn't care. Make a quality chip and spending a shit ton on marketing buzzwords is unnecessary. Nerds will buy it and sell it on word of mouth. Done. Fire your marketing people.

Re:Is it me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's you. You're a cretin, looking for cheap /. karma.

A better architecture clocked faster is a win on both fronts.

Re:Is it me

[cnettel]

If Anandtech didn't get a really bad chip, the power usage numbers are quite disappointing. On the other hand, for the same microarchitecture, there is no MHz myth. A quad-core Core 2 at 3.2 GHz will beat every other x86 CPU in existence. With a 1600 MHz FSB, there is even no reason to call it seriously unbalanced.

Re:Is it me

[dave420]

So a 2GHz Core 2 Duo chip is no slower than a 3GHz Core 2 Duo chip? Is that what you're saying? :)

Re:Is it me

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerds will buy it and sell it on word of mouth. Done. Fire your marketing people.

How comfortable do you think Intel engineers will feel when they come to know that their only way of advertising their product rests upon a bunch of nerds?

Re:Is it me

[aztektum]

I dunno. I'll ask some of the people I know that work there. Seeing as how they are nerds, I'd imagine they'd probably have a pretty easy time accepting other nerds discussing their product rather than some paid spin-doctor.

Is anybody using Barcelona yet?

[coult]

Outside of giant clusters, is anybody running Barcelona yet either? I have been unable to find any systems available for purchase. Word on the street is January before they are available in quantity to the general public.

Re:Is anybody using Barcelona yet?

[felix9x]

You can get Barcelona systems from siliconmechanics. The big guys don't have the systems yet.

Re:Is anybody using Barcelona yet?

[coult]

You can get Barcelona systems from siliconmechanics. The big guys don't have the systems yet. Thanks for the tip! Just over $13K for a 64GB system with 16 cores...not bad.

Re:Is anybody using Barcelona yet?

[xcjohn]

You'd be surprised how on the button you might be. I'm always hearing proposals that include "the first 3-10k processors off the line".

Why must you people exaggerate!

[ackthpt]

Good thing technology is making big leaps as you are going to need this, a solid state 1 TB hard drive and around 20 gigs of RAM to make Windows 7 to run at even a Vista level!

You know bloody well it'll take 24 GB of memory to actually run an office app!

It'll also demand a 4GB videocard with a GPU strong enough to process all SETI requests ever in about 20 minutes

Re:Why must you people exaggerate!

[CastrTroy]

Meanwhile, Linux keeps on getting faster and faster. I'm running Mandriva 2008, with Compiz Fusion on a Celeron 1.5 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Intel GMA, and it's faster than Vista without Aero. It's also faster than XP. I think that Linux will really take off if MS can't make their next OS consume less resources. When the choice for the average consumer becomes, spend $50 on a Linux computer, or spend $800 on a Windows computer, I think that most people will begin to switch. If things keep going the way they are, this is how the situation will become.

Re:Why must you people exaggerate!

[CxDoo]

Faster, like, your Excel flies? Or your %TheGameOfTheDay% flies?

OS in itself is useless.

Re:Why must you people exaggerate!

[edxwelch]

Yeah, the command prompt in Linux runs faster than the command prompt in Windows

old news

[crassico]

I've run 8x400 on my old P5W-DH/E6400 couple and it went fine. Today's quad must do it too on sweet new boards

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[Chandon Seldon]

What would you say if I told you that AMD processors were made in Germany?

Waiting

[CaptScarlet22]

Looks like I'll be waiting to buy my Mac Pro until later...

Re:Waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, i'm not the only one! i have been expecting the new mac pro since last week but not a peep from apple... i suspect they may wait until january to announce at the conference. :(

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[bogaboga]

I would ask you whether all AMD processors are made in Germany, and whether AMD is a German company. If the answers to all these questions is in the affirmative, then I am wrong...sorry!

If on the other hand AMD is [indeed] a US company and some of its processors are made in the USA, then I am reassured.

But then when it comes to the USA, all our electronics are foreign made. To make matters worse, our flagship Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet will be at least 61% foreign made. These are some of the facts that ashame me.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[Neuticle]

He would say that silicon fabs are built all over the world; AMD has relatively few fabs and the flagship one is in Germany right now.

However, that does not make AMD a German company and that being said, Intel* is firmly based in the USA. I live a few minutes from Intel's testing & research fab in Oregon, and the Corporate Headquarters is in California (not too far from the AMD headquarters)

*they own the personal computer CPU world, AMD is a much smaller competitor.

That is what he might say.

Getting it out of the way

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet America, the processor runs you!

An overclocked Q6600 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

And costs a damn lot less.

Re:An overclocked Q6600 is faster

[lordofwhee]

Yes, but, supposedly, it reduces power consumption, and has a larger L2 cache (unless I failed miserably at basic math).

So, basically, the Q6600 is still king of the quad-core world (at least until Phenom comes out, maybe).

What does 3GHz give me

[Colin Smith]

That 1GHz doesn't?

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[timmarhy]

an extra 2GHz?

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're asking that question, then you're presumably not the target market for "Extreme" edition processors.

Fortunately both Intel and AMD have processors that probably do suit your needs.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Colin Smith]

You have no idea how tiring people who think they're funny are.

What does an extra 2 GHz give me?

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[colesw]

It allows you to run programs that are poorly written because no one needs optimize the more GHz you get.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[jay-be-em]

2 billion more Hertz, assuming you're American.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Cajun Hell]

Faster Gentoo installs. And a longer penis.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can keep your 4-inch dick and I'll upgrade to the 12-inch model.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Anonymous Coward]

100+ FPS in any Valve Source Engine based games.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[JebusIsLord]

Conversely, it allows developers to write programs that are easier to debug, faster to develop, and easier to add features to (that yes, take up more CPU cycles than an obfuscated, buggy "optimized" application).

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[that this is not und]

And everybody knows that software development should be paced for the convenience of the programmers. That's why all those Pascal programmers in the 1980's conquered the world, eh?

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Anonymous Coward]

Decoding high definition H.264 compressed video in realtime.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[hoopshank]

A big track count and lots of plug-ins in multitrack pro-audio recording / production software.
I'm sure others have mentioned what it gives you in other areas - that's my area.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, totally. 64k should be enough for everyone, right?

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[jo42]

That 1GHz doesn't? A larger penis?

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[JebusIsLord]

Pascal was mostly a teaching language, and your point escapes me anyhow. As a (presumably) non-developer, you do realise that time is a scarce resource for any project, right? I'm sick of non-coders assuming that just because we don't do everything in assembly means we're lazy. No... it means we have more important things to implement. Cycles are cheap, programmers are expensive. Back in the day, the opposite was true.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[that this is not und]

I code mostly in assembly language. Granted, there are probably only in the mid six figures of medical devices running my code right now, but I guess I can consider myself a 'developer.'

I'm sick of people using kitchen-sink object models that bloat out the binaries. Not because you're 'lazy' it's more that you seem incapable of thinking out the problem.

Code reuse is a joke. It would make sense in an Open Source world, but in the commercial sphere, it's just a jerk-off exercise to keep busy and another set of buzzwords to toss at management. And big grandiose object models ADD complexity, and lower reliability.

Re:What does 3GHz give me

[JebusIsLord]

An embedded system for driving medical equipment, which definitely software development, is very different than say, developing even a medium-complexity GUI application with a database backend. I hope you aren't suggesting that the same tool (ASM) is the right tool for both. You'd be coding for years and years, and probably never catch all the bugs you introduce, by doing it in ASM. I can have a clean, bug-free application ready and on user's desktops in a week or two by doing it in C#.

C isn't the right tool either, after a certain level of complexity is reached. Great language for speed-sensitive things like CODECs and kernels, but shitty for asynchronous GUI applications. You can always spot them, because they don't support threading very well (the GUI frequently stops responding), suffer memory leaks, and crash a lot. When they do crash, you can't tell why, because error handling without exceptions is such a pain no one implements it. Who gives a rat's ass if they shave 10MB off their memory footprint?

Object models let the developer keep his/her sanity when dealing with large amounts of code, because its modular. Sure, some objects can be reused, but mostly its about the high-level architects being able to ignore the inner workings of objects, and just worry about how they interact.

Ever go back and try to understand your old ASM? Even when well-commented, its pretty painful.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Because making plants that make processors is expensive. Return on investment in building up the production capability from scratch would suck when there is already an international economy that is capable of supplying even the more capital restricted countries with the processors they need.

Obviously you don't multi-task

[Bryansix]

Multi-tasking takes up all kinds of CPU time. However a multicore chip is even better suited for it.

Re:Obviously you don't multi-task

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Multitasking doesn't take much grunt. A 7 MHz Amiga can do it without any slowdown at all. And I have a 300 MHz Pentium II running a long, long pipeline of curl, awk, and a shitload of seds all the time, and it's almost totally I/O bound. CPU doesn't matter at all for multitasking.

It's all about the apps you're running, not how many there happen to be.

Re:Obviously you don't multi-task

[Bryansix]

I usually run about 20 instances of IE and then I have Outlook, a few open email messages I'm writing, Windows Media Player. Ya, I need the grunt. Most of this is just a memory hog though.

What was that?!

[highspl]

Lonestar: It's Intel 1. Barf: They've gone to PLAID!

Re:What was that?!

[SargentDU]

Ludaquis speed! /I still love that movie!/

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are all high end industrial robots built in japan or sweden? Why are all decent camera lenses built by japanese or german companies? Why are all sport cars worth mentioning built in continental europe?

High end technology isnt just something you start building, it requires loads of development, and the market niche is probably taken, which makes all that development cost an unsafe investment.

Is this different from an enthusiast overclock?

[Neuticle]

I seem to recall several "enthusiast" sites bragging about over-clocking the stock Intel Core-2s to 3.2GHz on air cooling, even higher with water or other, but I'm not an over-clocking expert.

Can someone please explain how this is "better"? How big of an impact will the faster FSB have?
Will it allow you to run memory at insane speeds, and is there even RAM available that can handle those speeds?

Re:Is this different from an enthusiast overclock?

[jfinke]

3.2GHz is a pretty minor overclock at this point. Most of Intel's line will hit that. When you get about 3.8, you are pushing it. I believe that there are people getting close to 3.8 on air cooling as well.

Re:Is this different from an enthusiast overclock?

[__aawavt7683]

The computer builder I work for regularly does 3.7-3.75 on air cooling, just not a stock cooler. I think the FSB is set around 1600MHz as well, though I believe these are dual core and not quad.

As is said.. it seems to not take much.

Still, while we offer high end, our specialty is in multiple monitors :-) up to 8 on a single computer is fairly common, 12 quite doable, and.. well, if you use tricks.. how about 24? ;-) I need to get writing the program to configure those. Geez..</brag>

-DrkShadow

Re:Is this different from an enthusiast overclock?

[argent]

How big of an impact will the faster FSB have?

Let's put it this way. If Freescale had shipped a G4 with a decent FSB a year earlier, Apple wouldn't have had an excuse to switch to Intel. Access to RAM is the real bottleneck these days.

Unavailable?

[owlstead]

Of course it is unavailable. It will be available when it hits the $999 price tag. Or is Intels highest desktop price susceptible to inflation as well? In that case, lets hope that they don't do a 20% increase every 2-3 years. It seems technically we are now at the P4 GHz range again, but now with well performing and full featured CPU's. Maybe we should call this a green paper launch.

Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[NEOtaku17]

Do you make your own shoes and clothes or do you go out and buy them from "other" people outside of your household? Do you milk your own cow in your backyard or do you buy your milk at the grocery store? My guess is that you do what you do best in exchange for money and trade it for things that other make more efficiently. That way the total amount of production is greater because you and others are specializing in what you make. For the same reason it would be stupid to make all your own goods inside your own household it would be stupid for a country to make all of its goods inside of its borders. Comparative advantage increases division of labor which increases total production(AKA you become more wealthy). Making everything yourself is a good way to make yourself extremely poor.

Re:Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[quanticle]

Yes, in purely economical terms, you would be better off specializing in the goods and services that best suit you. However, there are other concerns besides economic ones. For example, lets say that the US outsources all of its electronics manufacturing to China. Then, if China wished to exert influence on US foreign policy, all they'd have to do is threaten to cut off the supply of new electronic parts. The US would have to consider China's opinion, or face large economic losses from a supply shortfall. Therefore, its in America's interest to keep at least some of its electronics manufacturing capacity, even when doing so is not economically optimal.

That's one of the flaws I often see in economists - the tendency to reduce everything to profit/loss equations, and disregard the fundamental fact that people are not the perfectly rational producer/consumer units in economics simulations.

Re:Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Well we know what you think the point of life is. To have the largest pile of useless junk when you die. People like you are what is ruining the world, not peope who don't buy into the capitalist nightmare.

Re:Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

"Making everything yourself is a good way to make yourself extremely poor."

True, but if you have the capital, it's a robust solution.

What happens when the grocery store runs out of milk, or the price doubles?
What if they find bacteria or mad-cow in the store-bought brand? What then?

If you want something done RIGHT, you do it yourself. And you spend the money,
and you write it off with the huge profits you make because you are a marketing behemoth.

Not only that, but your competitors can't squeeze you when they buy all the dairy farms.

This is called in house procurement. Welcome to 20th century economics.

Re:Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[captainwisdom]

Bravo. Absolutely correct. It's amazing to me that people have to keep making these arguments. It's basic economics 101. Well, at least it would be, if you had enough good teachers in this country that weren't so enamored with socialism. I have just one wrinkle to add. The above argument only applies to money and effeciency and not to 'total human happiness'. For example, can a person be happier by not always specializing - at least not one hundred percent of the time. Say by building their own house or furniture or sewing their own dresses. I believe they can. Bottom line: capitalism and specialization for the nation as a whole, with individuals stepping "off the grid" from time to time to become more generalist and rounded.

Re:Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[nyonix]

This is already happening, if china decided to dump all dollars they have, and start buying euro or pounds, the US economy would be in a lot of trouble, so they do have some influence, but what we must be aware is that any action against the US economy will effect every country in world including China, so China will stay put, even if they have the upper hand in this matter.

Re:Welcome to 18th Century Economics

[quanticle]

China will stay put only as long as a decline in the dollar hurts them as much as it hurts us; mutually assured economic destruction, if you will. That's why I find the recent moves by China to diversify its US Dollar holdings somewhat concerning, both because it means that China is losing faith in the dollars ability to hold value, and because of the fact that China is slowly moving into a position where they can hurt us more than we can hurt them.

So basically

[toriver]

you cannot actually use it, but if you could it would go VROOOOOMMMM!

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[GuidoW]

The Core line of processors is based on the Pentium M, which was developed in Isreal.

Correct.

[Colin Smith]

I work on one task at a time.

I have a laptop with apparently a ... 1.6GHz CPU and it works just fine, so what does an additional 2GHz give me?

Re:Correct.

[Bryansix]

I work on one task at a time.
I have a laptop with apparently a ... 1.6GHz CPU and it works just fine, so what does an additional 2GHz give me?

Apparently nothing.

Re:Correct.

[PhxBlue]

I work on one task at a time.

And your computer is never doing anything in the background? No antivirus software? No explorer.exe? You never plug in a memory stick to save work to while your word processor is open?

Re:Correct.

[Tom Womack]

It means that you will finish the maximum-likelihood refinement of a protein model against X-ray data in forty minutes rather than ninety, so can check the mode in which ligands bind to your protein kinase about twice as fast as you could on the slower computer. Which, literally, helps some of our customers find treatments for cancer more quickly.

(yes, of course the software is multi-threaded, the core parts are Fourier transforms and exponential maps on large 3D arrays, and those parallelise nicely).

Incorrect, motherboards are available

[Fross]

For instance The Asus Maximus Extreme, or Abit carries one too.

Re:Incorrect, motherboards are available

[nitio]

Wow, that's the most stupid name I've ever heard since ABIT's Fatality motherboard. FFS, do we need names that might suggest rape or any kind of anal violation now?

Re:Incorrect, motherboards are available

[modicr]

Another candidate in stock: Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-GA-X38T-DQ6-Motherboard-Definition-8-channel/dp/B000XQ5HF4

Is this one compatible?

Re:Incorrect, motherboards are available

[blacklagomorph]

Just wait for Gigabyte to counter with their Gigabyte Miles Gloriosus

Re:Incorrect, motherboards are available

[hollywoodb]

For instance The Asus Maximus Extreme, or Abit carries one too. Asus Maximus Extreme?

How do you top that?

The Asus Crotch-Rocking Awesomeness-Oozing Ultimus-imus Titan-Crushing Extreme?

bah (humbug)

[Anonymous Coward]

behold... the fastest Intel processor to date , watch it melt next to a Power5 or Power6 from IBM..

Re:bah (humbug)

[Technician]

behold... the fastest Intel processor to date , watch it melt next to a Power5 or Power6 from IBM..

You missed the tech specs regarding the 45 nm process and high K gates. They run at these speeds without overclocking and on about 20% less power..

That's hardly a formula for a meltdown.

Re:bah (humbug)

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing an Intel x86 CPU to a Power5/6 is laughable. Power5/6 are extremely complicated devices and much more expensive compared to current x86 CPUs and aimed at different markets. The yields and power figures on x86 are also much better.

Re:bah (humbug)

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven you drank any IBM Kool-Aid lately? That's all they are talking about these days.. power savings.

How could power figures on x86 be 'much better'? Did I miss something? Can you now allocate one tenth of a processors time to a running machine and change it dynamically on x86?

Re:bah (humbug)

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM no longer makes or supports desktop platforms. Instead they sell it off, look at their levono crappy tops.

Re:bah (humbug)

[Anonymous Coward]

"How could power figures on x86 be 'much better'?"

A Power5 die consume about 160-180 Watt. There really isn't anything wrong with that, since Power5 aimed at a different market. Power5/6 will never reach the power effiency of x86, and that is not what IBM is aiming.

"Did I miss something?"

Yes.

"Can you now allocate one tenth of a processors time to a running machine and change it dynamically on x86?"

No, whats your point?
You are comparing a CPU that costs say $500 to a CPU that costs at minimum $5000. I guess one should expect more features on a complex and expensive device compared to a high volume and cheap device.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[necro2607]

"I wonder why no other country, even those technologically [more] advanced, have produced anything remotely comparable to Intel and AMD processors yet."

Well, let's just say, in Soviet Russia, CPU processes you!

I dont care

[EEPROMS]

Some may cringe at that statement especially from a person who is also a hardware geek. The reality is Im more interested in portable solutions now than static over priced box's. I already have a three year old Dual Xeon media server (8TB Raid 5, 4GB ram) that does everything I want and I wont be updating any time soon. What I will be looking for are better portable solutions like the Fujitsu U1010 or a Asus 10" EEE (if that is ever released) even the Archos 705/605WiFi PMP (Portable Media Player). Yes I do play games but Im happy with my PS3 and I wont be updating that any time soon. These expensive and way over the top cpu's I feel are becoming more and more irrelevant for the average (even power user) consumer.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[larry bagina]

ARM is british designed. SH4 is Japanese designed. Nobody else has produced anything remotely comparable to x86 because x86 sucks. There's a lot of smart people polishing that turd, but it's still a turd.

the bus is nice

[sentientbrendan]

and would be great in combo with a fast harddrive. Also intel really needs to start using NUMA like AMD does. However, there doesn't seem to be much point to running a cpu with that high of a clock rate. All you do is chew up power and make your equipment hot with cycles that aren't going to bes used.

The core 2 duos are already pretty nice in terms of raw cpu speed, it is the rest of the system that could use a speedup.

Re:the bus is nice

[legoman666]

clearly you have never played a game on your PC, encoded a video, ran F@H, or anything else CPU intensive. The hard drive is only the bottle neck while loading. And it's a bottleneck that's going away; SSD's are becoming faster and faster very quickly. Once the HDD bottleneck is eliminated, I wonder what the next one will be? The user?

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[SleepyHappyDoc]

I was under the impression that the great things coming out of Intel lately have been from the Israeli R&D people.

I fixed your Haiku

[Matimus]

Shame on you intel
memory control on die...
That is what we want!

Re:I fixed your Haiku

[networkBoy]

It's already on the plans for Intel to put an integrated MCH on the processor. I would assume first as a multi chip package, following up to full integration.
-nB

You're all missing the point...

[legoman666]

Anandtech had a good insight about this release. I'll just quote it directly instead of trying to paraphrase:
"Almost as soon as we had Phenom samples, Intel made the decision to sample a CPU requiring a FSB that wasn't officially supported by any chipset at the time. No, 1600MHz FSB support won't come until next year with the X48 chipset, but it didn't matter to Intel; we were getting chips now.

Take a moment to understand the gravity of what I just said; Intel, the company that would hardly acknowledge overclocking, was now sampling a CPU that required overclocking to run at stock speeds. Even more telling is that Intel got the approval of upper management to sample these unreleased processors, requiring an unreleased chipset, in a matter of weeks. This is Intel we're talking about here, the larger of the two companies, the Titanic, performing maneuvers with the urgency of a speed boat.

It's scary enough for AMD that Intel has the faster processor, but these days Intel is also the more agile company."

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=2

Re:You're all missing the point...

[OGmofo]

I think you hit the nail on the head. AMD seems to be trailing right now in performance and I suspect the reason is mostly process capability differences. I think AMD had a lead for a little while, mostly in their design (relatively cheap to achieve) but couldn't turn that lead into enough profit to fund more rapid advances in process shrinkage to maintain that lead ( a much more expensive endeavor). A good part of why they couldn't turn that lead into a decent reputation and lasting profit margins was industry inertia and Intel's very effective, perhaps sometimes underhanded, marketing.

What's even scarier is that AMD could fall far enough behind they eventually effectively fold. I don't think that would bode well for CPU prices.

Sometimes I think the enlightened consumer needs to think about the competetion aspect of the market. Given two options of equal or comparable value, give extra consideration to the little guy...you may benefit from the competetion later.

Re:You're all missing the point...

[grahamd0]

Sometimes I think the enlightened consumer needs to think about the competetion aspect of the market. Given two options of equal or comparable value, give extra consideration to the little guy...you may benefit from the competetion later.

I think I'd benefit more from buying the superior product. If Intel manages to drive AMD out of business they'd be in for some trouble. First of all, they'd be under increased scrutiny from various governments for having a monopoly on the desktop processor market (not a big deal in the US, but Europe is too big a market to ignore). Secondly, if the quality of their products and their research went south, someone else would come in to pick up the slack. Lots of people make processors, even you only hear about Intel and AMD right now. We might even get to see some superior architectures gain ground. It would be a great opportunity for someone to gain a big chunk of the market with a superior CPU that could translate x86 instructions on the fly. Or the desktop/traditional-laptop market could simply fall apart as people begin to use leaner, faster mobile devices.

Disclaimer: It's late. I'm tired. Please forgive me if the preceding post makes no sense.

Re:You're all missing the point...

[julesh]

"Almost as soon as we had Phenom samples, Intel made the decision to sample a CPU requiring a FSB that wasn't officially supported by any chipset at the time. No, 1600MHz FSB support won't come until next year with the X48 chipset, but it didn't matter to Intel; we were getting chips now.

Except everyone seems to have missed the fact that the X38 chipset, available now, supports 1600MHz FSB.

Re:You're all missing the point...

[CAIMLAS]

FOr most people, there's a lot more to it than just speed, though. Speed is a big one, but price is also big, and so is product loyalty - though most people are hesitant to admit it. There are an awful lot of people who started buying AMD because they were cheaper (even if they were technically inferior in many/most/all respects), and have continued to do so for that very same reason. A change in relative status of price will not impact the decision making process of these people: AMD has a track record of about 8 years of superior processors to back them up, unlike Intel which has had a number of spectacularly unimpressive products in the same time frame.

For that matter, the release of this CPU won't change the decision making process of almost everyone else who buys AMD, either. I don't know about you, but a low price/performance ratio is a pretty big factor when I and the people I know buy. AMD still wins that fight hands down, and is likely to do so for some time: anyone who buys on price/performance, and anyone who buys "whatever's cheapest" will be getting AMD.

Re:You're all missing the point...

[legoman666]

You're 100% correct. When I built my first gaming computer, I put a 9700pro and a 2500+ Barton in it simply because they were the best out at the time; not to mention the 9700pro completely trounced Nvidia's offerings. Since then I've upgraded to a 9800pro to an x800pro then to a x1800xt, which I still have currently. My cpu has gone from a 2500+ barton, to a 3200+ A64 and to a AMD X2 3800+ (which currently use now and have crazily OC'ed on water cooling :D).

However, I was almost getting ready to buy a 8800GT for my christmas upgrade until I saw the numbers for the 3850 and 3870. they may be marginally lower than the 8800GT, but they are also marginally cheaper. Lucky for ATI (AMD) that I didn't upgrade sooner or else I would have had to betray my loyalty to them.

That being said, the numbers for the Phenom aren't looking too promising. I'm pretty sure my next CPU will either be a C2D or a Q6600 (OC'ed to high heavens).

Re:You're all missing the point...

[jadin]

Take a moment to understand the gravity of what I just said; Intel, the company that would hardly acknowledge overclocking, was now sampling a CPU that required overclocking to run at stock speeds. Even more telling is that Intel got the approval of upper management to sample these unreleased processors, requiring an unreleased chipset, in a matter of weeks. This is Intel we're talking about here, the larger of the two companies, the Titanic, performing maneuvers with the urgency of a speed boat. Desperation is a stinky cologne.

Re:You're all missing the point...

[CAIMLAS]

I don't know. I'd personally go up for an A64 x2 processor. It is absolutely astounding how much an extra core will speed up Windows on routine tasks while using WXP Pro 64 bit- though I'll admit to not being much of a gamer.

I'll reserve judgement on both Intel and AMD's coming offerings until they're out - or, at least, until I see a decent price/performance breakdown. The one thing I can almost be certain of is that AMD will have a better price/performance break point - and depending on how much better Intel's new offering is, that'll be enough for most people. Lately, I've been looking more at heat, noise, and power consumption than speed, because frankly I don't need the speed and I've grown tired of buying a new computer every x years because the previous one cooked itself.

And AMD still trounces Intel in memory management, without even a doubt. Might take Intel a while to catch up on that - and the memory management seems to have a much bigger impact on perceived performance than raw clock and processor performance, I've noticed.

Apple has one coming

[whatsyer20]

rumor has it that Apple has a new Mac Pro coming with this monster, just in time for Christmas. Dual proc as well. Let's see if this one comes true.

I think it's very descriptive

[RelliK]

"assus maximus" = "huge ass".

Jane and Joe user

[Nonillion]

Raw CPU speed is nice but when are we going to make the busses fatter. Most of the bottle necks are in the memory and hard drive subsystems. My Sun Ultra 2 for instance, it has two 64 bit 400 MHz processors, a 576 bit wide memory buss and a reasonably fast SCSI interface. Even though this thing is a dinosaur by todays standards it easily kept up with an old dual 1GHz PIII.

Besides, just how much unwarranted computing performance does Jane and Joe user really need to surf the net, do e-mail, instant message, play music and do home office chores.

Re:Jane and Joe user

[boredMDer]

At $1200 for just the processor (according to the blurb) for now and likely no massive price drop in the future, I highly doubt it's marketed towards 'Jane and Joe User', at least for a reasonable approximation of time.

Re:Jane and Joe user

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. I know it's passe to except people to RTFA, but at least read the blurb up at the top! This is, indeed, about a better bus.

Further: hard drive access speeds have their bottleneck in the drive itself, not in the bus.

Re:Jane and Joe user

[try_anything]

Ever hear of SUVs and how their profits propped up the moribund American car industry for half a decade? Ever hear about Ford or GM agonizing over the off-road performance of their Envoys and Expeditions?

The biggest reason this chip left the lab is to be a flashy status symbol for rich gamers and to manipulate brand perceptions.

Re:Jane and Joe user

[julesh]

Raw CPU speed is nice but when are we going to make the busses fatter. Most of the bottle necks are in the memory and hard drive subsystems.

Did you actually, you know, read the article? The entire point here is that Intel have just released a chip that needs a faster bus to run. And, yeah, sure, a 576-bit wide memory interface is great, but it would be insanely expensive for a consumer-oriented system. I'd expect to see the first 256-bit wide consumer systems (requiring 4 DIMMs to be installed for peak performance) introduced some time soon. Intel and AMD have both announced their plans for the next year or so, but I'd expect to see them hitting the market in 2009.

Re:Jane and Joe user

[Anonymous Coward]

This stopped being about Joe sixpack around 600 MHz.

Forget the CPU

[IdeaMan]

Dog-slow video cards can't even ray-trace properly yet.

http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/dc/games/245711.htm
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/04/23/intel-shows-off-raytraced-quake-4

I, for one, welcome our new virtual ray-traced underlings.

Consumer level

[heroine]

Wonder where the professional level processors are.

Re:Consumer level

[Technician]

Wonder where the professional level processors are.

You mean these..

http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1886368.html

More Benchmark Detail Here, Not Just Synthetics

[MojoKid]

FTA at HotHardware.com: http://www.hothardware.com/articles/Intel_Core_2_Extreme_QX9770_Performance_Preview/

"Cinebench is perhaps our most favorite "quick and dirty" test for gauging how fast a new CPU core is. If you're looking for a general quick-take view of system performance and CPU power, Cinebench consistently gives results that we rely on here in our labs. In the multi-threaded version of our this test, the QX9770 is 63% faster than the Phenom 9700. And with only a 33% clock speed advantage over the new Phenom, obviously the new Intel core is significantly more efficient clock-for-clock with a higher IPC (instructions per clock cycle) throughput."

"The fastest single processor for gaming from the AMD side of the house, generally speaking according to these two tests, is the Athlon 64 X2 6400+. Again, that's according to the game engines at work in Crysis and F.E.A.R. The fastest processor of Intel's offering is obviously the QX9770, which looks to be 6 - 8% faster than its 3GHz counterpart, the QX9650. In general though, the AMD systems are easily outperformed by the Intel-based setups, in some cases by a large margin."

wow

[okmijnuhb]

Still, the benchmarks from this powerful CPU are something awesome to behold.
Does that mean it can run Vista?

Re:wow

[ericski]

Still can't run but Vista now walks instead of crawls. :)

I'm actually grateful for that.

[SanityInAnarchy]

It means:

• More incentive for people to move off Windows, at least on low-end hardware. (It being "low-end" pretty much rules out OS X.)
• Faster and cheaper processors that I can actually use, because I don't have to waste half a core on anti-virus and half a core on DRM, leaving me just as fast as I was with XP on one core.

If Windows 7 does require 24 gigs of RAM and a 1 TB solid-state drive, I'll be loving my 12 gigs of RAM and 10 gigs of hard disks in a RAID for half the price. (Or something similar.)

Re:I'm actually grateful for that.

[ceoyoyo]

Hm... my $600 Mac Mini runs Leopard just fine and I fully expect it will run 10.6 as well. It's got as much processor power as the MBP I use routinely for heavy duty medical image processing development. The only thing it's lacking in, sort of, is 3D video performance, but it's more than enough to run all the eye candy in Leopard with some left over for a few image pro algorithms that run on the GPU.

It doesn't spend a core running antivirus or even half a core running DRM.

Gives new meaning to quad whore...

[lena_10326]

Can't wait to run around the map grabbing quad on my new quad.

Re:Gives new meaning to quad whore...

[xhrit]

But Quake Wars has no quad damage.

Re:Gives new meaning to quad whore...

[lena_10326]

But Quake Wars has no quad damage.

Long live Quake 2.

nothing new here

[CaptainNerdCave]

i can overclock my e6300 to 2.8ghz and that bumps my fsb us to 1600mhz (unless we're going to start disbelieving cpu-z?); what's so special about this?

how about some integrated memory control?

I am greatful for capitalism

[NEOtaku17]

Actually it is thanks to capitalism that I am able to have enough wealth to take leisure time away from work to do things I really love like camping, inventing, and studying philosophy. Only a short time ago these things were only for those of elite birth. The market has lifted up the common man so high he can afford things kings couldn't even dream of only 200 years ago(cars, computers, air conditioning). I'm afraid I can't say the same of other economic systems.

Count coup

[symbolset]

Now if Intel bumps up the performance on their value line, AMD is toast and Intel engineers can go back to resting on their laurels until another challenger steps up.

Nothing for me here. If the system draws more than 60 watts, do not want.

what you mean you can run it at 1600 fsb

[Anonymous Coward]

what are they on about that theres nothing that will support 1600fsb. Was running my crappy E4400 at 1800mhz fsb.. would have been 2000mhz if it wasnt a dud chip. And who would spend $1200 on one of those.. i spent $400AUS on a Q6600 and am running that at 3.2ghz only because i have been too lazy to get it stable at 3.5ghz and its summer now so it might get too hot with only an air cooler.

although those extream's have been known for some crazy overclocks.. like in the 6ghz sort of range. that'll get vista running smooth... maybey.

6 Ghz?

[WetCat]

Where are 6 GHz ONE core processors when you need it?
3.2Ghz looks too 2002-ish.

1600Mhz FSB

[barl0w]

Supermicro just came out with some cool workstation boards that support the Seaburg chipset that's 1600Mhz. http://supermicro.com/products/launch/Intel/#MB5400

Turn off tags before I claw my eyes out

[PhilHibbs]

Seriously, what's wrong with taggers? "hype", "vaporware", "advert" on an article about a new processor, this isn't the Slashdot that I know and love. Turn off tags, they're just another vector for trolling.

The OP is

[KodeWizard]

yet another AMD fanboy we can't avoid on /.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[StrategicIrony]

Bingo! The United States design teams came up with the Pentium 4, which was intended to be the end-all for chips for this decade. *makes a crashing sound* They then focused on the Itanium as the Pentium 4 replacement. *makes a crashing sound*. The Israel team was supposed to make some piddling "low power" mobile processor and what they came up with was so revolutionary, it ended up replacing the entire line of chips, from slim laptops to servers. Impressive. SI

Completely delusional...

[mbessey]

When the choice for the average consumer becomes, spend $50 on a Linux computer, or spend $800 on a Windows computer, I think that most people will begin to switch.

That argument only works if the two systems are otherwise equivalent. Linux is making progress on some of its various weaknesses relative to Windows (lack of first-tier applications, difficulty of setup, lack of an installed base), but for most people, Linux isn't even close to being a viable alternative to Windows.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[Neuticle]

Might be. The only engineers I know that work there work on the fabrication side, not the design side, so it's entirely possible that a lot of the new chip design is coming from Israel.

Still, once you have a design, there is a ton of work getting the manufacturing process streamlined and getting wafer yields as high as possible. This is especially true when moving to a new process like from 65nm to 45nm as they are now (and 32nm in the future). This work I believe is being done at the Oregon fab.

Just get Xeon's?

[MikeFM]

So how's this compare to a dual quad-core 3GHz Xeon system (X5365)? Those are available and already pretty fast. If you can afford $2500 for processors. Sadly only my server gets that kind of treatment. No gaming for me.

$600?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I can buy a Linux laptop for $300.

I can also re-use my grandmother's old computer for $0. Can't really do that with OS X, either.

Re:$600?

[ceoyoyo]

Ah, so by low end you meant sub $600? My mistake.

This is great

[php-trivandrum.org]

I just read this, and agree that this is great news. Still got sad, that there aren't any compatiable mother boards for the same.

Re:Good news for Windows Vista and the USA

[alexo]

The Core line of processors is based on the Pentium M, which was developed in Isreal.

I am pretty sure that the Core processors were not developed in a MATLAB Function.