Slashdot Mirror
Intel Skulltrail Benchmark and Analysis
Tom's Hardware has a detailed benchmark and analysis of Intel's new Skulltrail offering, taking a look at 8 vs 4 cores. The comparison uses games, A/V applications, office applications, and 3D rendering tools to help demonstrate benchmarks. "We were disappointed by the Skulltrail platform. Although we have tested and reviewed numerous Intel products, we have never had such a half-baked system such as this in our labs. If this sounds harsh, bear in mind that all we have to base this conclusion on is the Skulltrail system itself in its current state, which Intel provided as an official review platform. We do not know whether Intel plans to revise and improve the platform before the final versions ship to retail."
2. Skulltrail lets you multitask at levels far beyond what has been available. No, it is not the best price/performer at running a game. But if you want to record a TV show and rip a DVD to iTunes while simultaneously getting decent frames rates while playing Crysis, then Skulltrail does that too.
3. Eventually, the ECC in Skulltrail will fix a memory error that normal DDR2/DDR3 desktops would miss. That's why important business applications that require accurate computing use ECC. The implication is Skulltrail can be left on 24x7 without fear a cosmic ray will blow a bit away in some OS table. Yes, the cost in electricity will be measurable, but the analogy is that Hummer buyers can't complain about gas prices.
4. Software, including games, will move towards quad-cores as these chips reach the mass-market price points over the next two years. That uses more of the capacity, but for typical users, Skulltrail is overkill.
5. Vista Ultimate is actually perky on a Skulltrail. No flame, please. But it's true. Vista will throw little tasks onto eight cores with alacrity, and as a result, things get done more quickly due to multi-tasking at the OS level. I can't prove this with benchmarks, but perception is reality
Skulltrail will not appeal to everybody, and for sure, it won't fit everybody's pocketbook. For cutting edge, multi-tasking computing, it has a lot of horsepower. That's a fact.
It's not clear to me why Tom's Hardware is so bent out of shape about the Skulltrail board they received. Intel got the boards out two or three weeks ago; that's about two months before retail shipments, and allows for plenty of time for the monthly PC press (yes, they are still around) to get to print at launch. Would the press rather review products after they ship? No, they want to lead the market. Is the BIOS still a beta? Yes. But a working BIOS. Is the system noisy? Yes, but it's drawing north of 600 watts and doing a prodigious amount of work. Skulltrail is not a living room box, OK?
If you have intense computing jobs or a server-like workload with lots of batch jobs where completion time is less important than throughput, then I think you should seriously look at Skulltrail. That would mean lots of programmers, engineers, and scientists as well as media developers. Most consumers will not benefit from Skulltrail's capacity nor afford it.
Im sure if coders spent more time learning how a cpu works, they could achieve 16 cpu quality out of 4 cores, now if you stop writing crap in java and .net you can get
64 cpu quality out of c++ in 4 cores. Sure, I agree many solutions dont need it since they are crappy little tools that never use much cpu, but may use lots in doing
simple things like making thumbnails out of 24 images.
Im glad we've hit the wall on Ghz, it means these java/.net programmers cant assume in 3 years time their software will be faster, it will be slow-assed FOREVER!
Any one see a java/.net bytecode VM written in RAW AMD micro cpu code? Nahhhhhh! bad luck.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.