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Intel Unveils 'Sandy Bridge' Architecture
njkobie writes "Intel has officially unveiled Sandy Bridge, its latest platform architecture, at the first day of IDF in San Francisco. The platform is the successor to the Nehalem/Westmere architecture and integrates graphics directly onto the CPU die. It also upgrades the Turbo Mode already seen in Core i5 and i7 processors to achieve even greater speed improvements. Turbo Mode on Sandy Bridge processors can now draw more than the chip's nominal TDP where the system is cool enough to do so safely, enabling even greater boosts in core speeds than those seen in Westmere. No details of specific products have been made available, but Intel has confirmed that processors built on the new architecture will be referred to as 'second generation Core processors,' and are expected to go on sale in early 2011. In 2012 it is due to be shrunk to a 22nm process, under the name Ivy Bridge."
Old news. My 386 has turbo mode. Wake me when they add math coprocessors to this beast.
"Core 2" chips were out years ago.
They're opening a new factory in Madison county.
Task Mangler
Intel needs to dump the DMI bus and go all QPI the last thing you want is Intel video lock in and only x16 pci-e lanes.
Because this is primary motivation as no one is even coming close to maxing out an i7.
Please let me push a button on the case to enable "turbo" mode.
...I just drove over the Sandy Bridge this evening. Coincidence? I don't think so!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Yeah. No one ever buys a desktop, and they certainly don't ever want it to be faster.
Sent from my PDP-11
I'm sorry, what? People hardly buy desktops anymore? Are you posting from 2025 or something?
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
Better/different selection of real gpu's? Or is this just all about a slow all in one Intel on one chip gpu option?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...will it use a new socket? I just shelled out for a fresh build because my mobo's processor socket was deprecated, I really hope they don't turn around and change it again so soon.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
3th party chip sets also apple. They can't stay core2 for ever on the mini / some of there laptops and intel video does not fit in there gpu api.
and they don't like to put full pci-e x16 video chips in there low end systems.
The graphics have already been benched. Anand had early samples and showed that the Intel integrated SB video was actually faster than a Radeon 5450 in most cases. Yeah, that's not great, but for integrated graphics that's pretty damned impressive.
AMD has a new arch coming out which will go by Bulldozer for the mainstream and Bobcat for the low end netbook market. It looks to be pretty bad ass, as their hyperthreading will have an actual integer per thread with only the floating point being shared. Last I heard they were using the 5450 Radeon GPU for their integrated so it will definitely pump out the graphics. Next year should be an interesting time for us builders.
Sadly I'll probably sit this round out as my AMD quad is already faster than I am and at 8Gb of RAM I don't see myself needing anything else for quite some time, but Bulldozer based rigs should be great and affordable for my customers and if Bobcat rocks as well as their AMD Neo + Radeon discrete it'll make a kick ass multimedia netbook chip. According to those I've sold Neo dual based netbooks to they are getting around 5 hours on a charge and the graphics and video performance is awesome, and Bobcat is supposed to cut the power by anywhere from 40-60%.
So it looks like either way you go next year is gonna be a nice time for new gear. Faster and better graphics, cool. BTW, does anyone know if the Intel will support some sort of hybrid SLI? The AMD allows you to put a low end discrete with the onboard and bring it up to midrange GPU performance. Of course the way Intel has been trying to hamstring Nvidia lately it wouldn't surprise me if it don't. You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already. And if Nvidia doesn't end up buying Via so they can offer an "all in one" solution like Intel and AMD I predict it's gonna be some bad times for them, with Intel trying to squeeze them out of their sandbox and AMD not needing them since buying ATI.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah, that might have been a bit on the extreme side - however, desktops are currently 32% of sales and falling.
Meh, maybe I'm just an embedded person who treasures ARM above all else and thinks that 640k ought to be enough for anyone.
You do realize that a) Intel makes mobile chips as well that take power saving into consideration and b) TFA doesn't say it, but this feature will almost certainly be configurable by the bios and/or OS.
Monstar L
Anand had early samples and showed that the Intel integrated SB video was actually faster than a Radeon 5450 in most cases.
To put this in context for someone switching from console to PC gaming, is this equivalent to a Wii's Hollywood GPU, equivalent to an Xbox 360's Xenos GPU, or somewhere in between?
and Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor to specialise in media processing
branching performance usually suffers [...] Video and image processing, game geometry, and 2d rendering really belong on a GPU-like architecture, not the CPU.
I thought game geometry involved a lot of branching, especially in the cases of potentially visible set construction methods (e.g. portal casting or BSP), collision detection, and path finding. Or have these problems been solved?
Please let me push a button on the case to enable "turbo" mode.
It's not a button on the case, but several laptops give the user a taskbar control to change the power-management strategy. So you have a "turbo" setting and a "battery life" setting.
Not a single word on Intel killing overclocking, eh? According to anand's article majority of new CPU's won't allow ANY kind of overclocking.
You do realize that a) Intel makes mobile chips as well that take power saving into consideration and b) TFA doesn't say it, but this feature will almost certainly be configurable by the bios and/or OS.
Indeed: in normal use while web-browsing and the like -- at least according to the Linux battery monitor -- my i5 laptop takes only slightly more power than my Atom netbook. But if I plug it into the wall I can play any modern game decently (with it's Nvidia GPU, not whatever's integrated with the CPU).
If I want to make my desktop faster, I can replace the graphics card or CPU independently - it's big enough that an integrated CPU/GPU solution doesn't really make that much sense yet.
Mobile devices, on the other hand, make a lot more sense; if you can integrate the CPU and GPU on one chip with a reasonable max TDP, that's significantly less complexity in the design woth more computing power. You should see the heatsink arrangement in my HP laptop with a discrete CPU and GPU - it's insane, heat pipes and fans everywhere.
I've been out of the PC building rat race for several years now, and I'm diving back in. I don't know what AMD and ATI have to offer because Intel and NVIDIA are getting the stars with technologies like Turbo Mode, SLI, and low heat dissipation in the i7. All of I've been reading about with the new Geforce GT and GTS, has me very excited for all the graphics power I'll have, although the lack of support for Starcraft II on my 7600 GT based iMac has me pissed. Do you think AMD and ATI have something worthwhile now for me to consider, or do you think this next generation is enough that I should wait til 2011?
Thought the '2' in Core2 referred to the second generation already...
With the Core i3/5/7 being the third these are more like the fourth generation.
Might be time for people who make C(G)PUs to have a rethink on naming schemes... maybe even take a leaf out of the software industry, e.g
Core i .
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
From TFA:
Of course, we are left wondering what TDP means now, if exceeding it is standard.
Ironically, I was already wondering that. It never told what TDP is, and a Google define: search wasn’t terribly enlightening.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Not a single word on Intel killing overclocking, eh? According to anand's article majority of new CPU's won't allow ANY kind of overclocking.
And 128 nerds cried themselves to sleep... :)
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
I would suggest checking out ATI, for the last year and a half or so nVidia has been playing catch up to ATI, especially when it comes to the mainstream graphics cards. While Fermi is a decent video card it's about the same as ATIs 5xxx series cards in terms of performance only Fermi puts out more heat and take in more power. Right now the only card/price point that is considered solidly in nVidia's favour is the GTX 460. Coincidentally, upcoming Southern Islands series (or is it Northern Islands, the names keep changing) from ATI's first videocard will be targeted at the same price point as the GTX 460. Southern Islands should be releasing in the next month or two. I don't know what nVidia has in store really, but we'll see what happens. Both companies road maps got uppended when TSMC (their manufacturer) decided to suddenly dump the 32nm production process and go straight to 28nm. The www.anandtech.com is a pretty good place to do your research. Especially the video card forums, just try to avoid the flame wars in there :p
Well I would say whether you are building this machine as an "ePeen" or not. By that I mean I have a couple of customers who spend frankly insane money just so they can brag they get some huge number on benchmarks. Now if you aren't building for an ePeen, I'd say go AMD as the lower price will allow you to put nicer gear in the rig. For example my PC is an AMD Phenom II Quad 925, with 8Gb of DDR2 800, 2 500Gb HDDs, a nice case with 500w PSU, and finally an HD 4650 (I'm not much of a gamer, so the 4650 is all I need, although it plays Wolfenstein and Bioshock II like a champ) and Windows 7 HP x64, all for $650 before MIR and around $570 after.
If you don't want to wait you can buy AMD now and thanks to socket compatibility drop in a bigger CPU later. That's what I did, buying a cheap dual core kit and upgrading to the quad with some of my Xmas bonus. You can see they have real cheap quad kits and you can even get a 6 core kit for under $600. All you have to do is pick your favorite OS and whichever video card you like (I'm partial to ATI after the bumpgate fiasco, never had a bit of trouble from Gigabyte Radeon cards) and you are good to go. Most games now are just starting to hit dual cores, so a quad will last you quite awhile and a 6 core will be pretty future proof.
So if you are just getting back into the game personally I'd go AMD. There is nothing wrong with the Intel but when you figure in the higher prices plus them getting caught paying off OEMs...well I believe in competition and a REAL free market. But of course your main reason will be performance and my AMD quad purrs like a kitten, with an idle of less than 96f and the hottest it ever got was 135f after hours of transcoding, and that is on a stock HSF. But I really torture my machines, audio and video recording and transcoding, audio and video editing, and my AMD takes everything I throw at it and then some. I can also tell you as a system builder I've not had a bit of trouble from any of my AMD builds, even those I have built for extreme conditions like construction trailers. They take a licking and keep on ticking. Let me know how it goes!
Oh, a word of advice...Once your build is done use Autopatcher and Ninite. Just use Autopatcher to have the updates for whichever Windows you choose already downloaded and ready to go, and then use Ninite to get all the basics like Firefox, K-Lite Codec Pack (great for hardware acceleration) and Open Office. Using those two together will save you several hours on a build. Enjoy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Thanks for the encouragement. So far, I'm leaning on a laptop since I don't have space to house an iMac plus PC monitor, and in the laptop end, my options for NVIDIA seem limited to the Geforce GT 330M. I'm sure I can get a lower end GT 400 series NVIDIA in a laptop, but I'm guessing that would require I buy an Alienware or some other beastly looking laptop. I want sleek and Sony'ish like a proper laptop should be, so that's that. I haven't seen an ATI Radeon 5870 in normal looking laptop. Of course, I have been leaning heavily towards the i7 with its lower consumption and increased power. Being future proofed for the next generation of Diablo and Starcraft games is important to me, as is running Sim-anything at full power :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power
Just google for TDP to begin with.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Thanks. As I just told one slashdotter, I've been leaning toward a laptop since maintaining an iMac (which I use for development and work) on my desk will be difficult if I have to add a new PC monitor. :D
I've always loved AMDs, but even being out of the game, I've still heard major news coming out from Intel. AMD always seemed silent to me. Basically, my story is that I had had enough with my Pentium IV PCs leaving my computer room frying in winter, so I became more conscious to issues like heat dissipation and noise. I decided to go the iMac plus game console route, which proved to be a money and energy saver for me. I ended up staying Mac based through the Intel transition. Lessons learned: when you go Mac + game console, you save on chasing hardware upgrades, but you pay for it down the road by ending up years behind your fellow computer geeks on knowledge.
Thanks for those suggestions. Ninite will definitely save me time!
You don't need to go Alienware. I am typing this on the Asus g73jh which I bought for $1500 + tax. Here is a review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3662/asus-g73jha2-affordable-xlsized-gaming The laptop is a few months old so it's cheaper now, I've seen some places selling it for $1000. That said, there's a version coming out soon with an nVidia graphics cards. I would recommend getting those since a large amount of the ones with Radeon 5870s have grey screen of death issues if you update the drivers. There are solutions, but they're a little weird. My solution to the grey screen of death was to install the 10.8 Catalyst drivers, overclock my videocard by 5 MHz, and then download a still in beta hotfix from Microsoft that had something to do with the framebuffer causing freezes. Come to think of it I don't even think I have to overclock my computer since downloading the update anymore but I digress. The Asus g73jh and its variants are some of the best bang for your buck gaming laptops around. In short, the screen on the laptop is good and it gets great performance. The only downside is that some have the GSOD, but since new laptops have nVidia cards that should be solved. The laptop is very large so it's more of a portable desktop but it will definitely fit into smaller space than an iMac + PC monitor.
Awesome, thanks a lot! I'm surprised to learn that the GT 330M is still a DirectX 10 processor whereas the current ATI is DirectX 11.
Well why didn't you say so? Let the old Hairyfeet point you in the right direction. Now if you want a bad ass laptop I'd go with this one as I've had good luck with Acer and this one is top notch on CPU and GPU. Or if you are looking for something light and cheap I'd go with this one which I've sold quite a few of and my customers love it. I liked it so much I got one for my dad, it has a great picture and the Radeon 3200 is great for video.
But whether you go desktop or laptop the money you save by going AMD will allow you to have better hardware all around. That said I've always been a desktop man at heart because I like being able to pop the hood and hot rod it. Have you thought about a KVM switch? I currently have 2 desktops running on a 4 port KVM that cost a whole $20 and when I had my laptop (gave it away to my oldest when he started college) I just plugged it in and used it with the desktop monitor. Having a nice big screen to work just makes everything that much nicer IMHO. But either way you'll save serious cash over the i series which you can then use for nicer gear. Have fun!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Hehe. That Acer does look good. I like that the 5650 in it is DirectX 11. The MSI looks good too, but I believe the 3200 is only DirectX 10. Of course, nothing I'm interested in that's here or on its way soon is DirectX 11, so perhaps DirectX 11 support early on is a bit unnecessary.
KVM switch won't work with my setup. The iMac is an all-in-one from '06, so any desktop monitor would need to share desk space with my iMac which I use for work.
Forget turbo mode, It's nearly 2011, the innovations we need are in the supply-chain assembly side. I want to be able to custom build an entire laptop, case included.
The idea is to make the power consumption scale over a wider range proportional to the load. If you have a CPU that uses 13% of its TDP at 10% load, you can use a much beefier chip in the same application than if, say it consumed 80% of its TDP at 10% load. You can keep the power consumption the same but greatly increase the perceived responsiveness.
I, for one, welcome the day when the battery life of my laptop is dominated by the load average instead of how long it's been running. My phone can play 720p video, and the battery is good for barely more than a single movie. However, it'll last for days on standby in my pocket. Imagine that dynamic range with your computer.
English, motherfucker, do you speak it?
"You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already."
Should Intel buy nVidia? Jen-Hsun Huang, who averages about $23.02 million per year, is not the sort of person who would easily integrate into Intel, and he is important to the leadership of nVidia. Intel's CEO, Paul Otellini, makes about $14 million.
Soon Intel's integrated graphics will have mid-range speed, leaving only the high range for nVidia. The high range of video adapters is mostly bought by teenagers who want to practice being violent with video games, instead of practicing being involved with other people. That means nVidia will be dependent on buyers who are being self-defeating; eventually there may be a backlash against that.
The high range of video performance will always be needed for architectural drawing and machine design, for example, but the total demand will drop, as the nVidia stock price seems to indicate. So, maybe nVidia is not a good purchase for any company.
Should Intel CEO Paul Otellini be replaced? Another reason Intel should not buy nVidia is that Intel is generally a failure at anything besides making new CPUs and support chips. For the success of Intel and AMD in making CPUs, the world can be extremely thankful; that's enough success for any company.
But Intel in other areas seems amazingly badly managed. Intel marketing seems completely out of control. Is the product confusion at Intel a deliberate, sneaky way to sell slow processors to technically challenged customers, or just stupid?
Quote from the article linked just above: "Sandy Bridge PC processors will keep the CORE-i3, i5, and i7 designations and will be rebranded the "new CORE-i3..." That approach is likely to create confusion among customers about exactly what they're buying, given that the average user likely wouldn't be able to pick a Nehalem i7 from a Westmere i7 or Sandy Bridge i7."
Either Intel's purchase of the inferior security software maker McAfee for a "lofty 60% premium" is a HUGE mistake, or the reasons why it is not a mistake should be explained by Intel marketing. No explanation was given, apparently. McAfee has a 21.9% market share selling software often pre-loaded on a computer to technically challenged buyers.
Quote from the article: " 'We believe security will be most effective when enabled in hardware,' Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said in a conference call." That seems a particularly wacky statement. "Security software" is needed only because, in my opinion, Microsoft deliberately allows its software to be insecure. Insecure software makes Microsoft more money because people with infected computers often buy another computer. For example, see the New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster. The Apple Mac OS, Linux, and BSD operating systems do not require "security software" because they are made to be secure.
Intel CEO Otellini does not seem to have the social sophistication necessary to running a big company. When he made an announcement in 2006 about the Intel Eduwise laptop, he seemed to be intending to have Intel compete with MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charity program. However, Intel's intention seems to be just to make a market fo
It is not as good as the GPU in the Xbox 360.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-geforce-gtx-480,2598-6.html
In this chart, the Xbox 360's GPU is about the same as the X1900.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
My question would be are those wanting a laptop that is too small for a discrete GPU and who care about graphics performance going to be better off staying with a core 2 duo with a nvidia chipset? or will they be better off with sandy bridge?
Unfortunately anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/7 ) didn't include nvidia integrated graphics in their comparison. Also they were using a desktop not a laptop chip afaict (though they don't seem to know for sure exactly what they had from reading the comments). Integrated graphics performance is far less relevant for desktops than for laptops since it's so easy to add dedicated graphics to a desktop.
Further it seems anandtech can't seem to be consistent in their benchmarking. I found an article where they benchmarked a 320M ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3762/apples-13inch-macbook-pro-early-2010-reviewed-shaking-the-cpugpu-balance/2 ) but WOW was at lower settings and the other games didn't match up at all. Still told me that sandy bridge was probablly better than the 320M at least for WOW.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
i had a AMD 486 DX5 at 133MHz on a 386 case, after some upgrades...
i connected the turbo button to the Bus speed jumpers, so when i pressed, the bus jumped from 33Mhz to 40Mhz, overclocking the cpu to 160Mhz... i run at "full" speed when i was at home and put the normal speed when i left it idle
To my surprise, it worked really well, the PCI bus accepted that speed, the network and SCSI card never gave any error until i disconnect the computer about 6 years ago
i also tried to up the bus to 50Mhz and the CPU, RAM, the vesa local bus (for the graphic card) and the ISA bus (sound card) worked fine, but it was too much for the PCI bus and the network and scsi cards didnt work so gave up from having a 200MHz 486 CPU and fall back to the already "good" 160Mhz... relative power of the setup was about a Pentium 90-100Mhz... running at normal 133Mhz, the performance was a little lower than a Pentium 75Mhz
Higuita
i agree, i put together a 980x/rIIIe/gtx480 for myself before the summer.
this fookin biznitch ate more juice than my A/C.
sent my elec bill thru the roof.
plus it heated up the house so much, that my fridge and a/c had to work twice as hard lol
again, elec bill was sky high
-HasHie, nyc
P.S just made a /. acct
With consoles each console has a distinct pool of games. Most games are either released for a single console or for a group of consoles with similar capbilities. Sometimes with a PC release as well but the PC release is often either crap, late or both.
If you want to play recent Mario games you have to buy a Wii (or maybe screw arround with emulation on a PC but most people won't bother to go to that much trouble). If you want to play GTA4 you have to buy a PS3, an xbox 360 or a high end gaming PC. If you want to play recent halo you have to buy an xbox 360. If you want to play recent ratchet and clank you have to buy a PS3.
OTOH PCs all draw from the same pool of games. With a low end PC some games are unplayable and others require you to turn down the settings and/or tolerate slowdowns. With a high end PC you should be able to run all games well (other than driver bugs which can hit both low and high end systems :( ).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
monitor on lappy uses more batt than any other component
Neo dual based netbooks to they are getting around 5 hours on a charge and the graphics and video performance is awesome
I have one, and only get about 3 hours out of a 6 cell battery. It does have good video and raw CPU performance for a netbook though.
sandy bridge is only going to be like 20-30% faster then what's available right now, the last two generations after core 2 duo have only had modest games in the 20%-30 range. I've not been impressed at all lately, it seems technological leaps have slowed right down for cpu's at least.
Well I can tell you that even though the 3200 is DX10 it does excellent hardware video acceleration. Now if you are wanting to do hardcore gaming I wouldn't go for it, but games like Wolfenstein and Bioshock II play fine on it, although not with full bling. As for the Acer that bad boy comes with 4Gb and can hold 8Gb of RAM, so no matter what kind of apps you run you're good. And remember just because you don't need a DX11 card for gaming doesn't mean it won't be useful thanks to OpenCL and transcoding. The 5xxx series is also really good on power management, and that 3200MHz HT means the only possible bottleneck you have is the HDD. Add a SSD and that thing will put just about any desktop to shame.
But either one will give you a decent machine that will do gaming (light for the 3200, heavy for the 5650) along with excellent multimedia. But for the price you really can't beat the new AMD lineup. The only time I build Intel anymore is for those customers that care only for having the biggest ePeen benchmark score. For real world apps I haven't a single complaint with the new duals and quads. And while I haven't had an Apple yet the people I've known with them are loathe to give them up so I can see why you'd want a portable. I may find out myself as I have a customer that is thinking about throwing in her old G3 with Panther in on a new desktop. I'll just add it to the KVM and have a new toy to play with. Yet another plus of KVMs ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
3th party chip sets
Less high power high speed chips means less power spent on interfacing between them and less complex system cooling. For most systems that is probablly worth sacrificing the ability to choose northbridges.
also apple. They can't stay core2 for ever on the mini / some of there laptops and intel video does not fit in there gpu api.
If true that sucks for them but ultimately I don't think in.
It appears (see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1786182&cid=33570924 for caveats) that with sandy bridge intel is now beating the best nvidia chipsets for the C2D so it won't be a downgrade on general graphics performance for laptop builders to move from C2D+nvidia chipset to sandy bridge.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Not to mention that developers could spend days or weeks optimizing for the console's 3 graphics processors and have it pay off with a smooth experience. But with nearly a hundred desktop GPUs in varying usage, with varying levels of DirectX and OpengL support, there's not that "easy target" for optimization.
I would suggest checking out ATI, for the last year and a half or so nVidia has been playing catch up to ATI,
Unfortunately, for the last decade, ATI has been playing catch up to nVidia for quality of drivers. While their quality has improve considerably over the last several years, they are still many years behind that of nVidia; especially for OpenGL drivers.
And like it or not, for Linux, you still have exactly one high end 3D solution - nVidia.
I'd rather be a few frames slower with nVidia than slightly faster and unstable or unplayable with ATI. ATI just has a horrible track record even on Microsoft platforms. Just recently, they went through three drivers releases trying to fix simple OpenGL core features. ATI + OpenGL = horrible user experience. If you only ever use a Microsoft platform, chances are you'll happy with ATI; though even then there tends to be some exceptions. But if any non-Microsoft platforms are important to you, anything but an nVidia solution is a really, really, really bad idea.
I think the newer iMacs can handle video in and work as a monitor. Might be something to look in to.
D'oh! has to be Display port output from another system and then the 27" iMac will work as a monitor.
I drank what? -- Socrates
DirectX 11 doesn't mean anything really, it's all about performance since most games are still mostly DirectX 9 due to the fact they've been ported from consoles. As for the 5870 mobile, it's roughly equivalent to a desktop Radeon 4870 in terms of raw performance. I think the new mobile nVidia cards are a bit faster. Either way, Asus g73jh and their variants are where you want to look :P
s/only supported 16 modules/only supported 32 modules/
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
This comment always comes up over at Anandtech and it gets shot down every single time. Ok, yes, ATI had bad drivers during their Radeon 8xxx series; that was about 9 years ago. Since then their drivers have vastly improved and for the past few years have been on par with nVidia. If we really want to get into it I can point out a whole bunch of reasons why nVidia's drivers suck, such as that one release where the driver would actually destroy your videocard because the fan wouldn't spin up.
I know nothing of the Linux driver situation but outside of the statistically insignificant number of people who use Linux to game, nVidia and ATI are equivalent when it comes to drivers.
gets shot down every single time
If it gets shot down at all, ignorance is prevailing. Been reading on several forums on lessor known games (Spring RTS, for example) and ATI drivers frequently cause problems. The situation I depicted RECENTLY happened and if you search the archives, various problems are constantly pop up. To imagine this is not a problem is to be delusional. Seriously.
Exactly as I said, if you don't care for OpenGL compatibility, ATI drivers will likely be a good experience for you. If OpenGL and/or alternate platforms are important, ATI is a choice of the ignorant and are fairly likely to experience problems; especially if you play games which are not part of ATI's test suite.
Bluntly, ATI has shit support for OpenGL. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant, pushing an agenda, or ignorantly pushing an agenda.
Intel's drivers are frequently a problem too.
If you don't want to wait you can buy AMD now and thanks to socket compatibility drop in a bigger CPU later.
Bulldozer CPUs will require a new socket called AM3+.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
But are they backwards compatible? After all I'm running an AM3 CPU in my AM2+ rig and while I don't have DDR3 support otherwise it purrs like a kitten. From what I understand you can go as far back as AM2 with an AM3 CPU and it still works fine. So before I'd poo poo the idea I'd check into backwards compatibility. AMD has always been pretty good about long term socket support. Hell just look how long they supported socket 754, which one of these days I'll have to pick up a mobile Athlon for the old Sempron 754 PC I'm typing this on. Even with the loaded BS on the web today it actually runs quite nice.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Here's the thing about Apple, and it gets back to the recent Slashdot article about how good software makes us stupid; when you have an all-in-one computer that just works, you can easily grow complacent. I think back to my PC building days. Much of the knowledge I had, as well as the technical skills, were the product of me chasing necessary upgrades for parts that either failed or were not powerful enough for the next generation round of games or operating systems. By using a reliable all-in-one, I lost the need to chase upgrades, and so I feel I lost a valuable skill. Perhaps we can say the same about good cars. If your car never needs repairs, where's the incentive to learn how cars work?
My iMac is a 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 and Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz with 24" screen that happily runs Snow Leopard and Windows 7, and which is also capable of running some versions of Linux (there are BIOS issues apparently). The graphics processor was the best one could get in an iMac at the time: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. Unfortunately, it caps out at 256MB VRAM. Looking at the new line of Apple iMacs, you can get the ATI HD 5670, but you're limited to 512MB GDDR3. Seems to me that in the PC world, you can get more RAM. There is a 27" iMac that has an HD 5750 with 1GB of GDDR5 though. But can't I get more memory with a regular tower PC config? iMacs give you things like FireWire 800, multiple USB ports and even SDXC slots. I can't even get an old fashioned FireWire on the Sony VAIOs I'm interested in.
Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. :D
Yes. Previously this was a problematic issue. I think you had to find specific Belkin branded part to get the iMac to act as a monitor for a non-Macintosh computer. Maybe it's all smooth now.
The AM3+ will be backwards compatible, yes, but they're not available yet, so it's a moot point. Backwards compatibility of a future socket doesn't do anything for forward compatibility of an existing socket. If you buy now, you *will not* be able to drop in a Bulldozer later.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Uhhhh...I was talking about the CPU and NOT the socket. for example all AM3 CPUs can be dropped into any AM2 or AM2+ socket, albeit you of course won't have access to things like DDR3 support which of course the boards at the time didn't have. So at least for me it wouldn't matter if I couldn't have all the whizz bang features if I can get a multi-threaded quad Bulldozer with a kick ass ALU for doing hardware transcoding or hybrid crossfire, just as I didn't really care about DDR3 support when I dropped my AM3 quad into an AM2+ board, because I could get 8Gb of DDR2 for less than 4Gb of DDR3 at the time.
So what you are talking about is dropping an AM2+ CPU into an AM3+ socket, and what I'm talking about is dropping an AM3+ CPU into an AM2+ socket. It doesn't really matter though, as one can get a nice business class ECS motherboard for around $70, and I'm sure that won't change when AM3+ comes out, and of course SATA is SATA, so the only things you'd need to change is motherboard and maybe RAM if you went DDR2 now. But if he went DDR3 now he could get a nice quad kit for $250 at Tigerdirect, then if the socket isn't compatible simply change the board and keep the rest. Seems like a cheap way to go either way, although considering how long it is taking software developers to support more than single threads any quad one buys today will probably be plenty for the next 5+ years.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Isn't the whole point that the chips essentially dynamically overclock themselves based on demand and current heat profile?