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Intel Releases Sandy Bridge-based Xeon E5 Series
crookedvulture writes "Desktop and notebook users have been enjoying chips based on Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture for more than a year. Now, workstations and servers can get in on the action with the Xeon E5-2600 series. These Sandy Bridge-EP Xeons offer up to eight cores, 20MB of cache, and a truly staggering amount of I/O bandwidth. Unlike their consumer-grade counterparts, the new chips feature more advanced power management and the ability to deposit incoming data packets directly into the CPU's cache rather than going through main memory. They also plug into LGA2011 sockets, requiring an upgrade to the new Romley-EP platform. No fewer than 17 models are available, with prices falling between $200 and $2000 and TDPs ranging from 60-150W."
The summary is slightly incorrect -- the Xeon E3 series has been out for the workstation market for quite a while (sporting graphics cores on the models ending in -XXX5 too).
Yeah, the timing couldn't be better. Mortgage rates are at some of the lowest levels in decades.
They'll be here soon enough :) Now if only Apple could do something about the dreadful state of the video cards available...
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Anandtech's review is up, only single threaded benchmark I saw though was the Cinebench one where the 2.2 GHz is only a slight improvement. The 2.9 GHz top model is running away from everything else though, if you got $2000 to spare...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There have been news items all year about how the E5 was going to usher in a new era of low-cost 10 GbE LOM (LAN on motherboard). Even today's news stories are talking about it. But where's the beef? I've looked through about 30 motherboards from Supermicro, Tyan, etc., and the only 10 Gb LOM I've found is on a proprietary Supermicro MB and it's not even ethernet. Sure, system integrators have them, but I'd rather build my own box.
Anyone have an idea where they are?
Daniel
Intel seems to finally have fixed the power management bug and from the comments on the bug report on Launchpad (LP#818830) it seems very likely that Ubuntu 12.04 will ship with rc6 enabled by default.
I don't know that the sibiling AC is on about, I have used Unity on a Sandybridge laptop with integrated graphics and found no reason to complain about graphics performance, including HD video. YMMV
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I run a scientific computing group at a national laboratory... we have over 30 people developing massively parallel, multiphysics, simulation tools.... all with Mac Pro workstations and Mac laptops.
Macs are UNIX workstations with a good GUI and they don't break every time you do an OS update (like the one Ubuntu box we keep just for testing did just this morning).
We can do all of our development in a great environment and still be able to throw our code out on our supercomputers when the problems get large.
You sir, are wrong.
And for everyone saying Mac Pros are expensive... they are not. They are priced similarly to their competition (which is, gasp!, other workstations!) like these: http://www.boxxtech.com/products/3DBOXX/8920.asp?prodid=8920
I've had my Windows 7 PC for over a year now, not a single crash. Its made from parts from Intel, Crucial, Western Digital, Gigabyte, Sapphire, LG, Silverstone, Logitech and ViewSonic. What's your point again?
Having worked some years at a Mac Repair shop, I can tell you that OS X is the most unstable POS operating system I have ever had the displeasure of working with.
So none of the Macs sent in to the repair shop were working correctly? How odd.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.