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Intel Takes Quad Core To the Desktop
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Nov 14, 2006 08:43 AM
from the and-stay-there dept.
from the and-stay-there dept.
Rob writes to mention a Computer Business Review Online article about Intel's official launch of the Kentsfield chipset. Their Quad Core offering, Intel is claiming, is up to 80% faster than the dual-core Conroe released this past July. From the article: "Kentsfield, a 2.66GHz chip with a 1066MHz front-side bus, is more for computational-heavy usage, including digital content creation, engineering analysis, such as CAD, and actuarial and other financial applications. Steve Smith, director of operations for Intel digital enterprise group, claimed rendering is 58% faster for users building digital content creation systems, for video, photo editing or digital audio. In other words, Kentsfield is for high-end desktops or workstations only. For the average office worker who uses their PC for general productivity apps, such as communications and garden-variety computing, Smith recommended the Core 2 Duo from 'a price point and performance perspective.'"
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Why downplay it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why downplay it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is of course, that most games are barely optimised for dual cores, let alone four cores. It is not simple either as balancing several cores to get the most out of them requires a redesign of the game engine.
It will be significant for future games, but you are better off buying a high-end dual core now and replacing it with quad-core later on.
Parent
Re:Why downplay it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. The best bit about quad core for the moment is that it should drive the dual core prices down.
Cheers,
Roger
Parent
WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
What? I thought EVERYONE used WinDVR to encode MPEG2 files of Battlestar Gallactica from their TIVO while playing F.E.A.R., and turn it into H262 for uploading as a a killer torrent while kicking but in Call of Duty 2? I suck the life out of an X2 4400 bitch, and I am NOT alone.
We cant all have a life, so I NEED that chip!
You insensitive clod!!!
Parent
Office Apps (Score:4, Funny)
My recommendation (Score:3, Funny)
It's the only way to play.
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WoW-Core (Score:2)
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Will it be supported... (Score:3, Insightful)
Only 50 percent speedup on two cores (Score:2)
I am about 50 percent faster on two cores -- I am guess
I can't help but feel they're... (Score:3, Funny)
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Sounds... hot.
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What about other parts of the computer? (Score:2)
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If you complaint is the FSB; the AMD has something better for you. So what are you looking for here really?
Re:What about other parts of the computer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What about other parts of the computer? (Score:4, Informative)
Say hello to AMD, HyperTransport and integrated memory-controllers. Each CPU has it's own bank of RAM, and Each CPU is directly (well, 8-socket system needs one intermediate jump) connected to the other CPU's, and they can access the RAM connected to the other CPU's as well. So if you have dual-socket system, each socket has it's own RAM-bank, with 128bit bus between the CPU and the RAM, and the CPU can access the RAM attached to the other CPU as well. So as the number of CPU's goes up, the memory-bandwidth goes up as well.
This tech has been used since 2003 in the AMD's x86-64 CPU's. In the future AMD will have systems where you can plug co-processors and vid-cards to HyperTransport-sockets, alloweing them to directly communicate with the CPU's.
Parent
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Try connecting 4 of these chips together using only 3 HyperTransport links per core, with a single-hop memory latency, and allow for one link to external I/O. Can't be done. There are two hops required for the core that handles I/O, which is not a good thing when you consider how important I/O links are in a server.
Try connecting 8 sockets using only 3 HyperTransport
Not native Quad core (Score:3, Informative)
http://xstremehardware.co.uk/index.php?option=com
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Is that true? (Score:2)
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I recently met with an Intel rep and they are very much pushing their new core architecture. Quad-core this year, Octo-core next.. Core count is the next clock speed. However one of it matters until the software manufacturers can take advantage of it, and very few server applica
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There are three sides to this: Intel's, AMD's, and the truth.
Funny thing happened on the way to IT Support... (Score:3, Interesting)
We were issued laptops at the start of the project. Typical laptop is a Thinkpad T42p. They average somewhere between 1.6Ghz and 1.8Ghz.
Some people were complaining about performance (java is a hog, and they were using stuff that makes java look 'light'). so they requested new machines.
They were issued Core 2 Duo systems that are 1.8Ghz, with 2 Gigs of ram. This machines are nice. They guy from IT Support comes up to replace the system and starts saying that he doesn't know why we would upgrade to the desktops, they are the same speed as the laptops.
Ok, I expect that from some guy off the street, but IT Support?
(Note: For this work there is a significant speed difference, it is obvious, and almost immediate.)
Never mind the differences between a single core from a Core 2 Duo, and the core used in a Thinkpad anyway...
I have one of these babies (Score:4, Funny)
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The whole thing is a joke, for most people. Like cars that go 1000
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I noticed a difference upgrading from a Dual Xeon 2.0Ghz to a Dual Core Pentium D 805 (2.66Ghz) with quicktime streams for instance. Aside from my poor choice in video card (Geforce 7300), my new
Re:I have one of these babies (Score:5, Interesting)
I will say "lucky bastard", but that also explains your follow-up comment:
Applications can barely use two cores properly, and games are still not as SMP aware as they should.
Although apps and games have started to improve their multithreading, you don't get multi-core for single-app performance. You get it so you can play a modern FPS at the same time you have DVD Shrink backing up a movie for you, with little to no slowdown to either. With a quad core, you can add in two more CPU sucking tasks, again with little to no slowdown (though currently, memory needs to catch up to task of dealing with more cores).
Six(ish) years ago, I got my first dual CPU machine. Almost nothing except the OS itself ran multithreaded at that time. And the improved performance of the machine just blew me away - Only last year did I eventually decommission that ancient dual CPU box because modern single-CPU speeds had passed it (and I still would have held out, except for the knowledge that I could do an in-place upgrade to a dual-core CPU whenever I wanted to).
So you may not see the point of multi-cores, when your favorite game won't run any faster on four than on one. But that doesn't even come close to meaning that "most" people won't benefit. Quite the opposite, I'd say that only hard-core gamers wouldn't benefit. Everyone else will feel the improved responsiveness the first time they touch a multi-core box.
Parent
Re:I have one of these babies (Score:4, Insightful)
MSN, BitTorrent, an MP3 player and a web browser all running at once (on top of background services) on a single-core system leads to a lot of task switching that is entirely unnecessary in a multi-core environment. And while throughput may not increase 4x, responsiveness will be very much improved.
Parent
Soon (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, as it gets harder and harder to make larger CPUs run faster the trend is going to be more, smaller processors per die. Each core is by itself slower than a huge monolithic one, but the sum is greater thanks to non-linear scaling. The trick is getting software to efficiently utilize them all.
Hype (Score:4, Funny)
Benchmarks! (Score:3, Informative)
Intel's right. On games it doesn't do any better. On video though, well, lets just say I know some architecture majors who would have loved these in their lab several years ago, when 1 frame took 10 minutes to render. And they had 300 frame videos to do.
Yeah, Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that much faster on carefully selected software. And slower on some single thread applications that rely most of all on clock-speed and uncontested memory bus access.
Would be nice for once to have headlines read something more honest like:
Speed improvements range from -20% for 50% of your software, up to +80% for 10% of your software.
There could even be a nice graph of how much software is improved (or degraded) at each 5% bin of performance. Otherwise it's no more honest than saying that your new Ferrari is capable of speeds up to 220mph, without mentioning that this can only be utilized during .01% of your driving.
In 2013... (Score:3, Funny)
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Well, you were probably joking, but I'll open up a discussion to "whats next?" because this is something I feel the chip makers have kind of lost their way on.
First off, I'm not criticizing only AMD or Intel, I think they're both guilty of concentrating on perceived performance on desktop CPUs. They don't care how much power the chip consumes or how much heat it dissipates, they only care about what the average consumer sees as immediate performance. To me, performance can be mu
Re:whats next (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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It's still pretty scary, though. Sure, Core 2 Duo was focused on lower power consumption, but pick
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At work it's the same -- very few of our computers gets swapped because they're broken. Most gets swapped because it's bad business to have a $100/hour employee sitting around waiting for a computer worth $1000 to
Re:whats next (Score:5, Insightful)
They are happy with their new Dell 1.8ghz pentium M laptops and that horribly oudated and incredibly slow P4-1.8ghz processor they bought 3 years ago.
Consumers are happy now. computers have stagnated hard for the past 3-4 years and the performance gains offered by this new stuff is only marginal for them.
On video editing, I can see the advances IF your app can take advantage of it, problem is current apps cant take full advantage of that processor until a new build or version is made to take advantages of it.
The consumer yawns and happily uses their old 3 year old PC or that cheapie from dell that cost them $299 with flat panel and is as slow. They dont care about 64 bit, dual or quad core.
at least until they buy a new OS and discover that the added bloat requires more processing power to display menus and movethe mouse cursor.
Parent
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Re:whats next (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really? Now I can't say as far as Intel, but AMD has been very focused on power consumption for a very long time now. All of their literature is filled with benchmarks of power-per-watt and total power savings in the data center, etc. If AMD doesn't care about power consumption, then why would they specifically go to pains to offer CPU versions that are even MORE aggressive in their power saving if you pay a bit more for them? And with all of their power saving innovation and dedication what do they get? Intel now outperforms them and everyone jumps the ship and goes over to the Intel side (despite the fact that the lower power versions of AMD's CPU still use less power when the final weight with the chipset is done).
You know why they care about what performance the average consumer sees? Because that's all consumers care about. If it were otherwise you wouldn't be seeing your lights dim when your graphics card goes into high gear. Where are the "power conscious" versions of these graphics cores?
I've got a lot of Athons, and Athlon XP's running where I work. Some burn out but that's often because of their environment and due to the fact that the fan that comes with the heatsink for the OEM version is garbage almost guaranteed to burn out after a year in high dust environments. The Pentium 4 is history, even Intel admits it was on the wrong track. If you want more longevity, then get a robust heatsink fan (undervolted) and underclock your CPU. You DO underclock your CPU right?
Parent
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Also, I could be wrong
New Quad Core? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Earth warming more.
Or so says
The junior Gore.
Coolness to your every pore:
Burma Shave
Re:overkill (Score:5, Informative)
Other than jumping between cores to improve heat dissipation, how do you propose to make a highly serially-dependant algorithm run on more than one core at a time? Until computers can actually make programmers redundant by writing their own code given a high-level English description of the task (and even then, you'll still have some proveably-serial code), multithreading will remain at the whim of the programmers, not the scheduler.
also why dont they just make dual-core processors faster!
For the same reason they stopped the MHz-wars and moved to a core-war in the first place... Making each core faster has started to hit physical limits (power draw and heat dissipation, electron migration in progressively smaller transistors, clock speeds limited by the speed of light across the width of the chip, etc). Make no mistake, the speed will keep creeping up over time, but the end of 18-month speed doubling ended a few years ago. Major new improvements will either involve radical new technologies (and no, spintronics and diamond substrates will only yield incremental improvements) such as quantum, or what we see now, the move toward massive parallelism.
seems the only way we are going to get ahead in the field
Gaming, while interesting, does not drive research into the highest end of computing.
Parent
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