Core 2 Extreme 40% faster than Pentium EE 965? 282
Marc writes "As far as I know, this is the first time that Intel has talked about what we can expect from its new gaming CPU, Core 2 Extreme. For once, there is no word on power consumption on this new chip, but Intel talks about raw speed and a 40% gain over the current 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition 965 - which would be rather impressive and could indicate a problem for AMD. In this interview with TG Daily, Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust. Gamers, this appears to become the most exciting year for you in a long time!"
Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, when you build such a high-end system you probably wouldn't skimp on the case ($200), motherboard ($200 & up), memory ($300 & up), power supply ($100 & up) and peripherals, either, so let's allow another grand for these things and you wind up with a $4000 PC.
Put in a Blue-Ray drive (expected to cost around $1000 initially) and you just hit 5 grand.
I'm not a Sony fanboy, not by a long shot, but comparing a 5 grand PC to a 1/2 grand PS/3 does seem a tad unfair, now doesn't it?
And yes, a quad-SLI system with a Core 2 Extreme *is* expected to blow the doors off a PS/3. No surprise here.
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
"You'll [often] see 50 processes running on a PC today. So what we're finding is, all those background tasks can really be bothersome to someone when they're trying to game, because it interrupts them. So they'll turn all that off. The busiest gamers will get everything out of the Start Menu, every single thing off of their control bar, so they don't get interrupted. Well, dual-core helps that a lot. "
LOL noob.
I find that deleting stuff from my start menu gives me +10 fps.
I cant wait ti
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Informative)
That's like the people who think their computer is slow because they have too many icons on the desktop...
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Informative)
I don't game much, yet I strip my background processes to the bare minimum.. If nothing is wiggling onscreen, and I'm not running any apps, I want that CPU activity to stay at Zero. Windows follows the "include everything" school of thought, loading services that mos
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2, Insightful)
You've got it spot on. It is unfair now, but in 3 or 4 years time, you're going to be stuck with that same PS3 console in your lounge while the PC in your bedroom has evolved and moved on. More importantly, that PC has also got a lot cheaper, while Sony et al are still keeping the price disproportionately high to make money on their consoles.
However, it is nice to see Intel getting their act together with their proce
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
yes ... because if you're willing to spend $5000 on your computer, your more than willing to just replace the Quad-SLI card the next year, along with the CPU, and perhaps the motherboard and memory (perhaps the Core-3 slot isn't compatible and you want 4 cores on each die).
So you're saving what? The case and powersupply? (assuming the PowerSupply still puts out enough power for your system and you don't have to upgrade).
Yes, a computer
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
First, $5K is your estimate, not Intel's. (Come on, $2K for graphics cards!? $1K for a Blu-Ray drive when you can't even buy PC software OR movies for Blu-Ray!?)
Second, not everybody is terribly concerned about "performance per dollar"... they just want the best performance they can reasonably afford. I know my bike-racing brother's $4K ride is not 1/2 the weight of a $2K b
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
1 Vs. 1 the PS2's cell will CRUSH this Intel chip in raw FLOPS. But they can't run the same games etc... So they compare the graphics subsystem on the two systems. Now if you're Intel you're not going to build the rest of the system for 500$ your going to buy the
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Funny)
Make that $5000 PC a $2000 PC ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:2)
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, when you build such a high-end system you probably wouldn't skimp on the case ($200), motherboard ($200 & up), memory ($300 & up), power supply ($100 & up) and peripherals, either, so let's allow another grand for these things and you wind up with a $4000 PC.
You're about half off on that price estimate there. If you're talking about not skimping, you'd be building on a server board that's SLI capable. This means 2 processors, quite possibly 4, if Asus gets off their ass. So add on another $1k just for the extra proc (3K if it's a 4 proc board), throw in the 12-24Gb worth of high-quality registered RAM, $1,800-$2,600. Then there's cooling, you have to go liquid cooled to maintain the heat all those watts are going to put out; figure another &400-$800 worth of water blocks, pumps, hoses, reservoirs, radiators and coolant. And last but not least, we can't forget optical drives, sound card and speakers, mic, camera, media card reader and a fan controller for the fans in your radiator, figure about $600 there.
All this, and you still have to buy a monitor. Don't bother skimping on the 19", go for something with the native resolution you just paid $7-$12K to be able to handle, a 25" TFT with 8ms response time, $2500.
You think home pc's are expensive? You haven't seen anything til you make a corporate workstation meant for research, CAD/CAM or compile heave applications. I've made workstations capable of 4.86 teraflops, sucking all 1000 watts out of the wall, handling a minimum of 85 fps or so playing F.E.A.R.
"Not Skimping" are two words few people know about
Of course they say that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
The Core 2 [wikipedia.org] Extreme processor is clocked at 3.34 GHz with a 1.34 GT/s FSB.
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
3.34 * 1.40 = 5.18
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
3.7 * 1.40 = 5.18
But this seems reminiscent of the Intel vs AMD argument - its clock isn't 40% faster, but it's performance could be.
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Me? Tired?
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Games are usually video bound. Everything else normal people use their computers for tends to be user-bound.
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Games are a notable exception (which I did note). A few people play with photographs and Photoshop filters complex enough to give a computer a bit of pause. I can't really think of anything else. As digital video gets more po
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:2)
The reason netburst doesn't scale well is because the clock multiplier required to account for the loss in performance is not a simple 10% or 25%. In my last toorcon talk I compared an 540J to a 4200+. I found that while the 540 had a 1.45x clock advantage many algorithms took over 1.6x-2x more cycles (often with bignum routines 4x or more).
So against a 2.2Ghz Athlon you'd need roughly a 4.4Ghz P4 with a hec
Re:This whole thing is really dated. (Score:2)
Summary Hype? (Score:4, Insightful)
old axiom... (Score:4, Funny)
oh boy!!! (Score:5, Funny)
. . . until next year. : )
Re:oh boy!!! (Score:2)
"in the dust" claims . . . (Score:5, Informative)
"Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust.
but then I also see in the article:
"[I don't know off the top of my head] the number of polygons it can draw versus a Cell, but I think it's going to be higher, because there's a lot more bandwidth on the quad system than on the Cell system."
That doesn't sound like much of a claim to me.
Only 40% increase? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only 40% increase? (Score:5, Funny)
You're new to this planet, aren't you?
Re:Only 40% increase? (Score:3, Interesting)
Conroe will be fun.
Anyone else starting to feel.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anyone else starting to feel.. (Score:2)
Re:Anyone else starting to feel.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Anyone else starting to feel.. (Score:2)
Re:Anyone else starting to feel.. (Score:2)
Sweet vaporware goodness! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a bit more design elements going into a PS3 than just the raw pixel pushing. I still don't see many FPS games on a PC that can do let 4 players play on the same computer screen.
Re:Sweet vaporware goodness! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sweet vaporware goodness! (Score:2)
How many PC gamers WANT to do that? Especially on a 17" monitor.
-matthew
Re:Sweet vaporware goodness! (Score:2)
Trouble for AMD, I think not. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Trouble for AMD, I think not. (Score:2)
So that a new core from Intel is beating their crappy netburst core is not that surprising and not a problem for AMD [imho].
Tom
Re:Trouble for AMD, I think not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trouble for AMD, I think not. (Score:2)
Who knows, maybe the ATI or Nvidia drivers are just poorly optimized for Intel or AMD.
It means JACK SHIT.
Why not use real benchmarks using tools people need to do work since really for "funputers" people will buy whatever they think is whizbang cool.
Real developers care about things like IPC, memory throughput, NUMA, etc..
Tom
just explain one thing to me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not only clock speed (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not familiar with any possible new bus technology coming out with the new Intel CPU's, but based on my current experience with the latest Dell boxes (Intel) and our new Penguin Computing and HP AMD boxes Intel has a lot of catchup to do to outperform AMD and their whole architecture.
We are using these boxes as MySQL database servers with each server containing 100+ 500 MB to 50 GB databases attached to fiber channel disk arrays. These boxes are mostly doing I/O, but a fair amount of CPU is used for sorting/math done at the database level. The AMD boxes smoke the Intel ones.
Unless Intel also releases a whole new architecture that can compete with Hyper Transport the extra speed will most likely be wasted.
exciting indeed! (Score:3, Funny)
Gamers... ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep up the excellent competition... maybe we can have a third player jump in with some new ideas? IBM? Sun? Let's see you what you have...
Re:x86? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:x86? (Score:3, Interesting)
What are we optimizing for? (Score:2)
These all affect each other. The binaries are different between different arches, duh! The fact is that you invalidate fewer cache lines with smaller x86 instructions, and those Intel-based Macs are way faster than the PowerPC ones.
World of Warcraft on my friend's 15" MacBook Pro blows the doors off my 12" Powerbook G4 of the previous generation. We're talking 20fps average vs. 50!
Re:x86? (Score:2)
I've this personal conspiration theory that when Jobs realized that IBM was not going to care anymore about laptops and Apple in general CPUs anymore (the real reason why Jobs switched to Intel - read the second paragraph of this interview [com.com]) he planned a swtich which would harm I
Re:x86? (Score:2)
I generally don't hold with conspiracy theories, especially since Apple wants to keep the sales going during th
Re:x86? (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea that Apple uses Os to make IBM look bad is totally ridiculous.
Re:x86? (Score:5, Informative)
x86 is more complex. Its much harder to write a decoder for, and more difficult to debug the hardware. That adds cost (and a lot of extra transistors in the decode phase). But its a matter of complexity and cost, not efficiency.
Re:x86? (Score:2)
To say that the binaries should be more compact though, is correct. cache is cheap though - this is why loop unrolling is generally considered an optimization, not a hindrance these days.
Re:x86? (Score:2)
Now older style CISC chips (we're talking really old here- early 80s style) didn't allow multiple cycle ops and the length of the cycle was defined by the longest instruction. RISC was a speedup then, because the instructions that did more tended to take longer. Tha
Re:x86? (Score:2)
As for RISC vs CISC that argument is long since dead. After the decoders the processor is effectively RISC. While decoders are not trivial the ALU, AGU, FPU, LSU and other units account for more logic than the decoder. Look at things like PPC or ARM. They're both RISC yet their IPC is LOWER than the K8 core. Even on PPCs which are superscalar.
Granted there is no reason why you couldn't map most of the macro-op co
Re:An exciting year... (Score:5, Funny)
40% faster? Who cares. Especially for games.
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on your software and your hardware.
Did you have a 386DX40 or a 386SX16? I had a 386SX and my friend had a 286, Wolf3D.EXE was the same speed on both computers
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
-matthew
Re:An exciting year... (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, the 386 DX 40 was the one AMD made. Intel was rather peeved at them for licensing the design and then making it run faster than the fastest Intel chip.
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
However, if we look at instructions per cycle, those transitions were less impressive, especially the Athlon that got thrown in there. There was some added efficiency, but MOST of the gain was from the basic fact that a process shrink (and a core adjusted to make use of it) allowed hi
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Back in the old days (did I just say that?) we'd look at a 20% performance improvement, realize we probably couldn't tell the difference without a stopwatch anyway, and wait for the next 200% improvement. Now 40% is the "best year ever?" Wow.
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
HT links for example give more than 40% boost to most SMP setups compared to a shared FSB setup.
Dual channel memory, etc, etc, etc.
I think you'd find that a 50Mhz K8 would achieve a higher IPC than a similarly clocked 80486 core. Heck I'd bet you could pit a 100Mhz 486 against a 50Mhz K8 and still have the K8 win, specially with FPU intense code.
Tom
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Physics and AI do happen on the processor (well, people are interested in doing the physics on the video card too), but show me an example of a game that is CPU limited on Intel's current top of the line processor (and thus woul
Re:An exciting year... (Score:2)
Re:Sony's Market (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, what do I know? I fall into the "has too much money/buys them all" camp.
Re:Sony's Market (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll be a convert soon. Sick of throwing money at my PC.
Re:Sony's Market (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sony's Market (Score:2)
Re:Sony's Market (Score:2)
Blu-Ray fanboiz.
Re:Sony's Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sony's Market (Score:2)
I wonder which of the 100,000,000 PS2 owners Sony hopes to sell the new console to? Only a quarter of them is more than Xbox's market share. Some forcasts suggest that Sony can lose 20% of it's market share. That's still more than Xbox AND
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:2, Interesting)
Except that (Score:3, Insightful)
If the 20'000 hardcore gamer that are living in the same city as you use 50W CPUs instead of 150W one, maybe they'll get 3FPS less on the screen, but on the other hand will consume 2 MW less.
Which will put less strain on the power plant, will be more ecologically friendly and will contribute less to the global warming.
(That's why enterprise are also interested in more eco-friendly CPUs
Same reasonning also goe
Re:Good (Score:2)
AC = cool
Re:Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:2)
Please post the link to the data that supports your claim of "power hog".
Re:So (Score:2)
Some Core 2 Duo C processors will apparently sport an E designation, indicating consumption between 55 and 75 watts.
75W is comparable to an Athlon 64 FX, for a processor that was designed to be miserly that's a pretty terrible direction to be heading in.
Re:So (Score:2)
How does their mobile part's power compare to AMDs?
Re:So (Score:2)
Tom
Re:So (Score:2)
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!! (Score:3, Funny)
The most exiting round of CPU battles yet!