Intel Core 2 Updates, QX6850 and E6750 105
An anonymous reader writes "As AMD's Barcelona approaches, the price war between AMD and Intel continues. To spice things up a bit this week, Intel is throwing into the ring a number of new processors, refreshing the Core2 line-up. HEXUS reviews the high-end QX6850 and mid-range E6750: 'Now is a golden time for anyone looking to buy a new CPU, whether Intel or AMD. The latest round of price cuts means you can now get an incredible level of processing performance for little more than £100. But if your need to buy is not urgent, remember that Intel and its big rival are each promising new processors before the end of the year — AMD with K10 quad-core and Intel with 45nm Penryn-derived CPUs.'"
Unasked, unanswered question (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can't really blame you for speaking out of your ass, because the "related stories" section isn't working properly.
Re:Unasked, unanswered question (Score:4, Insightful)
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So Intels "professional" CPUs dont have bugs? or what you mean is that all of Intel CPUs are "consumer" CPUs? because server CPUs are affected by the bugs as well. I guess that they are "consumer servers".
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For me, choosing any CPU that has known security bugs to be used on any connected computer is reason enough to be fired.
Re:Unasked, unanswered question (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, choosing any CPU that has known security bugs to be used on any connected computer is reason enough to be fired.
Saying that these bugs "allow any script kid to compromise your servers in unprecedented ways" is totally over the top.
It is just FUD, until someone can actually point out a realistic code execution vulnerability, or even a PoC, even one that could be exploited in unrealistic scenarios, even a DoS, an idea, anything!
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Just because he didn't demonstrate an exploit doesn't mean it can't be done. If you're serious about security then his comments ought to set of your paranoia triggers off. Theo's been (obnoxiously) right a lot more often than his detractors have.
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Maybe Theo was just wise enough, for once, to keep quiet, at least temporarily, about how to exploit a processor bug for which no fix or workaround exists and avoid handing it on a plate to skript kiddies and hackers-for-hire?
Just because he didn't demonstrate an exploit doesn't mean it can't be done. If you're serious about security then his comments ought to set of your paranoia triggers off. Theo's been (obnoxiously) right a lot more often than his detractors have.
You're saying the most well known advocate of full disclosure isn't disclosing vulnerabilities? This is really clutching at straws.
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Congratulations, you just fired every sysadmin in the world. I hate to break this to you, but all modern processors have lots of bugs. They are usually subtle, and they can usually be worked around in one way or another, but they all have them. Expecting a modern processor, with hugely complicated microcode, to be bug-free is like saying you could write a full-scale, bug-free operating
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And no. I seriously doubt that every modern processor has a known security problem in its hardware. For me, the Intel processors mentioned in that errata Theo made some noises a couple days ago are out of question on any critical activities for now.
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Still, both goals are worthy. Although for practical reasons, perhaps only the bug-free OS is feasible.
We live in an era of persistent internet connections, large numbers of attackers attacking computers attached to those connections, and money to be made in compromising systems. We ar
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Re:Unasked, unanswered question (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the bugs will be fixed, others won't. Every CPU has bugs, it's just a fact of life. These things are designed by humans, it's just going to happen. CPU errata happens with Intel (This is the Core2 link) [intel.com] and AMD [amd.com]. None of this is a major threat to most users, and they get worked around by most people pretty quickly. Microsoft have released fixes for the Core2 issue, as have Apple. I don't know whether there has been an update to the kernel for these yet, but I am sure they would get back ported by your distribution.
There is a note here [realworldtech.com] and here [dailytech.com] regarding the Core 2 bugs, I think one of these might have even become a slashdot article at one point. The two links here both are referring to Linus' comment of it being "Totally insignificant", which given that he worked for Transmeta and knows a lot more about how the industry works, I would be putting a bit of faith in his statement.
As another poster said, keep up to date on your BIOS revs, as CPU microcode does have fixes for this stuff too.
Berny
Another review and benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)
The benchmark I want: (Score:2)
Hexus PiFast Challenge! They stopped updating the scores a couple years back, but it's interesting to see the sheer speed increases through the years.
And yes, that is me near the bottom with an old laptop (that still runs).
QX6850 costs $999USD (Score:5, Informative)
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BTW, is anyone else peeved at the notation "333 MHz (1333 MHz QDR)", as it was over at Hexus? I mean, the bus speed -- the data speed -- *is* really 1333 MHz, it's quite incidental that it is based on a 333 MHz source clock (using the "QDR" method of two signals half a phase out of sync and encoding at every falling and rising wawe edge, thus at four slots per clock tick). At the least it should be "1333 MHz (333 MHz QDR)" -- do these guys understand the tech they are w
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More Details, Analysis Here, HH Review (Score:5, Informative)
HotHardware also has a full review up right here [hothardware.com]. They were able to take the new quad-core up to over 3.7GHz and show power consumption numbers for all the high end chips as well.
Tom's Hardware (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/cpu_charts
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If you are thinking about floating point performance, it does. It's not called G6 - we call it Cell.
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If Apple took it, it could be called G6
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For everything else, it's a hyperthreaded (not even dual-core) 3.2GHz in-order PPC64. Bo-ring.
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Or maybe that was something else. I don't remember it being like a CPU that had a socket for another CPU on the top of it, I think it was more on the nano-scale....
Hmm, now I'm trying to think what they were using that technology for then...
Marketspeak (Score:3, Funny)
Read as:
For the love of God, PLEASE buy these things. The warehouse is full, it's bursting, it's...oh, the humanities...
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Price cuts (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as a point of interest, when I was looking for new components around a fortnight ago, suppliers were were already listing high-end chips in the forthcoming E6x50 series at lower prices than even the mid-range chips from the older E6x00 range. The E6600 has been near the sweet spot on the price/performance curve for quite a while now, so if you're looking for a cheap upgrade, it looks like they'll be practically giving away E6600s and E6700s for as long as they last.
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I see no signs of price cuts yet for E6x00 chips, but I also see no-one actually shipping E6x50 chips yet.
However, I just checked several popular UK components web sites, and it's common to find (for example) an E6750 on pre-order at near enough the same price as an E6600 to buy today. Prices for the E6850 pre-order vs. E6700 shipping today are similarly close. To me, that suggests a big price drop for the E6x00 chips is coming.
Re:Price cuts (Score:5, Informative)
Q6600 2.4 1066 $530 $266
E6850 3.0 1333 - $266
E6750 2.66 1333 - $183
E6550 2.33 1333 - $163
E6540 2.33 1333 - $163
The quad core (Q6600) is getting a ~50% price cut.
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wow.
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Yes, this low-end dual-core is half the price, but not half the performance. Therefor a real bargain.
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Athlon64 X2 4000+ 2.1GHz (Brisbane-65nm) - $70
Yes, this low-end dual-core is half the price, but not half the performance. Therefor a real bargain.
After next week's price cuts, Intel's low-end Pentium Dual-Core E2160 (Allendale, 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 cache) will also be a real bargain. It's $96 today at Newegg, but next week it'll be $84 (Intel list price, not street price) [vr-zone.com].
Note that 9 days ago, the Athlon 64 X2 4000+ was about $100 [dailytech.com] before AMD's July 9 price cut to $73 (AMD list price) [informationweek.com].
Tom's Hardware shows [tomshardware.com] the Pentium Dual-Core 2160 outperforming an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ in open-source audio/video encoders and Photoshop. I'd like to find better
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And of course a more expensive chip outperforms a cheaper one. Also your article from Tom's shows the AMDs besting the Intels on power efficiency for idle (which is what really matters in the real world). You get what you pay for, but if you're looking to spend $125 on a mobo+cpu then your choi
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For the most part, all of the current Intel/AMD CPUs within the $0-$300 price range all provide nearly equivalent performance for X cost. That is, a $150 AMD chip will perform very similarly to a $150 Intel chip.
Personally, we still buy AMD Athlon64 X2s in the $100-$125 range for our desktops. They were first to market with affordable 64bit dual-core chips and we prefer to keep our systems as homogene
Intel / AMD (Score:1)
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They might, but then again, they might not. Wait until they actually do something other than say they might do something before you make a decision.
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I have no idea what posting/blog you're referring to. Perhaps you would do well not to jump to conclusions and think someone's "misinformed"?
Messing up their own market? (Score:2, Interesting)
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which apparently perform quite well for their low power consumption
(however outside of Japan it's apparently damn near impossible to get
newer SH chips. We've tried and failed to even get a roadmap from
Renesas Europe)
Renesas is refocussing on multi-core chips instead of higher clocks
(IIRC the SH-X3 is a quad-core design and already running linux)
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Is everyone /. a gamer ? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Here I am running 4 terminals, Thunderbird, Firefox with around 20 tabs, a P2P-client, frequently an instance of mplayer, OpenOffice. Just the average user.
And this runs on OpenSolaris resp. Debian, and the processor load hoovers between 10 and 65%. On a Sempron 3000. With 0% swap use. Okay, at compiling (e.g. mplayer) the thing sucks. But how many percent of the users are developers ? And how many are die-hard gamers. And then, QX6850 and E6750 sure
Well then (Score:2)
Seriously though, I don't get why people like to hate on new processor developments. Does everyone need them? No, surely not, but they allow for great things including pushing down the price of faster hardware. Do you like your nice high rez 2D interface? Like the fact that you can easily run 5+ different apps at the same time? Well then this is the kind of thing you have to thank for it. I remember a time not long ago, less than 2 decades, when you couldn't do that. I
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I do some transcoding, but I went with the C2D E6320 anyway. It is still nearly four times as fast as my previous Athlon XP 2800+. :)
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I do all my day-to-day web surfing from an OpenBSD P IV 1.5 GHz box running the latest distro.
Flash works fine, acrobat works fine and no worries about the bajillion signed-but-have-root active x controls,
acrobat overflow conditions, gifs/jpgs/etc with spyware/backdoor payloads, etc. Really, there's
no compelling reason to upgrade. But assuming I did the quantum leap in power to a recent intel or AMD
proc would
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That's irrelevant. The question to ask is, what percent of users on this forum are developers and/or die-hard gamers? This is, after all, "news for nerds", not "news for average users".
So are these Intel's fastest FP processors? (Score:2)
Real Benefits on the Low End (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I'll need to figure out AMD vs. Intel. I just wish Intel had a better bus design. AMD has a good bus (HT) and Intel has the best chips right now. Maybe if they merged...
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The bus only makes a difference in a few specialized cases. If you're buying a 4S server or doing stuff where memory bandwidth is number 1 consideration, then you'll have to take it into consideration. Otherwise, it's just a small factor.
As for merging,
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Then we'd have a monopoly and both bus and CPU would suck! Sweet!
Wow... just... wow! (Score:2)
I wouldn't mind an AMD X2 BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
So the workaround I use at work is to never let the cores idle and always run them at full speed. Boot linux with idle=poll.
Ironically, the AMD X2s supposedly use less power than the Core 2 Duos while idle...
Apparently AMD say they're going to fix the TSC stuff, and though it's been quite a while since they said that, AFAIK I don't think it's been fixed. So if I had to buy a CPU today for a desktop computer, it'll be a Core 2 Duo. The alleged Core 2 Duo security bugs don't appear to be being exploited by hackers all the time, whereas this AMD X2 TSC problem is always there.
I believe there are Windows gamers who are having problems with their AMD X2s and end up running the game/app only on one core and it's probably due to this TSC problem. Yeah the programmers shouldn't use TSC etc etc. But really what are their choices? See [1]
[1] Why can't the CPU + hardware + OS people get together and come up with something good for something as basic as time keeping?
As Vojtech Pavlik summarizes:
RTC: 0.5 sec resolution, interrupts
PIT: takes ages to read, overflows at each timer interrupt
PMTMR: takes ages to read, overflows in approx 4 seconds, no interrupt
HPET: slow to read, overflows in 5 minutes. Nice, but usually not present.
TSC: fast, completely unreliable. Frequency changes, CPUs diverge over time.
LAPIC: reasonably fast, unreliable, per-cpu
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/11/18/261
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Does anyone have any opinion on how effective the "AMD Dual-Core Optimizer" is and the drawbacks if any?
I'm sure the Linux people would be happy if there's a _decent_ way of keeping the TSCs in sync.
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Basically the CPU just keeps polling for something to do, rather than taking a nap till there's something to do.
Running a distributed computing project _instead_ of doing idle=poll probably won't help, since it is unlikely to 100% guarantee that your CPU will never HLT.
BUT, doing idle=poll AND running a distributed computing project could make sense if you cared about not wasting compute cycles - basically w
increased fsb (Score:2)
my main question before that they answered is if the core 2 quad processors are being choked due to insufficient bandwidth. they measured the difference between 1066 and 1333fsb and performance barely increased. this brings me back to the following observations:
1. the processor is not bandwidth limited and merging the 4 cores in a single die would not yield much performance benefit. this brings back to the
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That said, it is still true that there is not much performance benefit to having 4 cores over 2, but the reason for that is very few users are doing the sort of wo
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this brings back to the argument who is better the native quad core vs 2 x dual core (though in an engineering standpoint, the native quad core will be better
From an economy angle, the MCM (Multi-Chip Module) is better than an integrated quad-core, since less cores need to be discarded. If an error is detected in one core out of four in an integrated quad-core, the entire chip will be discarded, while with an MCM, only one of the two chips will be discarded.
The higher rate of discarded processors with integrated quad-cores would translate to higher prices.
good time for a new pc (Score:1, Informative)
Add to that incredibly low memory prices and incredibly low HDD prices and you can piece together something fast and cheap with little cash.
Unfortunately, the mid-range graphics market for DX10 parts isn't up to par with the rest of the parts. There is a void between $125 and $260. The geforce 8600GT is the $125 part, which is ok, and the 8800
November/December might be the time to buy.. (Score:1)