Intel Targets AMD With Affordable Unlocked CPUs 207
EconolineCrush writes "For years, AMD has catered to gamers and enthusiasts with mid-range Black Edition processors whose unlocked multipliers make overclocking easy. Intel has traditionally reserved unlocked multipliers for its ultra-expensive Extreme CPUs, but it has now brought the feature to affordable models that compete directly with AMD's most popular processors. The Core i5-655K and Core i7-875K have two and four cores, respectively, and they're priced at just $216 and $342. It appears that both will easily hit speeds in excess of 4GHz with air cooling. Surprisingly, even at stock speeds, the i7-875K offers better performance and power efficiency per dollar than just about any other desktop CPU out there."
Nothing to lose (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel have nothing to lose anymore by keeping the multipliers locked: the bottleneck isn't with the CPU frequency anymore. The biggest differentiators in their higher end models are number of cores and cache size.
If they can get few more sales with a pointless gimmick some fall for, why not?
LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I guess when anti-competitive practices fail.....
Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
The article comparing values uses the highest price motherboard available for AMD for a "midrange" system, then claims that the Intel-based total system is a value. If you spend $350 on a 6-core processor, then spending $140 on a high-end motherboard is reasonable. If you're spending $99 for a low end AMD quad, you're probably in the market for more reasonably priced motherboard (~$100) to go with it. The comparison is valid for the high-end AMD cpus, but not their budget stuff, as a $40 drop in price is a big deal for a system with a $100 cpu.
That being said, being able to overclock this thing is directly aimed at the enthusiast market. "I got 6 cores, w00t!" "Yeah, well I'm at 4GHZ on a quad, so there!" It definitely improves the competition between the high end AMD hexa-cores and the midrange Intel quads, and makes the Intel option more appealing to the enthusisast.
NO 1336? so you are stuck with 16 pci-e lanes so (Score:5, Interesting)
NO 1336? so you are stuck with 16 pci-e lanes so a good video card can uses that up and then when you add usb 3.0 and sata 6.0 you cut into the video pci-e lanes.
for $200 you can get a AMD board with 890fx that has more pci-e lanes so you can have 2 x16 video cards + room for sata 6.0 and usb 3.0 as well.
Nice to see AMD v Intel reversed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel Targets AMD...
Nice to see this. In the past 10 years it has always been 'AMD targets Intel.' AMD must be doing something right if Intel is taking notice of it and that means a little competition which is great for the future of the hardware.
Please explain overclocking. (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone please explain overclocking to me? Why are processors sold at a slower speed than they can actually perform at? Why don't they ship from the factory at their fastest speed?
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Interesting)
If you do computationally-intensive workstation tasks, like video editing, gaming, virtualization, or using java (sigh); you really will appreciate going from a $100 CPU to a $300 CPU. Using faster components also means having an overall less-frustrating experience with your computer.
At home, I have an i7, an SSD, a high-end NVIDIA GPU, and the fastest RAM my mobo can take. At work I have a computer made of the budget components you think are good enough. The difference is extremely evident. My computing tasks happen as fast as I can think at home. At work, I often have to wait for things to load, which can derail my train-of-though, lower my productivity, or just generally piss me off.
A few hundred more for good components is money very-well spent.
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Interesting)
Having been part of PC building community for a long time with a lot of experience in everything from low-end as-cheap-as-possible builds to ridiculously expensive gaming builds, your comment is not based on reality. Unless you have a very short memory, about 4 years ago you had to spend at least $200 to get any dual core CPU (Pentium D or AMD Athlon X2), so I very much doubt your "ages" comment on a CPU suitable for your uses. And especially vid encoding benefits a lot from quad core CPUs with suitable architectures, so were you seriously informed about these things, you would have put the limit to that $200, so that Intel's i5-750 (good at gaming, excellent bang for the buck in other desktop task, like video encoding) would have fitted into the budget. Of course, if your time isn't worth anything, you might as well get the cheapest CPU out there, but that doesn't mean that for a lot of people the $100 extra would make their computing experience a lot less time-consuming.
Description is flawed (Score:4, Interesting)
-1, Inaccurate
The 2.8ghz i7-930 is $199 [microcenter.com] vs $342 for a 2.93ghz i7-875K, so almost double the price for 0.13ghz more. How did the author see that and think "better performance per dollar"? The article he linked to even shows the better performance per dollar in a chart, [techreport.com] and btw techreport that chart is pretty piss poor, shoving $200 processors on a chart that goes to $1200 just clumps 90% of the processors in the $50 to $400 range. Learn how to make a chart: you should have left off under $50 (no processors under $50) and anything past $1000 (no processors over $1000). Because of your crappy chart the i7-875 is right next to the i7-930 despite the $142 difference.
The i7-930 is locked but it does reach 4ghz on air rather easily.
I suppose all of this is a mute because the LGA 1156 platform and LGA 1366 platform are being discontinued next year [bit-tech.net], so if you don't already have a i7 compatible motherboard you'd be buying a board that won't be compatible with any cpus made 7 months from now. I wouldn't buy a i7 cpu unless intel started selling them for $50, while AM3 boards available now are compatible with future 16-core cpus [anandtech.com]
Re:Nothing to lose (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest differentiators in their higher end models are number of cores and cache size.
I'd add the platform to that.
The low and midrange desktop chips (i3, i5 and i7 8xx) are on the LGA1156 platform. That means dual channel memory, a max memory of 16GB* and only 16 channels of fast PCIe**. What that means is that any addition storage controllers etc end up either stuck behind the PCH or stealing channels from the graphics card.
The high end desktop chips (i7 9xx) are on the x58 single socket LGA1366 platform, that means triple channel memory, a max memory of 24GB* and 36 channels of fast PCIe**.
The xeon 5500/5600 workstation/server chips are also on LGA1366 but it's a dual socket variant. That means six channels of memory (three per CPU), a max memory of 144GB* and 36 or 72 channels (depending on whether the motherboard vendor uses one or two IO hubs) of fast PCIe** (and yes there are boards that use all 72 e.g. http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DAH_.cfm [supermicro.co.uk] ).
The higher end xeon chips support even more.
* Max memory figures for desktop chips assume 4GB modules and two modules per channel. I haven't seen a desktop board that claims to support higher configurations than this though it may technically be possible. Max memory for dual socket workstation chips assumes 8GB modules and three modules per channel, more is possible in theory if you can find 16GB modules which supposedly exist but i've never seen for sale.
** PCIe channels that run at the 2.0 speeds and are taken from the processor or IOH. Not the channels that are taken from the ICH/PCH that only run at 1.0 speeds and are potentially bottlenecked by the DMI/ESI connection.