New i7s

[Mercutio]

New i7s, including an i7-2700k and a couple six core versions, were released this morning. (http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i73960X-Extreme-Edition-Sandy-BridgeE-Review/?page=13)

They are of course completely ridiculous. That might go without saying.

[Handruin]

Looks like Lunar can upgrade to the latest and greatest 6-core Sandy Bridge-E. I read an article on Friday that said Ivy Bridge should be ramped up before the end of this year.

[Mercutio]

Oh yeah, and a new CPU interface. LGA1366 is officially obsolete.

[BingBangBop]

I like the last paragraph of the following review - Xbit Core i7 - 3960X review (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-3960x-3930k_13.html#sect0)

"... Today’s Core i7 from the new 3000-series are based on Revision C core with significant power consumption and not very high overclocking potential. Intel is planning to eliminate these issues, but only after the launch, so we are in for some processor line-up refresh and maybe even a chipset upgrade. Therefore, until things get figured out it is better to hold off the purchase even if you are certain the LGA 2011 platform is for you."

It seems to me that they buried the lead. That is what should have been mentioned at the start, supported by the entire article while foreshadowing the conclusion.

That being said, it is nice to see an 6 core processor at the $500 price point and it is also nice to see the expansion of memory capacity.

[CougTek]

The only x79 motherboard on my price list this morning (Asus Sabertooth X79) is 325$. This is ~130$ more than the older X58 of the same lineage. It is completely ridiculous. For the small % increase SandyBridge-E offers over the old LGA1366 6-cores, the investment asked is simply insane.

[CougTek]

Ok, I've spotted other offerings from MSI and GigaByte, but the cheaper boards are 255$. Still too much.

[BingBangBop]

It's too new to expect normal prices. They jack the prices up to start with to capture the price is irrelevant crowd. Give it a few months, while the early adopters get price gouged and the motherboards get publicly beta tested then wait a few more months so the flaws get identified and can be corrected in the v2.0 motherboards. Six months seems to be a reasonable waiting time period for all this to come to pass.

[Mercutio]

It might be worth pointing out that nothing LGA1366 was ever made available at a reasonable price point either. New boards started at about $180 and just went up from there.

[ddrueding]

My last Socket 1366 purchase was...oh...a week ago. Looking at these, it doesn't look like I missed much.

I think I'll wait around for v2 of the motherboards and some higher clocks on the CPUs.

[CougTek]

Told you that you should have gotten that dual-socket EVGA board.

[ddrueding]

'salright. There will be other goodies in about 6 months for me to waste a day building.

[Mercutio]

MOAR new Intel CPUs, coming Q2 '12. (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20111130234629_Intel_Schedules_Core_i_3000_Ivy_Bri dge_Desktop_Processors_Launch_to_Q2_2012.html)

These are the mainstream guys. The i7-3770k is the top end chip and it's a whole 100MHz faster than a 2700k.

[Mercutio]

Oh and these guys are still LGA1155.

[Handruin]

I looks to be the same frequency (http://ark.intel.com/products/61275/Intel-Core-i7-2700K-Processor-%288M-Cache-3_5-GHz%29) as the 2700K, no? They are both listed as 3.5GHz/3.9GHz (base/turbo)? They say it may be 20% faster overall for the new3770K, and 77W vs 95W is nice. The memory looks like it'll use 1600/1333 vs 1333/1066 in the current 2700K.

I was hoping it would have been available early Jan, but my guess is (much like the article) is that it would step on the SandyBridge-E release a bit much.

[Mercutio]

I thought the 2700k was 3.4/3.8GHz, but that's off the top of my head.

[LunarMist]

No, the 2600K is the 3.4/3.8GHz one.

[BingBangBop]

What I would like to know are prices on the new Ivy-Bridge LGA 1155 chips. Since this is basically just a die-shrink, Intel's costs per chip will significantly decrease. So the question is -- Will the savings be passed along to the consumer, or will Intel use it to significantly increase their margins? I suspect more of the later, since AMD is not really placing much pricing pressure on Intel right now.

[LunarMist]

Yes, the latter - at least for a while.

[Handruin]

What I would like to know are prices on the new Ivy-Bridge LGA 1155 chips. Since this is basically just a die-shrink, Intel's costs per chip will significantly decrease. So the question is -- Will the savings be passed along to the consumer, or will Intel use it to significantly increase their margins? I suspect more of the later, since AMD is not really placing much pricing pressure on Intel right now.

It's more than just a die-shrink: (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Inside-the-Intel-Ivy-Bridge-Microarchitecture/1397)


Socket 1155
PCI Express 3.0 controller, which increases the bandwidth of the PCI Express lanes connected to the CPU from 500 MB/s to 1 GB/s; motherboards must use PCI Express 3.0 channel chips, otherwise, the video card slots will be limited to 2.0 speeds
Two new security features: a digital random number generator and a Supervisory Mode Execution Protection (SMEP)
Float16 format conversion instructions, which convert between a 16-bit compressed floating point memory format and a 32-bit single precision format
Improved performance for instructions that handle strings (REP MOVSB and REP STOSB)
Four new instructions for allowing applications to access the FS and GS registers of the CPU
Support for DDR3L (i.e., low-power DDR3) memories in mobile CPUs
DirectX 11 graphics engine
New 2D graphics engine
Support for three video monitors
Memory overclocking limit was increased from 2,133 MHz to 2,800 MHz, and memory clock can be configured in 200 MHz increments now
Dynamic overclocking, allowing you to change the clock ratio on unlocked CPUs without needing to reboot the PC, and higher clock ratios (up to 63) available for unlocked CPUs
Improvements in power management
22-nm manufacturing process

[BingBangBop]

I rather look at the changes as the equivalent to a service pack.

The main change is the die-shrink from 32nm (Sandy Bridge) to 22nm (Ivy Bridge). A smaller chip is directly equatable to fewer defects/chip (unless they really screwed up in the die-shrink); more chips/wafer; and significantly lower cost per chip.

[ddrueding]

When was price determined by manufacturing costs? I always thought that price was determined by the following:

Demand (basically the usual)
Competition (not much in this case - primarily from themselves)
Benefit (measurable improvement to the previous model - moderate in this case)

So it should cost more.

[CougTek]

A smaller chip is directly equatable to fewer defects/chip (unless they really screwed up in the die-shrink)...
With two designs based on the same process : yes. But certainly not on two designs on different process. Every time they move to a smaller process, adjustments needs to be made and yields usually tank at the beginning of the move. I would be very surprised if the yieds of Ivy Bridge were better for the 22nm process than those of current Sandy Bridge chips are on the 32nm process.

[Mercutio]

Intel finally got around to releasing 5-series Sandy Bridge Xeons. Dual and quad Socket systems can now join in i7 love at up to 8 cores and 16 threads per socket. (http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/xeon/e5/pdfs/Intel_Xeon_E5_Factsheet.pdf)

Looks like somebody could build an absolutely monstrous 16-core system for about $3500.

[ddrueding]

Somebody indeed. Time to go shopping...

[BingBangBop]

Xeons are too expensive for what one gets. If you need lots of cores, AMD is still a far better bargain. If one needs horse power/core, or watt/core (as long as you don't get a MB that uses FBRAM) then Intel all the way.

[ddrueding]

Anyone who needs lots of cores really needs lots of computing power. I'm having a hard time thinking of a scenario where many slow cores is the preferred solution. Perhaps if ESXi wasn't so good at sharing cores between VMs it would be a reasonable application?

[ddrueding]

Should arrive Thurs along with the Gigabyte board to fit it and 64GB of RAM.

[CougTek]

Should arrive Thurs along with the Gigabyte board to fit it and 64GB of RAM.

Which GigaByte board? And when are the 8-core/16-thread desktop CPUs coming from Intel?

[ddrueding]

Couldn't find one with stated support for the chip, so ended up going this way (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182350). Only one CPU to start with, though.

[Handruin]

Anandtech has a preview of the new Ivy bridge Core i7 3770K CPU (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k). Seems to be as expected in terms of performance improvements over the previous generation (5-15%). Power consumption also looks to be pretty good when compared to Sandy Bridge. The integrated video shows signs of significant improvement over the previous generation. My guess is it's not worth an upgrade for anyone with a Sandy Bridge. I think it'll be worth it for myself coming from Lynnfield.

[Mercutio]

Xeons are too expensive for what one gets. If you need lots of cores, AMD is still a far better bargain. If one needs horse power/core, or watt/core (as long as you don't get a MB that uses FBRAM) then Intel all the way.

They aren't ALL too expensive. Entry level Sandy Bridge Xeons start at $200, comparable to Core i5 desktop chips. Yes, they need to be paired with expensive motherboards and expensive RAM, but most of us here buy expensive motherboards and RAM to begin with. I don't think I'd give any serious consideration to $1000 8 core monsters, but then I don't give any serious consideration to Extreme Edition desktop CPUs either.

[LunarMist]

Meh. I have too much invested in software to switch mainboards now. Maybe next year with a new system.