Intel Core i7 – X58 Chipset – Nehalem Arrives – Reviews and News Round-up

[DigitalDude]

Intel's Core i7 purchased, overclocked, benchmarked
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/02/i...d-benchmarked/

(Read Link: http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/...-out-wild.html
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=440677)


REVIEWS AND NEWS ROUND-UP





Intel Core i7 920 and 965 review
http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-...nd-965-review/

Core i7 Multi-GPU SLI Crossfire Game performance review
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i...rmance-review/

Intel Core i7 – Nehalem Arrives and FSB Departs
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/164...rts/index.html

Intel Core i7 940, 920 and 965 Extreme Edition
http://legionhardware.com/document.php?id=786

Intel Core i7 CPU & DX58SO X58 Platform
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...d=229&Itemid=1

Intel Core i7 Performance Preview
http://techgage.com/article/intel_co...mance_preview/

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=634

Intel Core i7 920, 940 and 965 Extreme Edition review
http://www.techspot.com/review/124-i...7-920-940-965/


UPDATE 1:

Intel's Core i7: Blazing Fast, But Crippled O/C : Eight Virtual Cores Through Hyper-Threading
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...alem,2057.html

The Dark Knight: Intel's Core i7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3448

Intel Core i7 Processors: Nehalem and X58 Have Arrived
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Inte...rived/?page=17


Intel Core i7 review roundup
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/03/i...eview-roundup/

[...]

Read - PC Perspective. "Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review"
Read - Techgage, "Intel Core i7 Performance Preview"
Read - Maximum PC, "Core i7 Dissected and Benchmarked"
Read - Computer Shopper, "Intel's Core i7 Debuts: Systems, CPUs, and Motherboards Reviewed"
Read - HotHardware, "Getting To Know Intel's New Core i7, Video Spotlight"
Read - HotHardware, "Intel Core i7 Processors: Nehalem and X58 Have Arrived"
Read - TechSpot, "Intel Core i7 920, 940 and 965 Extreme Edition review"
Read - Custom PC, "Intel Core i7 - all you need to know"
Read - SlashGear, "Gateway FX6800-01e Review"

UPDATE 2:

Intel X58 Extreme DX58SO motherboard review
http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-...rboard-review/

ASUS P6T DeLuxe review - X58 motherboard
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-p...8-motherboard/

Overclocking Intel's Core i7 920
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...-core-i7-920/1


UPDATE 3:

Intel Core i7 CPU and Platform Value (must read)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...i7-cpu-value/1


(in no particular order and will update if necessary)

If possible, please post links of the news/reviews related to Core i7 and X58 that are going to be flooding the Tech sites in the coming days in this thread.

_

[Zangetsu]

Wow...eager 2 c same news from AMD also...
well i've heard dat the corei7 is designed in Bangalore

[shadow2get]

You could add these links to the REVIEW section :

TomsHardware - Intel's Core i7: Blazing Fast, But Crippled O/C : Eight Virtual Cores Through Hyper-Threading
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...alem,2057.html

AnandTech - The Dark Knight: Intel's Core i7
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3448

HotHardware - Intel Core i7 Processors: Nehalem and X58 Have Arrived
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Inte...rived/?page=17

[skippednote]

Looks great
hope its out in markets soon

[comp@ddict]

My eyes really popped out when I saw 400FPS OMG!!!!

[desiibond]

Nehalem is a perfect step forward for Intel, building on the success of core 2 microarchitecture. It has widened the gap with AMD to unreachable extent.

God save AMD!!!!

I have decided. My next rig will be Nehalem based

now, it will be really foolish now to go for high end core2quad's. they will be beaten by core i7 with much less effort

[hellgate]

just cant wait till Jan.getting the Core i7 920 + any good x58 chipset mobo asap.

[amritpal2489]

Just One Word..... WOW......

[Hrithan2020]

As expected/feared, no improvement w.r.t games.
But,maybe when games really go multi-core,it will benefit a lot from the SMT...

[desiibond]

Now, Imagine what happens if Nehalem moves to 32nm fabrication.

That's gonna start late next year and the core name will be Westmere and it will be far more destructive.


Here's what you have to know about Nehalem:

1) Conroe was first to introduce 4-way front end. Processor could decode, rename and retire up to four micro-ops at same time. Conroe's width was underutilized and Nehalem is going to fully utilize this

2) Conroe introduced "fused" x86 instructions (two instructions combined together and run at same time). Nehalem now does the same for x86 and 64-bit instructions too.

Result: Better 64-bit performance

3) Hyper Threading: this feature alone gives 34% increase in 3D-Mark performance without any other changes. so, why is this feature work this time?

HT was introduced in Pentium. HT means that at the same time, procesor will have ability to fetch instructions from two threads. Due to Nehalem's bigger and wider memory bandwidth, bigger cache and wider bus, HT will be finally utilized to it's potetial, thus making the processor lot more powerful.

4) Integrated Memory Controller. Nehalems has triple channel DDR3 memory controller. This means that for RAM to get to peak bandwidth, you need to use sets of three memory modules. you will see many manufacturers relase boards with 3 or 6 RAM slots.

5) QPI. Memory controller is on-die. Sticking to FSB will be a serious bottleneck for the on-die mem control. Intel has moved to QPI for this. It's the same as what we call Hyper Transport bus in AMD and nVidia processors.

Each QPI link is bi-directional supporting 6.4GB/s and is 2-bytes wide. That gives 12.8GB/s bandwidtch in each direction

6) Move to new instruction set SSE 4.2

7) Power Management: For the first Intel has 1 million transistors for on-die Power Control Unit. PCU.

PCU has it's own embedded firmware and takes inputs on temperature, current, power and OS requests. Thanks to this PCU, you can now Overclock or downclock each core separately and also change voltage on individual cores without effecting other cores.

8) Fast out of the box: No software optimization requried. the processor works fast right out of the box.

9) Intel took a simple rule "For each 1% increase in power, that feature need to provide a 2% or greater increase in performance." Else the feature will not be added however good it looks on paper.

10) Increase in size of data structures on the chip. can now keep 128microops, up from 96 in conroe

11) Bigger size of reservation station, load and store buffers.


PS: Nehalem architecture is not just about speed and bandwidth. Every single part of conroe is enhanced and optimized to get better from the core. Instruction set, TLB, controllers, branch predictors, execution unit, parallelism, cache access, cache memory hierarchy, HT, data bus, power management. Everything everything is changed.

That's why it is said that it's the biggest thing to happen in Intel since Pentium Pro.

Source: Anandtech and IDF

Originally Posted by Hrithan2020

As expected/feared, no improvement w.r.t games.
But,maybe when games really go multi-core,it will benefit a lot from the SMT...

The biggest improvement is for servers (database and web servers) and video rendering tasks

[chesss]

Its time to get depressed about the upgrade you made a few months ago! hehe.

@shadow2get , OP - thx for teh linkz

[QwertyManiac]

When will Core i7 be coming to the normal consumer section (or Non-extreme)?

[Pathik]

Q2 2009.

[Hrithan2020]

Originally Posted by desiibond

Now, Imagine what happens if Nehalem moves to 32nm fabrication.

That's gonna start late next year and the core name will be Westmere and it will be far more destructive.

The biggest improvement is for servers (database and web servers) and video rendering tasks

Of course, nehalem is apparently gonna pwn the current opterons,which did very well in the multi-socket category due to increased bandwidth inherent when using IMC.

All I am saying is that there is not much for a gaming enthusiast to be happy abt.(which i am not,but many are).Like u don't have to wait for the mainstream one to arrive when u upgrade.(though by that time,the current processor's price would have dipped).

Yeah 32nm could hold immense possibilities esp. if they increase the L2 cache back to the 4-6MB level and/or increase L3 to 16MB(then very few misses for sure)!!

[desiibond]

^^ Acutally, Nehalem does have a lot of promise for gaming. But it's the game developers that have to get the performance most out of it. Just like the IBM cell processor in PS3, th core and Nehalem architectures are monsters waiting to be unleashed.

Games have not yet utilized the four cores. I am pretty sure that Nehalem is going to change that.

Best example : http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i...ance-review/10

Look how much difference Nehalem brought over E8400.

Far Cry 2 running on HD4870 X2 and Nehalem:

2560x1600: 78fps. Speechless

Far Cry 2 running on two HD4870 X2 cards and Nehalem:

2560x1600: 52fps

Crysis warhead giving 50fps at 1900x1200 using GTX280 SLI.

In every gaming benchmark, it's way ahead of E8400 and other dual cores at all resolutions. Now, that's lot better when compared to earlier quad cores.

The old performer Q6600 was beaten by E8400 in gaming without any effort. Q9xxx series fared much better and now, i7's are on a whole new level.

but that's too early to give the gaming crown to Nehalem. The processor used for test wast the extreme edition and that costs around 1000$ and market price estimated to be 1100$

Originally Posted by comp@ddict

My eyes really popped out when I saw 400FPS OMG!!!!

hehe. that rig will put 400 holes in your pocket

[krinish]

AMD is dead. RIP. Now Intel will make us use what they want us to use and nothing more.

No competition. No fun. I read on tom's that With i7 you dont require High End coolers?

[desiibond]

^^ You never require high end coolers unless you wan't to do insane overclocking.

[krinish]

Extract from Tom's

Here’s the short version. Intel is introducing the Core i7, the successor to the Core 2 processor, which features both improved performance and higher efficiency. In our benchmark suite, the Core i7 is 25% faster clock-for-clock than the Core 2. Overclockers shouldn’t get their hopes up though: all standard models are equipped with an overclocking lock.


Overclocking is very different on the Core i7. Unlike the Core 2 or Pentium D processors, the Core i7 CPU can monitor the current it draws as well as its power consumption—if it exceeds a certain level, the processor automatically reduces its clock speed. Intel calls this feature "Overspeed Protection." The limits hard-wired into the core are 100 A and 130 watts. Only the Extreme Edition allows the user to increase these values as they like, effectively circumventing the protection mechanism altogether.

Thermal power loss rises especially quickly when the core voltage is increased. Thus, it is entirely possible that a lower model Core i7 may offer excellent overclocking potential, but it will be constrained by the Overspeed Protection feature when its power dissipation triggers it. Obviously, Intel wants to prevent customers from buying an inexpensive processor and then overclocking it to very high or even extreme levels. Apparently, Intel has realized that the good overclocking potential of its processors has led ambitious users to choose less expensive models, relegating the faster (and more expensive) CPUs to the sidelines.

Companies selling water-cooling solutions may also be affected as an unintended consequence of this design. After all, water cooling solutions tend to be the method of choice in scenarios where a conventional air cooler is no longer able to handle a CPU’s heat dissipation. The normal, non-Extreme Edition Core i7 processors will hit a hard limit at 130 watts, which means a large percentage of users who previously chose a liquid cooling solution may suddenly disappear. Instead, the target group for such pricier cooling solutions would automatically shift to buyers of Extreme Edition processors and users building silent PCs.

[comp@ddict]

Originally Posted by desiibond

hehe. that rig will put 400 holes in your pocket

That's xaktly the biggest problem right now.

Tha's y 'm soo keen for Deneb, cuz if it performs(very) well, then INTEL will be forced to cut prices, and then finally we might be able to hope for a nehalem rig in 50k

[nvidia]

Anyone saw the temperatures? Its 80C+ after OCing.. I wonder why no site mentioned anything much about the temperature part:roll:

[desiibond]

Originally Posted by comp@ddict

That's xaktly the biggest problem right now.

Tha's y 'm soo keen for Deneb, cuz if it performs(very) well, then INTEL will be forced to cut prices, and then finally we might be able to hope for a nehalem rig in 50k

The reason why I said that is because the CPU tested costs 999$ and is the flagship model. Don't take that as a NO for core i7.

the starting market price will be around $320 core Core i7 920.

And btw, when Deneb gets into the market, memory like DDR3 and chipsets for core i7 will stabilize and will become lot more affordable.

Comparing Nehalem with Deneb coming next year in price point of view is totally nonsense.

whether Deneb arrives or not, Intel will cut the price and they will released lot more chipsets for Nehalem.

[nvidia]

^^DDR3 is already cheap now.. Its come down to about 5k for 2Gigs..

[JAK]

I think I made the right decision of waiting..
I was initially planning to upgrade in around last June/July but decided to wait till Jan/Feb...
Heck my gut feeling is pretty darn good....

[desiibond]

Originally Posted by nvidia

^^DDR3 is already cheap now.. Its come down to about 5k for 2Gigs..

That's not cheap. 2Gb DDR2 costs 1.5k.

And to utilize DDR3's full bandwidth, you need 3 modules that means you have to buy it like 3x1Gb or 3x2Gb...

And yes, it's good news that the price fell by 3k.
The price will be inside 3k in another 2 months

Originally Posted by JAK

I think I made the right decision of waiting..
I was initially planning to upgrade in around last June/July but decided to wait till Jan/Feb...
Heck my gut feeling is pretty darn good....

Great. Now you will be one of those having a PC based on brand new architecture.

[ax3]

i will 2 wait ........ hope prices r down ......

[MetalheadGautham]

Originally Posted by nvidia

^^DDR3 is already cheap now.. Its come down to about 5k for 2Gigs..

1066 MHz ?
Here I am, waiting for 1600MHz to come under 4k.

[desiibond]

moo haa haa. Really man, What is the use of RAM being at 1666MHz when you have HDD running at 133MHz

[MetalheadGautham]

Originally Posted by desiibond

moo haa haa. Really man, What is the use of RAM being at 1666MHz when you have HDD running at 133MHz

Well, I always prefer higher values
Actually, 1600 is supposed to be the higher mainstream, the way 400MHz DDR RAM and 800MHz DDR2 RAM are, so I wouldn't be surprised if it lands at 4000.

[DigitalDude]

updated with more links


_

[vish786]

is there a single guy in thread who's gonna buy ? NO!, at max someone might say "Hey, I'm THINKING to buy it".