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LGA 775 Lives on with Processor Price Cuts and New Lower Wattage Models

Paul Lilly — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:08:56 -0600

If you're building from scratch, chances are you've been eyeballing Intel's newly minted Core i7 platform (as you should be). But the decision isn't so cut and dry when your budget doesn't allow for a new motherboard and kit of triple channel RAM. For those of you sitting pretty on an LGA 775 platform and in need of a processor upgrade, Intel has announced a handful of price cuts affecting its Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual Core, Celeron, and Xeon chips, as well as announced several new lower wattage Core 2 Quads, which drop the TDP from 95W to 65W.

Among those with the new lower TDP rating are the Q9650 (3.0GHz, 12MB), Q9550 (2.83GHz, 12MB), and Q8200 (2.33GHz, 4MB). However, these new revisions won't come cheap, commanding an $82, $107, and $103 premium respectively over their 95W counterparts with newly lowered prices.

New processor models include the E7500 (2.93GHz, 3MB, 1066MH) and E5400 (2.80GHz, 2MB, 800MHz), priced at $133 and $84 respectively in thousand-unit trays.

See Intel's updated price list here.

Intel's Q8300 May be the Last New Core 2 Quad CPU

Paul Lilly — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:17:50 -0600

Intel has released a new mainstream Core 2 Quad processor in the Q8300. The new 45nm chip comes clocked at 2.5GHz on a 1333MHz front side bus just like the Q9300, but with 4MB of L2 cache instead of 6MB. Look for the chip to sell for around $224.

The new CPU will also likely mark the end of the line for Intel's Core 2 Quad lineup, at least for the immediate future. Of course, Intel will continue to make quad-core processors, just not for the suddenly defunct Core 2 platform. Instead, the company appears to moving all of its efforts to Core i7 and, as Stanley Huang, director of marketing and technical services of Intel's Asia Pacific division said in a statement, boosting Centrino 2's penetration rate.

Huang also reaffirmed that the company's Calpella platform is on schedule despite rumors that it might be delayed for a 2010 launch.

Image Credit: Intel

Intel Plans to Axe Core 2 Quad Q6600 in First Quarter of 2009

Paul Lilly — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:29:08 -0600

For a long while, Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor remained a popular choice in the DIY community. The 2.4GHz chip, helped in part by an aggressive round of price-cuts, brought quad-core computing to the mainstream. It became even more popular when Intel released the G0 stepping, which ushered in lower temps and higher overclocking potential.

But there's no looking in the rear-view mirror for Intel, and with the chip maker's Core i7 stepping into the limelight, it's come time to retire the aging 65nm Q6600. Citing un-named sources at PC vendors, DigiTimes reports that Intel plans to phase out the vintage quad-core chip in Q1 2009 by issuing a product discontinuance notice.

The Q6600's impending end-of-life could come as good news to those in need of a quad-core upgrade while remaining fiscally responsible. In all likelihood, vendors will again cut the Q6600's price as they look to clear out inventory before the end of the year. Stocking stuffer, perhaps?

Image Credit: Intel

AMD’s new X4 quad core

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:02:28 -0500

It’s been a pretty lousy six months in AMD fan boy land. Even the most vocal of fan boys have found themselves ducking for cover as AMD was hit with delays, production problems and errata bugs.

With the release of the Phenom X4 9850, AMD hopes to finally put some of those problems behind it. Dubbed “B3” chips, the new CPU no longer features the infamous TLB bug that hobbled performance of the original Phenom chips. If it isn’t already obvious to you, AMD is also reverting back to the X4 nomenclature that it had toyed around with before Phenom launched. New Phenom’s will now carry the X4 designation for quad cores and X3 for tri-cores (of if you want to be snide, quad cores with one bad core).

We tested the new 2.5GHz Phenom X4 9850 using an Asus M3A32-MVP board with 2GB of Corsair Dominator RAM at 1066MHz data rates, a 150GB WD Raptor, Windows XP SP2, and the new Nvidia GeForce 9800GX2 GPU. For a comparison, we populated a new 45nm Penryn Core 2 Quad Q9300 and a Core 2 Quad Q6600 in an EVGA nForce 790i Ultra motherboard. For those who don’t know, the Q9300 doesn’t have the same relationship that the Q6600 has to the top-end procs. Intel has cut the cache in half from the 12MB in a Core 2 Extreme QX9650 to 6MB in the Q9300. This makes it sort of a “Penryn-lite” chip. Why? There’s probably two explanations: Intel has either decided to do something with its Penryn CPUs with some bad cache (ala AMD) or it has decided to hobble the chip intentionally to give its top quad cores more of an edge. We set the pair of 1GB Crucial DDR3 modules at 1333 and installed Windows XP SP2 on a WD Raptor 150GB drive. Finally, the same reference GeForce 9800GX2 card was used in the same machine and the same public drivers were used for both tests. Is it fair to pit a DDR3 platform against a DDR2 platform? We think so. Afterall, we would have tested Phenom on DDR3 but there’s just no support for it yet. Even though the DIMMs in our Core 2 platform cost more than the CPUs, we think it would be unfair to not put the Core 2’s best foot forward. If anything, Intel is probably grumbling that the test should be conducted on X48 which, we’re sure, the company thinks is a better and faster platform.

For the most part, the Q9300 owned the night. It generally outpaced the old Q6600 quad core and the new Phenom quad core in most of our tests. In a clock-for-clock test between the Phenom and Penryn, we would declare the Q9300.

AMD fans shouldn’t hand their heads in shame though. The Phenom numbers weren’t so far behind as to be dead in the water. Certainly, it doesn’t go quite head-to-head with the Penryn-lite but it is still fastest AM2 chip available today for most apps. That makes it a pretty good upgrade for those with AM2 boards that are capable of supporting Phenom. If you had to start afresh though and you weren’t opposed to Intel for anything other than religious reasons, Core 2 is still the champ in the cheap quad core category.

AMD’s big problem is expectations. When Phenom first launched late last year, the company had built up wild expectations that Phenom would level the playing field with Intel’s quad core. In truth, all it could do was barely compete with Intel’s lowest of the low quad cores – a chip that was a year old. AMD still has no response to Intel’s 3GHz Core 2 Quad QX9650 and the soon to be released 3.2 Core 2 Quad QX9770 chip and it doesn’t look like the company will for several more months. Meanwhile, Intel is already demonstrating fully functional Nehalem CPUs and says they’re on track to launch later this year.

Benchmarks
	Core 2 Q9300	Core 2 Q6600	Phenom X4 9850
Clock	2.5GHz	2.4GHz	2.5GHz
L2	6MB	8MB	2MB
L3	N/A	N/A	2MB
Rated TDP	95 watts	95 watts	125 watts
FSB	1,333	1,066	N/A
Bulk Pricing	$266	$266	$235

3DMark06 Overall	13,990	13,565	13,594
3DMark06 CPU	4,103	3,856	3,807
Valve Particle Test	87	76	72
Valve Map Build (min:sec)	2:42	2:48	2:57
CineBench R10	9,622	8,763	8,065
ScienceMark 2.0	1,572.21	1,393.57	1,606.46

PCMark05 Overall	9,080	8,948	8,547
PCMark05 CPU	8,064	7,746	7,396
PCMark05 RAM	6,012	5,434	4,761
PCMark05 GPU	15,643	15,806	13,972
PCMark05 HDD	7,633	7,647	7,766

Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 (min:sec)	15:45	17:33	18:01
Photoshop CS3 (min:sec)	2:20	2:28	3:35

FEAR (fps)	199	209	200
Quake 4 (fps)	169.7	166.6	165.7
Unreal Tournament 3 (fps)	119	105	87
AutoGK DIVX 6.8 (min/sec)	9:36	10:07	11:44
AutoGK XVID	11:08	11:38	12:42

In the Lab: Gordon Mah Ung Mulls Overclocking

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:00:48 -0600

One clear lesson that came from all the overclocking I did for this month’s cover story is that bargain processors kick butt over their pricier brethren when it comes to increased clock output. The most impressive pure clock-speed gain I saw was with the Pentium E2160 chip. That sucker jumped from 1.8GHz to 3.37GHz—roughly an 85 percent overclock! Our gauge of success wasn’t just a post and screen grab, either. I used Prime95 to stress-test the processors.

Perhaps the most disappointing results were with AMD’s older 90nm Windsor cores. These make up the company’s fastest Athlon 64 X2 CPUs, but neither the new Black Edition Athlon 64 X2 6400+ nor the X2 6000+ coughed up many extra megahertz. I saw less than a 10 percent clock bump from either chip. And I’m not alone. I spoke to an OEM representative who said his company was also seeing only minor overclocking results from its Windsor core processors.

Even though AMD has decided to unlock its X2 6400+ as a reward to overclockers, it doesn’t seem that there’s really any point to it. AMD’s 65nm Brisbane CPUs performed a bit better, with stable 25 percent overclocks, but they paled against budget Intel dual cores, which all allowed for overclocks of more than 50 percent. Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6700 was another impressive processor. Although we saw but a 30 percent clock increase, that’s not bad for a $500 CPU, especially when the pricier Core 2 Extreme QX6850 doesn’t go that much farther. Of course, your mileage may vary. We decided to stick with standard air-cooling for all of our tests; water or phase-change/hybrid solutions would likely yield even better results.

I’ve long believed that the bulk of overclockers aren’t pushing $1,000 CPUs as far as they can go. It’s really the guys and gals buying the $180 CPUs who are trying to get as much bang for the buck as possible.

Overclocking Results for Intel and AMD CPUs
CPU	Core	Stock Speed	Overclock	Price
Pentium E2160	Allendale	1.80GHz	87%	$74
Core 2 Duo E6300	Conroe	1.86GHz	55%	$163
Core 2 Duo E4500	Allendale	2.20GHz	50%	$113
Core 2 Quad Q6700	Kentsfield	2.66GHz	29%	$530
Athlon 64 X2 4200+	Brisbane	2.2GHz	24%	$78
Athlon 64 X2 BE-2350+	Brisbane	2.1GHz	24%	$96
Athlon 64 X2 6000+	Windsor	3GHz	9%	$167
Athlon 64 X2 6400+	Windsor	3.2GHz	7%	$220
Performed on an eVGA 680i SLI motherboard, 2GB Corsair Dominator 8500 RAM, a PC Power and Cooling 1KW PSU, and standad air cooling.

Quad-core, you're So HOT!

Paul Lilly — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:05:49 -0500

Life is about perks, whether it's getting free HBO as a DirecTV installer, or taking the summer off because you went into teaching for your profession. I don't get either of these, but I do get to play with the latest computer gadgets and hardware. Most recently, I logged some hands-on time with Antec's P182 enclosure, the newest mid-tower in their Performance One series, and it got me wondering about the future of PC case design.

PC enclosures have a knack for avoiding major innovation, partly because the ATX specification continues to dominate the landscape, and has been doing so for the past decade. Intel's BTX form factor tried to shake things up, but was ultimately rejected by the DIY community from a presumed lack of necessity. And for the most part I agree, but how much longer will that stay true?

Using the above mentioned P182, I officially retired my AMD 4400+ X2 based system this past weekend, and in its place, I built a rig around Intel's newly released Core 2 Extreme QX6800 processor. This quad-core beast packs 2.93GHz in each of its four cores, sports a total of 8MB L2 cache, and comes topped off with an unlocked multiplier to feed my overclocking jones. In other words, it brings the heat...both literally, and figuratively. And adding to the thermals are a pair of 8800GTS videocards for some SLIick gaming performance. I had no expectations of a cool running rig, but will admit to being surprised at just how toasty things were getting under the hood.

On stock voltage and clockspeed, my temperature monitoring programs registered right around 50c idle, and just a tick under 70C during load (4 instances of CPU Burn-In). And that was after performing my cooling kung-fu. Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste? Check. Aftermarket heatsink/fan? Check (Thermaltake V1). Open the bedroom window to keep an influx of cool breeze flowing in, record temps in the evening, and remount the heatsink? Check, check, and checkmate. The underlying problem here is a hot running four-core chip combined with a chassis that lacks the cooling pizzaz needed for an enthusiast level rig. The P182 (whose forte is noise management) isn't alone in this category, and it even brings some handy cable routing options to help with airflow, but it's just not enough for where systems are headed. We saw dual-core chips become a standard option this past year, and widespread quad-core adoptance is approaching. Word on the street is that by mid summer, budget shoppers will be able to pick up a Q6600 for as low as $266. And Barcelona's knocking on the door.

Unlike with videocards, both Intel and AMD should be commended for putting thermal management at the forefront of chip design (lower wattage requirements, clockspeed throttling), and in preparation for the upcoming four core madness, I'd like to see more case manufacturers step up to the plate with effective cooling innovations too. I've seen a small handful of enclosures sporting giant 25cm side fans, which I'm more keen on than the ones that implement side ducts, and of course there's cases like the Cooler Master Stacker 830 with more fans than an Atlanta Hawks game. But let's see what else the case designing gurus can come up with. Otherwise, it's strictly up to consumers to figure out adequate cooling for high end setups, and our ideas tend to revolve around the outlandish (check out what you can do with 8 gallons of cooking oil). It's no easy task turning a hot rig into a cool running PC, something enthusiasts have known for years, and the mainstream may soon find out.

Intel's Barcelona Killer?

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 14:31:34 -0500

How do to you keep the hype boat going in your direction instead of suddenly tacking over to your competitor? You constantly beat the drum with tidbits of information to tease the public.

That’s what Intel is probably doing when it invited the media into its lair to preview two next-generation CPUs months more than half a year before they’re supposed to ship. Intel setup three machines with nearly identical hardware, drivers and benchmarks to give the public a glimpse of how fast Yorkdale and Wolfdale are.

Inside Intel: To the left is Kentsfield, in the middle is Yorkfield and on the right is the dual-core Wolfdale in a controlled shootout at Intel HQ.

Yorkdale is the desktop quad-core version of Penryn and Wolfdale is the dual-core version. Like Conroe and Kentsfield, the new 45nm chip is a native dual-core design with the quad configuration coming from joining two dual-cores at the front-side bus inside the heat spreader. Besides the obvious smaller 45nm process, the Penryn procs also sport a 50 percent larger L2 cache and 1,333MHz front-side bus. There’s also a raft of new features that we covered here.

For this preview, Intel used three machines, each with Asus GeForce 8800GTX cards, Intel D975XBX2 boards, 320GB Seagate Barracuda drives and 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 running at 5-5-5-15. The only difference, according to Intel, was a preproduction BIOS in the D975XBX2 board and a voltage modification to allow the board to run Penryn procs.

The Core 2 Quad QX6800 was running at 2.93GHz on a 1,066MHz FSB while the pair of Penryns were running at 3.33GHz on a 1,333MHz FSB. Intel hasn’t said exactly what clock speeds Penryn will ship at, only a nebulous “3GHz+.”

All of the machines were running the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate. We were allowed to poke around the machines all we wanted but we were not allowed to install our own benchmarks. Obviously, these types of “previews” should be taken with a bucket of salt, but Intel’s selection of benchmarks and the fact that a similar test with Conroe last summer was justified by shipping chips gives it more credibility.

Several of the benchmarks Intel used aren’t new: 3DMark06, Cinebench 9.5, Half-Life 2 Lost Coast and the Mainconcept H.264 encoder. Others were alpha or beta builds of newer benchmarks including a beta version of Cinebench 10 and an alpha build of Divx 6.6 using VirtualDub 1.71. Intel says Cinebench 10 scales better with multi-core and Divx 6.6 was singled out for its early adoption of SSE4. SSE4 is exclusive to the new Penryn cores but Intel said the Divx demonstration helps illustrate that SSE4 is no mere instruction set. Designed to increase encoding, it can reduce half page of code into a single line of code.

Speeds and Feeds
	Core 2 Extreme QX6800	Penryn Quad	Penryn Duo
Codename	Kentsfield	Yorkfield	Wolfdale
Clock Speed	2.93GHz	3.33GHz	3.33GHz
Process	65nm	45nm	45nm
Cores	4	4	2
Total L2 Cache	8MB	12MB	6MB
Front Side Bus	1,066MHz	1,333MHz	1,333MHz
3DMark06 CPU	4,047	4,944	3,068
3DMark06 Overall	11,252	11,969	11,020
Mainconcept H.264 (sec)	89.05	72.75	119.22
Cinebench 10	10,551	12,900	7,061
Cinebench 9.5	1,541	1,917	1,125
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast (fps)	153.14	213.03	206.06
Divx 6.6 (sec)	38	18	22

Fastest scores are bolded. All three systems used an Asus GeForce 8800GTX card, the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate, Intel D975XBXC2 boards, Seagate 320GB Barracuda drives and 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800.

The Upshot

The upshot is that Penryn is shaping up to be the fastest desktop chip in town. It’s easily 20 percent to 111 percent faster than the current fastest chip: the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and Intel says it has months to tune it still.

AMD says that its quad-core chip, codenamed Barcelona for Opterons and Agena FX for QuadFX, is still on the roadmap for later this summer. The company has previously said that Barcelona is 40 percent faster than the fastest available Xeon but Intel counters that its 3GHz Xeon X5365 wasn’t available when AMD made the announcement. (To date, the Xeon X5365 has only been adopted by Apple. That’s led to speculation by Apple fanboys that Intel is giving the vendor an exclusive. When asked by Maximum PC whether there was an exclusive, Intel officials told the magazine that was not true. The only reason Apple is the first to announce support for the faster Xeon is that Apple is the only vendor to adopt it thus far.)

Officially, Penryn chips are scheduled to go into volume production at the end of this year with retail availability set for the first of the year but it's clear from Intel's posturing that it can turn the knob to "on" much, much sooner if it wanted to.