Another good piece on the new CPUs, but without some new coolers or LGA1156 mounting kits it's a little hard to put into practice. Any news on the LGA1156 HSF front?
In the power consumption area, you list a core i7 875 and giver power consumption when overclocked. is this supposed to be an i7 975 or a i7 870 (and curse you intel for using such similar names). Would it be possible to get a table showing both a 920 and an 8x0 at some overclock at idle and load?
While many are odd, the graph that really makes my head spin is the second one that shows the 4890 on the ranch small level. For some reason the older Q9450 is significantly faster than the rest of the competition, even outpacing the 870 which has a clockspeed advantage! When looking at several other graphs with the 4890 it's again apparent that the Q9450 has some weird magic going on where performance doesn't match the expected results (FarCry2 Playback action bench, HAWX 4X AA Max Quality Low AO). I'm assuming the mobo's are different, but could that honestly make the 5-6% difference between the 920 and the Q9450? (I'm assuming you are using the same graphics drivers correct?)
This could be a piece of the puzzle that would allow you guys to figure out a possible reason.
And thank you for the followup article. While I (and many others) thought a lot of the recent comments were from trolls looking to damage this site's comments section, I was interested in seeing the OC'd power numbers and direct comparison Turbo-disabled at higher OC's (where you would likely have Turbo disabled anyways if used for a gaming boot).
Posted this message after reading the article but before reading the comments. I think GeorgeH might be spot on as he described a reason behind what my original comment was referring too.
The GPU oddities look almost completely like a hyperthreading issue to me. There are two types of anomalies in your graphs: performance inversions (a definitively "slower" CPU performing better than a "faster" one) and line crossing (a slower CPU becoming faster at a different resolution.) Only 2 games really demonstrate these behaviors to any significant degree: Far Cry 2 and HAWX. Those two titles benefit the most (to my knowledge) from going from 2 cores to 4, implying they have the most threads running at any one time and therefore would be most susceptible to HT issues.
Looking at just those two titles, the i5 performs consistently better than its i7 brethren. As the only real difference between the two is hyprthreading, I conclude HT is the culprit (as it sometimes was in the "days of yore" on the P4.) Turbo mode as well as differences in base clock speed and memory architectures mask the problem, but I'd bet money that if you turn off HT your graphs will be much more normal.
My guess would be that it's using some Havok technologies that are more completely or efficiently GPU accelerated on AMD/ATI GPUs than on NVIDIA ones. Far Cry 2, Dawn of War II, and HAWX all demonstrate much more significant CPU dependence on NVIDIA hardware than on ATI hardware, and AFAIK all three use Havok technologies to some extent. I don't know if Battleforge uses any Havok technologies, but its behavior does roughly match the other titles that do.
I'm not sure if they've looked at this back when i7 itself was launched, however it's definitely worthy of a second look. Simply disabling HT then retesting may yield all the answers we are looking for, even if there's only a couple of games where this issue exists for the i7s.
Good article. There are a number of great hardware sites out there, but I do appreciate that you fellas at anandtech not only get out the info fast, but also in depth. I was especially interested in the stock voltage (or near to it) overclocking comparisons with i7 920 vs i7 860 both with and without turbo enabled. I was pretty sure I wanted an i7 920 versus the 860, but this article along w/ some early forum board results pretty much seals it.
I understand that anandtech has to go by the prices of reliable online retailers or else chains like Best Buy etc, but for overclockers with a microcenter nearby I think i7 920 is a better value than 860. Lynnfields turbo modes are of dubious value for OCers, even conservative ones like me. I plan on running a low OC of ~3.4GHz which likely makes 860's turbo modes much more attractive to me versus more aggressive OCers, but still find the total system cost/performance of even a moderately overclocked 860 to be negligible vs 920 because-
1) I can buy a 920 for $200 vs $230 for the 860.
2) There are a number of excellent 1366 mobos in the $170-200 range. Most 1156 mobos which compare featurewise to those sub-$200 x58 mobos are at least $150 with many costing the same price as X58. Combined w/ a cheaper CPU from microcenter, Lynnfield offers me nothing pricewise.
3) x58 is a safer and easier OC since it doesn't fiddle w/ the PCIe. This is of particular interest for those of us who might be diving in early to the upcoming (and probably $$) ATI/Nvidia GPUs. x58 = Less challenge for the tweakers but a safer bet for the set-it-and-forget-it crowd who don't want issues later on.
4) The cost per GB of low-latency DDR3 is a almost identical for 3x2GB and 2x2GB kits. I easily chew up 4GB of RAM on my currrent system, so 6 or even 12GB is much more attractive.
If you have the ability to buy your cpu from a nearby microcenter or someplace with similar prices the main attraction for buying an i7 860 seems to be-
1) running stock speeds/low OCs
2) buying a low-cost $100-120 mobo that skimps on a few features.
3) you want the coolest running i7 CPU possible
4) new and shiny ooooh.
I'll buy 920 for me, and probably pick up 860 with one of those $100-120 mobos for the woman. Now please hurry up and pass NDA, I'm curious about the new ATI GPUs.
You forgot about the idle and load power consumption.
Lynnfield has really low power consumption. I'm one of the slight OC with stock voltage persons but I think if you will only be running a single high end GPU or a dual GPU on one PCB then the Lynnfield is the way to go for stock clocks relying on the aggressive turbo to keep the power consumption down. (I normally take off my overclocks when I don't play for a few months.)
Lynnfield would have been great if it wasn't for the linked PCI-e on die controller.
I'm undecided yet because I'm not sure about how to handle that while overclocking so I'll be waiting for more articles related to that issue. *wink* *wink* AnandTech staff
From looking at the benchmarks, it seems that in Gaming the Core2Duo E8600 and the Core2Quad Q9650 perform very well. It seems to be mostly in the Photoshop / 3D rendering tests that they move way down the charts.
So if you are mostly doing Gaming and already have a good system that could handle the E8600/Q9650 it would seem there was not a specific value right yet in spending all the money to upgrade to an i5/i7 system.
From the benchmark results, would I be right to extrapolate that there is no real reason to get a Lynnfield if one solely focused on gaming performance?
The 2.66Ghz C2Q is clock matched with the i5, but remains on par most of the time, despite the i5 dynamically overclocking. I surmise that a C2Q at a frequency = max i5 turbo freq would beat the i5. Furthermore, since the i5 is not that great of an overclocker, max C2Q freq > i5 freq, but $C2Q << $i5 due to the newer platform & need for DDR3. P55 mobos, cooling solutions, ram all cost more.
Hopefully someone can run some benches and do a comparison to squash such speculation. ;)
The on-die PCIe should make the Lynnfield slower, right? The reason the benchmarks close up a little on games at higher clock speeds is the bottleneck probably moves more towards the GPU.
If you notice on your next page, you see that at higher resolutions the i7 920 starts creeping up. You could say this is the reverse, but in some situations it actually passes the Lynnfield. This is because of the inferior PCIe implementation on the Lynnfield, probably. In this event, you're probably have more collisions, because of the higher resolutions, you're using main memory for video. Consequently, the weaker on-die implementation starts to falter, while the x58 doesn't have the memory contention issue.
That's my guess anyway. It's going to be as hard to get people to understand this as it was for them to understand the additional stages for the K8 were for IPC, not clock speed, but ...
On-die PCIe isn't going to boost performance, it should hurt it. Unless Intel did something weird and gave the Lynnfield a separate memory bus for PCIe, all the memory requests from the video cards now have to go through the processor. If the processor and video card want to access memory at the same time, you lose performance. The x58 doesn't have to use the wider memory bus of the Bloomfield, so this problem doesn't exist.
This would explain some of your benchmark results. You'd see it more if you actually used proper memory. Not that you'd want to.
I'm not sure of this, but so far benchmarks seem to imply it, and I've seen nothing to disprove it. Have you heard something different from Intel? I really don't think they would have a separate memory bus for PCIe, when you think of how infrequently, relatively speaking, it would be used. So, it seems very likely there is a potential contention issue, and on-die PCIe would lower performance, not increase it.
Your explanation seems plausible at first but it fails to account for:
1) That the symptom more or less disappears with AMD GPU.
2) That the Bloomfield suffers the same thing as the Lynnfield.
3) That it is not Intel CPU under-performing but rather AMD CPU (or platform) better performing when coupled with NV GPU. I deduce this partially from C2Q-P45's showing under GPU-limited scenarios.
TA152H...
Where is your article about P55 being "brain damaged" at your review site? Where are all of your benchmarks proving that the 920 "wipes the floor" with the 860? Where are all your benchmarks proving that the 920 is faster with higher speed memory? So far none of the benchmarks here or elsewhere even show what you claim. How is that next copy and paste article coming along for you by the way?
Although, I'm not crazy about him running the uncore on the Bloomfield faster. The results are skewed. They would be lower were it not for that.
Still, let's say 3%. When you see 3% just from changing the CPU, considering the other parts, that's a big difference. With caches being so effective, getting 3% difference from the same architecture, on average, is pretty big.
Uh, did you perhaps notice that these benchmarks were with turbo disabled at equal clocks? There haven't been any benchmarks that alter the standard story: most of the time going from 3ch to 2ch shows little benefit for most desktop users (or indeed using higher bandwidth memory...lots of articles showing this), compared to the benefit of higher clockspeed. Now, I know that you are going to reply with something about overclocking blah blah blah ad nauseum, but many users never overclock their CPUs. You know, serious users. I'd never use a computer seriously without ECC, but others do. If I wasn't planning to upgrade to 6-core or something and I didn't want a Xeon for ECC support, I'd certainly choose Ci7 on P55 over Ci7 on X58 for any kind of comparable price (which is what this release was really about: new price points for the performance on offer). That's without considering power consumption. You are just desperately trying to cling to your 'Bloomfield superiority'. Grow up.
Wish the teenage retard hiding behind his nick would just dry up and blow away.
Proper memory? Hint: The Patriot Viper memory used in their testing is excellent memory and easily OC's to 1600 and beyond, but adimttedly you have to back off the CAS to 8 at 1600.
Get a life and when you move out of your parent's basement and get your own house, job, and life, just let us know.
By then, your teenage angst know-it-all attitude should have faded as it typically does for most adults.
Simply put, he said on-die PCIe controller, not memory.
And he was stating that he thinks (and is looking for confirmation) that the PCIe controller (That thing that, you know, gives info to your PCIe slots?) uses the same bus as the on-die memory controller.
Thus if both your CPU AND GPU want information from memory, how do they prioritize it? Which controller gets to use the BUS first?
Try pulling your head out of your ass, and use some comprehension skills before insulting someone next time, genius.
"The x58 doesn't have to use the wider memory bus of the Bloomfield, so this problem doesn't exist"
He was merely stating that it doesn't matter if there is an intervening QPI connection: the GPU still needs to access the memory controller (for the kind of situations that TAH was talking about). I can't really see why Intel would use an inferior access solution for Lynnfield than it does for the Bloomfield/X58 combination.
Any chance we can see results from the Phenom IIx4 with the multiplier reduced while using the same platform for comparison?
With the significant differences on the PCI-e interconnects for four different platforms I am wondering if latency is giving the advantage in some situations. If a lower clocked PhenomIIx4 still sees similar advantages in the same situations it could be related. Who knows...
"Guru3D pointed out an important observation in their Lynnfield review: power consumption goes up considerably when you overclock. It's not just the overclock, but it's the process of increasing core voltage that makes power consumption skyrocket."
Dynamic power is P=C*F*V^2 ... it is linear in frequency and goes as the square of voltage. This is why tweaking voltage pushing power up so much more quickly.
Certainly very interesting GPU-CPU pairing oddities. Well it's not gonna some one sentence explanation if you ever do find out exactly what's going on in there....perhaps even after a few new driver revisions the benchmarks could look completely different...but either way I'm pretty happy with my Phenom II/4850 pairing and I'm completely broke...
if I'm not mistaking the Turbo will limit your maximum overclock for all 4 cores...
so for example:
* with turbo disabled you can achieve a stable 4,2Ghz overclock. It doesn't matter, if you're using 1, 2, 3 or 4 cores, it will always be 4,2Ghz
* if you enable turbo at 4,2Ghz, it will still work if you use all 4 cores, but once you're using fewer cores, it will Turbo the system to ?4,7Ghz? and of course crash. So to get a stable system, you'll have to lower you're overclock to 3,8Ghz. Then it will run at 3,8Ghz with 4 cores in use and perhaps 4,3Ghz with 1 core in use... So the system will be a bit faster if you're using only 1 core, but a lot slower if you're using all 4 of them
That is also the reason why I would prefer a higher, non-turbo overclock
And that is also what I'm still missing in the Anandtech reviews: test results with higher OCs and better cooling (water) to see if OC is really the advantage of the bloomfield vs lynfield (as Intel claims)
Power consumption are not doubled. In fact, there will be no increase in power comsumption at all. If the CPU is rated at 95W, even at the highest turbo mode setting, the consumption will not exceed that.
Wow, you're a bit confused there... If you run at a higher speed (turbo), you consume more power - that's a fact of life.
Rating != actual power consumption.
If you really want to do this right, though, look at the total energy needed to complete a task instead of just power. If you run at 50% higher power but complete your task in half the time, it's a net win.
Actually, you're the one that's a bit confused here.
If you are using Turbo mode, you do not consume more power. The chip has a TDP of 95w, and it will not exceed that under all conditions. If you are running 4 cores, then it will even distribute the power to all the cores staying at 95w.
If you are running turbo, 2 of 3 of the cores shut off, and the remaining 1 core runs at a faster speed b/c all the juice is being used in that core, all the while staying at 95w TDP.
The difference in "Turbo" and overclocking is that, Turbo stays at TDP while overclocking goes over TDP.
Turbo is not overclocking. You clearly are a noob, or you would know what overclocking means. Here, I'll educate you: Overclocking: verb: running a computer component, such as a CPU, beyond its factory set specifications.
Since Turbo is a FEATURE, and is a part of the specification of the chip, it is in no way overclocking.
haha lookit how wrong you are. The whole point of turbo mode is when you have something like a single threaded app that is only going to use one core. No need to have all four chugging along then is there? So three of them shut off, and the core doing the work is overclocked to take advantage of the added headroom created when the other three shut off. No more power than all four of them running at normal speed.
If all four cores are working away on something, turbo mode doesn't kick in. Simple as that, but it apparently does require a rocket scientist (aka not you)
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SixOfSeven - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Another good piece on the new CPUs, but without some new coolers or LGA1156 mounting kits it's a little hard to put into practice. Any news on the LGA1156 HSF front?strikeback03 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
In the power consumption area, you list a core i7 875 and giver power consumption when overclocked. is this supposed to be an i7 975 or a i7 870 (and curse you intel for using such similar names). Would it be possible to get a table showing both a 920 and an 8x0 at some overclock at idle and load?7Enigma - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Anand,While many are odd, the graph that really makes my head spin is the second one that shows the 4890 on the ranch small level. For some reason the older Q9450 is significantly faster than the rest of the competition, even outpacing the 870 which has a clockspeed advantage! When looking at several other graphs with the 4890 it's again apparent that the Q9450 has some weird magic going on where performance doesn't match the expected results (FarCry2 Playback action bench, HAWX 4X AA Max Quality Low AO). I'm assuming the mobo's are different, but could that honestly make the 5-6% difference between the 920 and the Q9450? (I'm assuming you are using the same graphics drivers correct?)
This could be a piece of the puzzle that would allow you guys to figure out a possible reason.
And thank you for the followup article. While I (and many others) thought a lot of the recent comments were from trolls looking to damage this site's comments section, I was interested in seeing the OC'd power numbers and direct comparison Turbo-disabled at higher OC's (where you would likely have Turbo disabled anyways if used for a gaming boot).
7Enigma - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Posted this message after reading the article but before reading the comments. I think GeorgeH might be spot on as he described a reason behind what my original comment was referring too.GeorgeH, I second the beer!
GeorgeH - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
The GPU oddities look almost completely like a hyperthreading issue to me. There are two types of anomalies in your graphs: performance inversions (a definitively "slower" CPU performing better than a "faster" one) and line crossing (a slower CPU becoming faster at a different resolution.) Only 2 games really demonstrate these behaviors to any significant degree: Far Cry 2 and HAWX. Those two titles benefit the most (to my knowledge) from going from 2 cores to 4, implying they have the most threads running at any one time and therefore would be most susceptible to HT issues.Looking at just those two titles, the i5 performs consistently better than its i7 brethren. As the only real difference between the two is hyprthreading, I conclude HT is the culprit (as it sometimes was in the "days of yore" on the P4.) Turbo mode as well as differences in base clock speed and memory architectures mask the problem, but I'd bet money that if you turn off HT your graphs will be much more normal.
coconutboy - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
If true and HT is the culprit, GeorgeH deserves a beer for figuring out the anomaly. Nice spot there, dude.gwolfman - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
What about Battleforge then with the inverse affect?GeorgeH - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Dunno.My guess would be that it's using some Havok technologies that are more completely or efficiently GPU accelerated on AMD/ATI GPUs than on NVIDIA ones. Far Cry 2, Dawn of War II, and HAWX all demonstrate much more significant CPU dependence on NVIDIA hardware than on ATI hardware, and AFAIK all three use Havok technologies to some extent. I don't know if Battleforge uses any Havok technologies, but its behavior does roughly match the other titles that do.
silverblue - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
I'm not sure if they've looked at this back when i7 itself was launched, however it's definitely worthy of a second look. Simply disabling HT then retesting may yield all the answers we are looking for, even if there's only a couple of games where this issue exists for the i7s.swaaye - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
Hmmm, I think that this guy's comments should be considered.coconutboy - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Good article. There are a number of great hardware sites out there, but I do appreciate that you fellas at anandtech not only get out the info fast, but also in depth. I was especially interested in the stock voltage (or near to it) overclocking comparisons with i7 920 vs i7 860 both with and without turbo enabled. I was pretty sure I wanted an i7 920 versus the 860, but this article along w/ some early forum board results pretty much seals it.I understand that anandtech has to go by the prices of reliable online retailers or else chains like Best Buy etc, but for overclockers with a microcenter nearby I think i7 920 is a better value than 860. Lynnfields turbo modes are of dubious value for OCers, even conservative ones like me. I plan on running a low OC of ~3.4GHz which likely makes 860's turbo modes much more attractive to me versus more aggressive OCers, but still find the total system cost/performance of even a moderately overclocked 860 to be negligible vs 920 because-
1) I can buy a 920 for $200 vs $230 for the 860.
2) There are a number of excellent 1366 mobos in the $170-200 range. Most 1156 mobos which compare featurewise to those sub-$200 x58 mobos are at least $150 with many costing the same price as X58. Combined w/ a cheaper CPU from microcenter, Lynnfield offers me nothing pricewise.
3) x58 is a safer and easier OC since it doesn't fiddle w/ the PCIe. This is of particular interest for those of us who might be diving in early to the upcoming (and probably $$) ATI/Nvidia GPUs. x58 = Less challenge for the tweakers but a safer bet for the set-it-and-forget-it crowd who don't want issues later on.
4) The cost per GB of low-latency DDR3 is a almost identical for 3x2GB and 2x2GB kits. I easily chew up 4GB of RAM on my currrent system, so 6 or even 12GB is much more attractive.
If you have the ability to buy your cpu from a nearby microcenter or someplace with similar prices the main attraction for buying an i7 860 seems to be-
1) running stock speeds/low OCs
2) buying a low-cost $100-120 mobo that skimps on a few features.
3) you want the coolest running i7 CPU possible
4) new and shiny ooooh.
I'll buy 920 for me, and probably pick up 860 with one of those $100-120 mobos for the woman. Now please hurry up and pass NDA, I'm curious about the new ATI GPUs.
ginbong - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
You forgot about the idle and load power consumption.Lynnfield has really low power consumption. I'm one of the slight OC with stock voltage persons but I think if you will only be running a single high end GPU or a dual GPU on one PCB then the Lynnfield is the way to go for stock clocks relying on the aggressive turbo to keep the power consumption down. (I normally take off my overclocks when I don't play for a few months.)
Lynnfield would have been great if it wasn't for the linked PCI-e on die controller.
I'm undecided yet because I'm not sure about how to handle that while overclocking so I'll be waiting for more articles related to that issue. *wink* *wink* AnandTech staff
JamesA - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
From looking at the benchmarks, it seems that in Gaming the Core2Duo E8600 and the Core2Quad Q9650 perform very well. It seems to be mostly in the Photoshop / 3D rendering tests that they move way down the charts.So if you are mostly doing Gaming and already have a good system that could handle the E8600/Q9650 it would seem there was not a specific value right yet in spending all the money to upgrade to an i5/i7 system.
Zoomer - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
From the benchmark results, would I be right to extrapolate that there is no real reason to get a Lynnfield if one solely focused on gaming performance?The 2.66Ghz C2Q is clock matched with the i5, but remains on par most of the time, despite the i5 dynamically overclocking. I surmise that a C2Q at a frequency = max i5 turbo freq would beat the i5. Furthermore, since the i5 is not that great of an overclocker, max C2Q freq > i5 freq, but $C2Q << $i5 due to the newer platform & need for DDR3. P55 mobos, cooling solutions, ram all cost more.
Hopefully someone can run some benches and do a comparison to squash such speculation. ;)
nevbie - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Penryn and the Radeons like each other. Though these results are with 4 cores only..Patrick Wolf - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
So do those gaming results mean your going to post results of future GPU benchmarks on both Intel and AMD hardware?TA152H - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
I read this, and I'm really confused.The on-die PCIe should make the Lynnfield slower, right? The reason the benchmarks close up a little on games at higher clock speeds is the bottleneck probably moves more towards the GPU.
If you notice on your next page, you see that at higher resolutions the i7 920 starts creeping up. You could say this is the reverse, but in some situations it actually passes the Lynnfield. This is because of the inferior PCIe implementation on the Lynnfield, probably. In this event, you're probably have more collisions, because of the higher resolutions, you're using main memory for video. Consequently, the weaker on-die implementation starts to falter, while the x58 doesn't have the memory contention issue.
That's my guess anyway. It's going to be as hard to get people to understand this as it was for them to understand the additional stages for the K8 were for IPC, not clock speed, but ...
On-die PCIe isn't going to boost performance, it should hurt it. Unless Intel did something weird and gave the Lynnfield a separate memory bus for PCIe, all the memory requests from the video cards now have to go through the processor. If the processor and video card want to access memory at the same time, you lose performance. The x58 doesn't have to use the wider memory bus of the Bloomfield, so this problem doesn't exist.
This would explain some of your benchmark results. You'd see it more if you actually used proper memory. Not that you'd want to.
I'm not sure of this, but so far benchmarks seem to imply it, and I've seen nothing to disprove it. Have you heard something different from Intel? I really don't think they would have a separate memory bus for PCIe, when you think of how infrequently, relatively speaking, it would be used. So, it seems very likely there is a potential contention issue, and on-die PCIe would lower performance, not increase it.
lopri - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Your explanation seems plausible at first but it fails to account for:1) That the symptom more or less disappears with AMD GPU.
2) That the Bloomfield suffers the same thing as the Lynnfield.
3) That it is not Intel CPU under-performing but rather AMD CPU (or platform) better performing when coupled with NV GPU. I deduce this partially from C2Q-P45's showing under GPU-limited scenarios.
These are subtle yet important distinctions, IMO.
goinginstyle - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
TA152H...Where is your article about P55 being "brain damaged" at your review site? Where are all of your benchmarks proving that the 920 "wipes the floor" with the 860? Where are all your benchmarks proving that the 920 is faster with higher speed memory? So far none of the benchmarks here or elsewhere even show what you claim. How is that next copy and paste article coming along for you by the way?
TA152H - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
You saw them here, you twit.Although, I'm not crazy about him running the uncore on the Bloomfield faster. The results are skewed. They would be lower were it not for that.
Still, let's say 3%. When you see 3% just from changing the CPU, considering the other parts, that's a big difference. With caches being so effective, getting 3% difference from the same architecture, on average, is pretty big.
On some, it's much bigger.
Did you learn something, moron?
ClownPuncher - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Do all of your comments need insults in them? Take a Midol and stfu.Inkie - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Uh, did you perhaps notice that these benchmarks were with turbo disabled at equal clocks? There haven't been any benchmarks that alter the standard story: most of the time going from 3ch to 2ch shows little benefit for most desktop users (or indeed using higher bandwidth memory...lots of articles showing this), compared to the benefit of higher clockspeed. Now, I know that you are going to reply with something about overclocking blah blah blah ad nauseum, but many users never overclock their CPUs. You know, serious users. I'd never use a computer seriously without ECC, but others do. If I wasn't planning to upgrade to 6-core or something and I didn't want a Xeon for ECC support, I'd certainly choose Ci7 on P55 over Ci7 on X58 for any kind of comparable price (which is what this release was really about: new price points for the performance on offer). That's without considering power consumption. You are just desperately trying to cling to your 'Bloomfield superiority'. Grow up.Inkie - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Sorry, I meant going from 2ch to 3ch.C'DaleRider - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Wish the teenage retard hiding behind his nick would just dry up and blow away.Proper memory? Hint: The Patriot Viper memory used in their testing is excellent memory and easily OC's to 1600 and beyond, but adimttedly you have to back off the CAS to 8 at 1600.
Get a life and when you move out of your parent's basement and get your own house, job, and life, just let us know.
By then, your teenage angst know-it-all attitude should have faded as it typically does for most adults.
TA152H - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
What are you talking about? Can you read, you sub-human dolt?What memory are you talking about?
My problem with Anand's testing, on other tests, was he would running PC 1066 on the Bloomfield, and PC 1333 on the Lynnfield.
If you were anything but a sub-hunan ape, you'd have understood that.
Zoomer - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
In theory, an on die PCIe controller would help performance by lowering CPU<->GPU communication latency.The reason why it's being bashed it because it limits max overclock freq and requires VCore to be turned up.
imsabbel - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Even your beloved Bloomfield has an on-die memory controller.How the hell should your GPU access memory without going to through the CPU, genius?
Sagath - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
No.Simply put, he said on-die PCIe controller, not memory.
And he was stating that he thinks (and is looking for confirmation) that the PCIe controller (That thing that, you know, gives info to your PCIe slots?) uses the same bus as the on-die memory controller.
Thus if both your CPU AND GPU want information from memory, how do they prioritize it? Which controller gets to use the BUS first?
Try pulling your head out of your ass, and use some comprehension skills before insulting someone next time, genius.
Inkie - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
I think he was referring to this:"The x58 doesn't have to use the wider memory bus of the Bloomfield, so this problem doesn't exist"
He was merely stating that it doesn't matter if there is an intervening QPI connection: the GPU still needs to access the memory controller (for the kind of situations that TAH was talking about). I can't really see why Intel would use an inferior access solution for Lynnfield than it does for the Bloomfield/X58 combination.
Inkie - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
...unless someone is going to start talking about the number of PCIe lanes, but that is something that Anand has already talked about.praeses - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Any chance we can see results from the Phenom IIx4 with the multiplier reduced while using the same platform for comparison?With the significant differences on the PCI-e interconnects for four different platforms I am wondering if latency is giving the advantage in some situations. If a lower clocked PhenomIIx4 still sees similar advantages in the same situations it could be related. Who knows...
JumpingJack - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
"Guru3D pointed out an important observation in their Lynnfield review: power consumption goes up considerably when you overclock. It's not just the overclock, but it's the process of increasing core voltage that makes power consumption skyrocket."Dynamic power is P=C*F*V^2 ... it is linear in frequency and goes as the square of voltage. This is why tweaking voltage pushing power up so much more quickly.
Yangorang - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Certainly very interesting GPU-CPU pairing oddities. Well it's not gonna some one sentence explanation if you ever do find out exactly what's going on in there....perhaps even after a few new driver revisions the benchmarks could look completely different...but either way I'm pretty happy with my Phenom II/4850 pairing and I'm completely broke...blyndy - Friday, September 18, 2009 - link
So is there any compelling reason to disable turbo if the power consumption doubles for a 2% performance increase in one or two apps?the zorro - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
lynnfield seems to have a roof at 1.4v after that power consumption skyrockets and temperatures reach almost 100C.the zorro - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
guru of 3d is showing lynnfield temperatures close to 100C and power consumption of 320 watts when overclocked.http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-p7p55d-deluxe-m...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-p7p55d-deluxe-m...
Mastakilla - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
if I'm not mistaking the Turbo will limit your maximum overclock for all 4 cores...so for example:
* with turbo disabled you can achieve a stable 4,2Ghz overclock. It doesn't matter, if you're using 1, 2, 3 or 4 cores, it will always be 4,2Ghz
* if you enable turbo at 4,2Ghz, it will still work if you use all 4 cores, but once you're using fewer cores, it will Turbo the system to ?4,7Ghz? and of course crash. So to get a stable system, you'll have to lower you're overclock to 3,8Ghz. Then it will run at 3,8Ghz with 4 cores in use and perhaps 4,3Ghz with 1 core in use... So the system will be a bit faster if you're using only 1 core, but a lot slower if you're using all 4 of them
That is also the reason why I would prefer a higher, non-turbo overclock
And that is also what I'm still missing in the Anandtech reviews: test results with higher OCs and better cooling (water) to see if OC is really the advantage of the bloomfield vs lynfield (as Intel claims)
Nich0 - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
power consumption doubles?rennya - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Power consumption are not doubled. In fact, there will be no increase in power comsumption at all. If the CPU is rated at 95W, even at the highest turbo mode setting, the consumption will not exceed that.hyvonen - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Wow, you're a bit confused there... If you run at a higher speed (turbo), you consume more power - that's a fact of life.Rating != actual power consumption.
If you really want to do this right, though, look at the total energy needed to complete a task instead of just power. If you run at 50% higher power but complete your task in half the time, it's a net win.
CloudFire - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Actually, you're the one that's a bit confused here.If you are using Turbo mode, you do not consume more power. The chip has a TDP of 95w, and it will not exceed that under all conditions. If you are running 4 cores, then it will even distribute the power to all the cores staying at 95w.
If you are running turbo, 2 of 3 of the cores shut off, and the remaining 1 core runs at a faster speed b/c all the juice is being used in that core, all the while staying at 95w TDP.
The difference in "Turbo" and overclocking is that, Turbo stays at TDP while overclocking goes over TDP.
the zorro - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
that's completely wrong.turbo is just overclocking you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand this.flipmode - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
Turbo is not overclocking. You clearly are a noob, or you would know what overclocking means. Here, I'll educate you: Overclocking: verb: running a computer component, such as a CPU, beyond its factory set specifications.Since Turbo is a FEATURE, and is a part of the specification of the chip, it is in no way overclocking.
MamiyaOtaru - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
haha lookit how wrong you are. The whole point of turbo mode is when you have something like a single threaded app that is only going to use one core. No need to have all four chugging along then is there? So three of them shut off, and the core doing the work is overclocked to take advantage of the added headroom created when the other three shut off. No more power than all four of them running at normal speed.If all four cores are working away on something, turbo mode doesn't kick in. Simple as that, but it apparently does require a rocket scientist (aka not you)
silverblue - Sunday, September 20, 2009 - link
There is actually one speed bin for all four cores (same for three).AssBall - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
Maybe you should actualy read some of the lynnefield articles, not all four cores are overclocked in turbo mode, sweet-tits.