Intel Core i7 Presentation

[Bungral]

Recently OC3D received an invitation to a Nehalem presentation Intel were planning to hold in the Hilton at Heathrow's Terminal 4. I was lucky enough to get to go along.

I've tried to summarise the main features of Core i7 and give an explanation on what they do. Included is a little indication on performance.

Check out the full article here

 

[Diablo]

Nice article guys, nice amount of detail, and good explanation for those of us on an after lunch browse.

I can't say I'm that fussed for Nehalem, having spent £4000 on my last PC, I don't intend to upgrade for a farily long while. Sure the HT could be good, and "turbo mode" is a bit of a laugh, but really, I predict it will be used like speedstep. i.e. not at all by enthusiasts who already overclock their cpus. I mean what is going to be better, a modest 5-10% overclock, or a good old 25-30% overclock done the old fashioned way.

Triple channel memory looks to be a pain (I have 4 sticks of 2GB, am I going to have to buy another 2 or throw some out?)

All in all I won't be buying into it until they release some octo core monsters at decent clock speeds. And that looks to be waaaay off. The current generation will probably increase performance slightly, then lose it all because of the new motherboard's not having optimised drivers etc.

I don't mean to be that negative, its just I don't see it being a huge draw (pending benchies) until the "tick" of 2009

 

[FarFarAway]

I knew that Nehalem was going to be good.

Now I really know it is going to be good

 

[Bungral]

Ta muchly mate,

Yeah for those who aren't really due an upgrade, then it's gonna be a tough choice whether to bother quite yet. The real bonus will be for those who are planning a full overhaul anyway.

At least we know we're going to actually see a decent improvement over the already very impressive current line.

Also yeah HT does look very very promising indeed this time around.

Nice article guys, nice amount of detail, and good explanation for those of us on an after lunch browse.

I can't say I'm that fussed for Nehalem, having spent £4000 on my last PC, I don't intend to upgrade for a farily long while. Sure the HT could be good, and "turbo mode" is a bit of a laugh, but really, I predict it will be used like speedstep. i.e. not at all by enthusiasts who already overclock their cpus. I mean what is going to be better, a modest 5-10% overclock, or a good old 25-30% overclock done the old fashioned way.

Triple channel memory looks to be a pain (I have 4 sticks of 2GB, am I going to have to buy another 2 or throw some out?)

All in all I won't be buying into it until they release some octo core monsters at decent clock speeds. And that looks to be waaaay off. The current generation will probably increase performance slightly, then lose it all because of the new motherboard's not having optimised drivers etc.

I don't mean to be that negative, its just I don't see it being a huge draw (pending benchies) until the "tick" of 2009

 

[Diablo]

Sorry, reread that bit on HT, as its going to be properly implemented this time, I'm a bit more excited, still not worth it for me (for at least a year and a bit). If there are some decent threading apps coming out it will go great. The only problem is that it took yonks for them to make dual core apps, still longer to make quad core apps, so HT is going to take a long time too by the looks of it.

 

[Rastalovich]

Be willing to sit on the sideline for a fair bit whilst these come out, past even the 1st generation of the releases atleast.

Something akin to OC3D testing an i7 setup vS the best 775 setup would sway me either way as to how good these things really are tbh.

I`m not convinced the hardware being good at using core theory is going to effect software, until I see results.

Nice read btw

 

[Bungral]

In the testing slides I saw with performance figures on they used a QX9770 VS an Extreme Nehalem at the same frequency.

Nehalem won and by quite a margin in some things. Twas an early sample too.

Better not say much more about that though

 

[Diablo]

A nice benchmark setup once they are released would be great. Unfortunately it makes an upgrade very expensive this time round for many people upgrading. New memory, motherboard, cpu and even then you may be limited on what you can buy, in terms of motherboard, I am yet to see an Nvidia 880i or 890i even being put forward, so for those wanting full 3 x x16 boards you could be in for a wait. (As far as I'm aware the x58 will be sli only on 8x, 16x in dual, 4,4 16 or something similar in triple).

For a few months it will be a decidedly one horse race for intel.

 

[Bungral]

MSI for one are bringing out 3 X58 motherboard at launch or very soon afterwards that will support SLI. Two with software SLI (one with two 16X PCI-E slots and the other with 3 full 16X slots), and another with the NF200 chip on board which has four full 16X PCI-E slots. :yumyum:

That last one will allow Quad SLI or Tri SLI + 1 extra GFX card used for physix

A nice benchmark setup once they are released would be great. Unfortunately it makes an upgrade very expensive this time round for many people upgrading. New memory, motherboard, cpu and even then you may be limited on what you can buy, in terms of motherboard, I am yet to see an Nvidia 880i or 890i even being put forward, so for those wanting full 3 x x16 boards you could be in for a wait. (As far as I'm aware the x58 will be sli only on 8x, 16x in dual, 4,4 16 or something similar in triple).

For a few months it will be a decidedly one horse race for intel.

 

[Diablo]

Oh that's good news, from what I'd heard it was limited, but if that is the case then sli is still viable.

I think the 2.93 GHz i7 is comparable to a QX9770, but the 3.2 GHz is out in front. I'd be interested in how well these overclock. I think turbo mode won't give huge benefits because under stress, powerful chips with overclocks tend to go further than their power allowances.

I look forward to the benchmarks (and laugh at the lack of 12MB L3 cache.)

The DDR3 controllers (according to the fountain of all questionable knowledge that is wiki) works at 800/1066, is that 1600MHz and 2132MHz really or is it very slow DDR3?

 

[Bungral]

I've also seen evidence that they overclock fine. Not how to actually go about it, but the end result. I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Also at first is is just officially 1066MHz as is... Obviously it can be overclocked to higher levels but that is the support when it first launches.

I think I mentioned in the article somewhere that they also confirmed that higher frequencies will be supported not too long after launch.

 

[k4p84]

What are we guestimating the price point for all this new kit then!!

 

[Rastalovich]

In the testing slides I saw with performance figures on they used a QX9770 VS an Extreme Nehalem at the same frequency.

Nehalem won and by quite a margin in some things. Twas an early sample too.

Better not say much more about that though

Meh, running them both at 3.2 isn`t doing much for me and not knowing any further about what they tested on them and what the hardware list for both builds were.

We all know an Athlon running at 2ghz and a Sempron running @ 2ghz will give different obvious results.

Hence I await OC3D testing.

 

[Bungral]

What are we guestimating the price point for all this new kit then!!

I'm not sure.. I did ask and they couldn't (wouldn't?) tell me. I also asked for a launch date but they said it wasn't nailed down as they were still testing certain things.

Meh, running them both at 3.2 isn`t doing much for me and not knowing any further about what they tested on them and what the hardware list for both builds were.

We all know an Athlon running at 2ghz and a Sempron running @ 2ghz will give different obvious results.

Hence I await OC3D testing.

Yeah I agree with that. I've got the test system specs on a slide somewhere but I'm not allowed to post that. Also a full set of tests but again.. NDA

Roll on release for full reviews.

 

[SwaleSmith]

Yep agree with you there, Im hanging on for an 8 core moster

Nice article guys, nice amount of detail, and good explanation for those of us on an after lunch browse.

I can't say I'm that fussed for Nehalem, having spent £4000 on my last PC, I don't intend to upgrade for a farily long while. Sure the HT could be good, and "turbo mode" is a bit of a laugh, but really, I predict it will be used like speedstep. i.e. not at all by enthusiasts who already overclock their cpus. I mean what is going to be better, a modest 5-10% overclock, or a good old 25-30% overclock done the old fashioned way.

Triple channel memory looks to be a pain (I have 4 sticks of 2GB, am I going to have to buy another 2 or throw some out?)

All in all I won't be buying into it until they release some octo core monsters at decent clock speeds. And that looks to be waaaay off. The current generation will probably increase performance slightly, then lose it all because of the new motherboard's not having optimised drivers etc.

I don't mean to be that negative, its just I don't see it being a huge draw (pending benchies) until the "tick" of 2009

 

[monkey7]

Hmm I like it :')

I'm probably going to buy an i7 within two weeks after the release (completely new build), but I first want to see a 775 / i7 comparison benchmark, since it'd be way cheaper to buy a q9450 with ddr2

Btw: the prices I've read about (I do not know if they will actually be like this): $289, ~$500, ~$1000, in order of clockspeed

 

[°TheMadDutchDude°]

That is correct Monkey, the CPU is actually going to be cheaper than the motherboard! I don't understand how that works but I don't think that it is good enough for me to be making the jump to the LGA1366 format, as I have just spent £500 on this rig and still planning to get a Quad in here which will last for at least another 3 years before the Quad will start to become out dated IMO.

I have to admit, very interesting reading and thanks for sharing that with us

What happened to heatpipe cooling on the NB, SB and MOSFETS?

 

[Zoot]

The current generation will probably increase performance slightly, then lose it all because of the new motherboard's not having optimised drivers etc.

I don't mean to be that negative, its just I don't see it being a huge draw (pending benchies) until the "tick" of 2009

Yeah I agree with you there.

I'm not even going to remotely consider upgrading until the 32nm die shrink. Yorkfield suits me fine for now. Anyway the software really isn't around to that fantastic new architecture justice....

 

[usman.zx10]

i just recently upgraded to the x48 with a q6600. and after reading this i am wondering how much more im going to spend on the upgrades.

Looks really good so far. I wonder what AMD has in store. I know they are coming to a new socket also the AM3. Can't wait to see what the future brings!

 

[monkey7]

(...) Anyway the software really isn't around to that fantastic new architecture justice....

What about the quite large increases in render times, then? It isn't all about games