Intels sexy new I7 platform

[Uranium-235]

reviewers have been getting the Sandybridge-E samples for a while now, but a few days ago intel released the Official new platform and manufacturers have been selling boards they've been designing for months

the board has 2011 connectors, 645 more pins then 1366 i7 platform

The processor has integrated Quad channel memory, hard drive controller, PCI Express controller

here is the best offering board for it right now. tis sexxy

[Uranium-235]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

^^^and yes that is 8 memory slots (4 on each side), with the new 8GB DDR3 sticks that would be a maximum of 64g

[ratdude747]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

damn... makes the dual cpu athon rig i am working on look like trash.

i can't imagine the cost of such a thing... way more than i have...

of course, this means nothing until the reviews come out... where the rubber meets the road.

[c_hegge]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

that's an ASUS motherboard!! $500 for a board that only lasts two or three years. best deal ever (not).

[mariushm]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

the new chipset is crap..

sata + sas support - sas is disabled due to some bugs in the chipset

pci express 3.0 - slots are in 2.0 mode and intel says 3.0 *may* work with some devices when they come out, they're not sure.

still only 2 sata 6gbps and no integrated usb 3.0 (due to intel-apple deal to promote thunderbold my guess) on a chipset that's supposed to be the high end

[Uranium-235]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

I'm sure there will be a bios setting to force the PCI-E to 2.0 if there are issues

who cares about USB 3.0? what devices use the full bandwidth of 2.0? will an integrated chip really make much of a performance difference then one wired into the pci-e bus?

they have gotten reviews out, and I hear the chip (extreme edition...~1000 dollars) has gotten to 5ghz and it purrs like a kitten

[mariushm]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Yeah... so what if it goes to 5ghz... the 2500k that's 250$ goes to 5 ghz on a simple self 25$ air cooler (CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus). The guy simply used the auto-overclock stuff in the windows software even and went up to that on the first try.



Performance wise, it's 5-10% better in most cases compared to 2600k, which is just 100mhz faster than 2500k and also has hyperthreading support.

I've been actually discussing this processor on another forum and came to the conclusion that this processor is only good if you need it for specific expensive software that's licensed per core. In this case, you really want the best performance per thread.

AMD just released the 16 core Bulldozers - the 16 core 2.2 Ghz is 650$ ... you can put two of these on a 400$ motherboard and get 25-50% better performance PER PROCESSOR at some jobs that can use all 16 cores of each core (like encryption, video encoding)

You can see the conclusions here and you can browse the whole article where they test it against some intel processor that's just as expensive...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5058/a...rlagos-6200/14



It only fails where the software is optimized for high mhz and few threads.

See at compression for example... 7zip is capped at something like 8 threads on compression but uses the whole 16 cores for decompression.

So 2 x 650 cpu + 100$ cpu coolers + 400$ mb versus 2 x 1000$ cpu + 2 x 250$ mb and still be about 10-15% better than those two systems added together... kind of no brainer...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

who cares about USB 3.0? what devices use the full bandwidth of 2.0?

External hard drives.

will an integrated chip really make much of a performance difference then one wired into the pci-e bus?

Not really... but it would give better compatibility.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

External hard drives.

external SSD hard drives maybe, but usually not. Most of the time, its the USB/sata conversion chip that slows speeds down of external hard drives to way below USB 2.0, this is why ESATA exists

[mariushm]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Uhmmm no.

Mechanical drives are pretty much peaking at 160 MB/s sustained transfer rate (this is for 3 TB drives with high density per platter). That's about 1280 mbps.

SATA2 is 3 gbps, with a 8/10 bit transmission rate, meaning for every 8 bits there's 10 sent on the wire so the maximum rate is about 286 MB/s if my math doesn't fail me.

USB 2.0 is limited at 480 mbps, again with protocol overhead and other stuff you're limited to about 450mbps or 56 MB/s ... there's no conversion chip limiting the performance, that's just the speed of the usb 2.0 protocol.

USB 3.0 brings you 5 gbps (again, if I'm not forgetting the exact value, not in the mood to look it up)... so it's a good idea for both mechanical and SSD drives to have it.

eSata is OK but you're forgetting that most motherboard manufacturers implement it as an additional sata controller with 2-4 sata ports which must be connected to something.
That something is usually one of the PCI Express lanes coming from the southbridge. Usually the southbridge has about 8 pci express 2.0 lanes - mb makers use x1 lane for sound card, one for network card, one for firewire, one for extra usb 2.0, 4 lanes for a x4 slot on the board and so on.

On AMD systems this 2 port sata controller is connected to one pci express 2.0 x1 lane coming from the southbridge so the controller has 512 MB/s bandwidth or about 4 gbps shared between 2 ports. That's quite OK.

On Intel systems, the southbridge has PCI Express 2.0 lanes but they're capped at PCI Express 1.0 speeds, which is 256 MB/s or about 2 gbps. I'm not sure but I think in Z68 chipset or some recent chipset they fixed it so it's full 2.0 speed.

On low budget motherboard, this means the 2 ports of the sata controller share the pci express 256 MB/s lane on Intel systems, which is much less after the 8/10 error correction algorithm comes in place.

This is no different than USB 3.0 controllers - they're also connected to x1 pci express lane.

On middle/high end budget motherboards, the mb makers usually implement a sort of "switch" which takes 2-4 of those lanes and creates several x1 or x4 lanes, and connect each bandwidth hungry device like sata controller or usb 3 controller to these sort-of fake x4 lanes coming from the switch chip. The switch then multiplexes the data from the sata controller, firewire controller, usb 3 controller and so on to those 4 lanes. If you don't use firewire, usb 3 gets more bandwidth, if you use the eSata usb 3 is starved of bandwidth and so on.

With USB 3.0 embedded in the chipset, it no longer uses those pci express lanes coming out of the southbridge so there's a much higher chance you'll get consistently higher bandwidth throughput and devices won't fight for pci express lanes so much.

[mockingbird]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Say goodbye officially to IDE and Floppy ports...

The last boards I know with these are the Asrock P68 Fatal1ty series.

[ratdude747]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Say goodbye officially to IDE and Floppy ports...

The last boards I know with these are the Asrock P68 Fatal1ty series.

well, to be honest, they were getting a bit "dated"

SATA has been out for quite some time now and the amount of new IDE devices on the market has been dwindling. floppies are almost useless anymore, and for the few uses, they make USB floppy drives.

I'd imagine that in embedded systems and the like, those ports will still exist when needed.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Say goodbye officially to IDE and Floppy ports...

The last boards I know with these are the Asrock P68 Fatal1ty series.

Real boards got floppy. [Just sounded good.]
http://www.supermicro.nl/products/mo.../X58/X8SAX.cfm

And this one can do Eight 10-core CPUs and 1-TB DDR3.
http://www.supermicro.nl/products/mo...00/X8OBN-F.cfm

Sandybridge-E isn't exactly a break through for Intel.
More a re-mix of stuff they've had for a while..
.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Uhmmm no.

Mechanical drives are pretty much peaking at 160 MB/s sustained transfer rate (this is for 3 TB drives with high density per platter). That's about 1280 mbps.

SATA2 is 3 gbps, with a 8/10 bit transmission rate, meaning for every 8 bits there's 10 sent on the wire so the maximum rate is about 286 MB/s if my math doesn't fail me.

USB 2.0 is limited at 480 mbps, again with protocol overhead and other stuff you're limited to about 450mbps or 56 MB/s ... there's no conversion chip limiting the performance, that's just the speed of the usb 2.0 protocol.

160MB/s is very optimal, even my RE3's peak at 80-90MB's

I have a friend who has a external HD with USB 2.0/eSata/firewire-with USB it transfers about 17MB/s, with esata, about 70MB/s

chip translation speed is VERY low with a lot of cheaper chips

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

Most of the time, its the USB/sata conversion chip that slows speeds down of external hard drives to way below USB 2.0

You're right. - I've experienced that too.
Depends on which conversion chip you end up with and very few say what's inside.
.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Intels sexy new I7 platform

most of the time these small conversion circuits (which get cheaper and cheaper) don't have any cache ram, which also severely decreases transfer rates