I bought a QX6700 for crunching at numbers. The reasoning was simple twice the power, only one MB, disk, PSU, case...
The result is disappointing, the maximum throughput I get is not twice an E6700, it is just a little more than one an half : 1,6 to be precise. The bottleneck is definitely the memory. The Northbridge cannot communicate fast enough with the memory. 5I came to this conclusion by varying multiplier, FSB...) Perhaps it would be worthwhile with the faster memory available 9200, but I am afraid even that kind of memory is to slow. The Quadcore is where Intel went over the edge with their memory architecture.
Any ideas on the Apache benchmarks I am seeing with a QX6700? They are appalling at best, with a QX6700 performing on par to a E6400!! A little of the same problem seems to have shown up in Office Productivity benchmarks. Any thoughts on this?
<<<No article looking at a new processor release would be complete without benchmarks. However, let us preface the benchmark section by stating that the benchmarks don't tell the whole story. There are numerous benchmarks and tasks that you can run that will actually show quad core processors in a better light. A lot of people will never use the applications related to these benchmarks, so in one sense we could say that most people should already know whether or not they need quad core processing.>>>
Some interesting comments here on the relevance of Benchmarks .. This looks interesting as this point of view never came up while the AMD CPUs were being glorified a few months back in this same site!! Wonder where the sudden wisdom comes from.
Why not compare dual to quad by trying to run things in the background while you do something in the foreground? Encode something and play Oblivion, for example. Would we finally be able to do anything like that with quad cores? Are we able to get good framerates in such a situation yet?
How about running http://www.driverheaven.net/photoshop/">DriverHeaven.Net's Photoshop CS2 benchmark? I think one of your standard magazine benchmarks has Photoshop 7, but the DH benchmark is newer and it's somewhat popular. Anybody can download a demo from Adobe, and run the benchmark on their own PC.
On page 7 you say "Apple's OS X and its applications have also been well threaded for quite some time..." yet the only two Apple apps in the test (Quicktime and iTunes) didn't scale AT ALL from 2 to 4 cores. I'm not trying to bash Apple here I'm just trying to point out that the facts don't seem to support your assertion. If Apple's media rendering apps - which are some of the easiest to multithread - don't scale well I doubt that the rest of their apps do.
"We don't expect dual or quad core to be necessary for gaming anytime in the next 9 months..."
Really? That is surprising to hear. 9 months takes us to next July. I thought Alan Wake would definitely be released before then, and I thought that game REQUIRED two cores and would greatly benefit from four. Are you sure that statement isn't supposed to read "We don't expect QUAD CORE to be necessary for gaming anytime in the next 9 months..."?
I thought Alan Wake was looking more like late 2007 (along with Unreal Tournament 2007 and some other games). We'll have an article looking into this area a bit more soon, but right now the games aren't out; they're in development, but the "when it's done" attitude often leads to launch dates that get pushed back.
The first chart on page 1 seems to have a typo. It states the Core 2 Quad has a die size of 162mm^2x2. But it shows the Core 2 die size as 143mm^2. If the Quad is just two Core2 dies, then why are they so much bigger?
The quoted die size of the Pentium D 900 at 162mm^2 suggests the source of the typo.
As well if were going to be consistent and and call Core 2 Quad as 2x 143mm2 which is the right figure I might add not 2x 162mm2, then the Pentium D 900's should indeed be 2x81mm2 and not 162mm2 as it is stated right now on the chart.
Continued.. The reason being as the Pentium D is also 2 die on a single package just like Kentsfield as in this case you had 1 core on each die instead of a 2 core per die arragement.
2) No mainstream software that I might use will take advantage of 4 cores in the near-future.
4) Quad-core does come at a large price increase (it isn't a free-lunch like the first dual-core chips from Intel were)
5) Quad-core doesn't overclock as well.
Decision - almost everyone who buys this at these prices is making a mistake, by the time the software catches up with this everyone will be ready to upgrade again.
From a gaming perspective definately. But if you render I like the performance increase. Price does suck. However when AMD 'replies' middle of 07 - the prices will adjust.
Do you think that with four cores, there are other bottlenecks limiting performance? I would think that moving to a striped disk array would be representative of a system that has a $999 processor.
With four cores I would imagine there is some disk access contention happening. Especially since the iTunes test using write/reads pretty heavily doesn't it?
Not a fan of one giant strip array. IMO, if disk contention is a problem, isolate the tasks that are contenting for disk access, then put the data on seperate physical drives. I put iTunes on one drive, page file on another, system files on main drive, videos and edits on another, and finally all iso's on one. Disk contention is never an issue even though rest of my system could use upgrades.
Dudes, I remember reading, with detailed benchmarks from a site that specialized in HDD's, that raid array's for speed are COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVICABLY USELESS.
It bugs me too, because then as now, people just refuse to accept that fact, even with benchmarks proving it over and over staring them right in the face. RAID DOES NOT SPEED UP YOUR SYSTEM. PERIOD.
If you want to use it for auto backup otoh, fine..
One question I would like answered, would a quad core help with the gaming and background task usage? (i.e. IM, P2P etc etc) Is Windows intellegent enough to use those cores properly?
Reason I ask is I'm planning to go from a 2 pc setup (1 gaming, 1 background tasks) to a single setup, and wondering if quad would be an even better solution for me?
Probably not. While this sounds like a good idea, the main benefit in going dual-core is offloading 100% of those background tasts to the second core, so the game gets one core all to itself. Moving from two to four does almost nothing because there isn't anything else to unload. Now, in the future there will be more titles that will use 2 cores, so 4 core chips have their uses, but by then most readers of this site will have upgraded again anyways.
Depends on the background tasks. If you're running something in the background like media encoding, which can already easily use two cores, I would expect quad core to do better. If you're running BitTorrent plus media encoding plus a TV recording application, then I would expect even more benefit if you try to game. Of course, if you're doing all that, you better have a nice HDD configuration as well. RAID 0 with NCQ enabled should suffice.
Ok, sure, but when most people ask this question they are talking about a game plus IM and anti-virus and maybe a Firefox window. Not all that many people play fullscreen games while encoding files and bittorrenting.
Right, in which case there's little difference, at least right now. When games start coming out that can use multiple cores (not just 2 or even 4), then it could become a lot more important. For now, dual cores is plenty for 99% of people.
But before his ppc chips WERE more powerful than Intel ones. Before the core architecture came into being. Now the core is faster than the ppc, so he is using them. Makes sense really, I'm sure I'd do the same.
"4x4 is an entirely new platform using Socket-1207 (not AM2) CPUs. As much as AMD wants 4x4 to succeed, what we're really waiting for is Barcelona. "
HAS AMD ANNOUNCED CLEARLY that 4x4 will be only 1207 and NOT AVAILABLE for AM2?
In earlier announcements it looked like 4x4 would be AM2 (hence speculation about how it could dual socket without extra hypertransport links). PLEASE STATE IF AMD HAVE MADE AN UNAMBIGUOUS STATEMENT OR CLARIFICATION TO THIS EFFECT. Note 4x4 and the acceleration coprocessor tech are two different technologies and might be confused if they are in the same conference/press release or anandtech article.
In any case AMD promised 4x4 during 2006, so we will know the answers real soon ;-)
I think 4x4 will not be nice just for two dualcores, but for have TWO QUADCORES. Now depending on if those quadcores can be AM2 or 1207 or available for either, that will alter the price/performance of AMD's offering.
However I am looking forward to an 8 core system from AMD.
I am quite sure that 4x4 is for 1207 and not AM2. Sorry. I am also quite sure that 1207 will get quad core support, so long-term a 4x4 (dual dual core) can become... 4x8? (dual quad core). Anyway, in that sense it's just like Core 2 Duo and Quad.
The questions I don't have answers to: will the 4x4 begin with a K8L chip, or just a tweaked K8? Will K8L be more competitive with Core 2? When will it finally come out? How much will it cost? Actually, I can sort of guess on the last point that 4x4 will cost a lot more than a Core 2 Quad config as you will need a more expensive mobo, RAM, and two CPU packages.
I *think* Anand plans to have an article delving into 4x4 and AMD's plans more in the future. Maybe he's still gathering data from AMD? (Sort of like squeezing water from a dry spongue at times, unfortunately....)
I don't think you're right on that one; 4x4 CPU's will use the same RAM as AM2 CPU's do. The "more expensive RAM" requirement is only for Opterons, which of course use registered ECC memory. In fact, if your chosen mainboard has memory banks for both CPU's, then you could even save a little since 4 smaller DIMMs tends to cost a little less right now than 2 bigger DIMMs.
The whole "catch" of 4x4 was that there are no ECC/Registered DIMMS required - at least that was the synopsis all the time. It should have very little to do with the socket itself, rather a matter of IMC, no?
I stand corrected, though I have to say I'm still not at all interested in getting a dual socket motherboard. LOL I guess 1207 CPUs will have to support both registered and unbuffered DIMMs? I can't imagine AMD trying to get people to make sure they get the right type of CPU for the RAM they're using.
Second thought: could they have mobos and CPUs that will support both registered and unbuffered DIMMs? I think they have the same keying, so it's possible, right?
I'm personally a extremely heavy multi-tasker and I can't wait for quad to a hit a more managable price range. At the moment, they're just beyond my reach for a CPU alone. Once it hits around 300-500 then I would definitely buy one, but these right now are still for the rich and video encoders.
I will eventually be buying an E6600 but I was hoping we'd see a price drop when these quad cores came out. Now they have and we see that the cheapest one is over $800, the price of the E6600 will probably not drop for a while because these processors are not in the same market.
Price doesnt really interest me as much, the fact that i have a very hard time getting a lot of low end Athlon64 around 2.8ghz, mines seem to max out at around 2.7ghz. Seem like most athlon for some reason like 2.3-2.4 and sometime lower while a whole group at my lan party have no problem push a E6300 past 3.1ghz.
The article seems to state that Kentsfield is more efficient that Conroe. This conclusion comes from power measurements of complete systems. This is a little misleading, since a large chunk of that power is consumed by the rest of the system. Since the CPU only makes up a part of the power consumption, but accounts for a very large performance increase, the efficiency is bound to increase when looking at system power consumption.
The Kentsfield CPU itself shouldn't be any more efficient than Conroe. That said, there isn't anything wrong in looking at system power consumption and drawing the conclusion that the computer is more efficient with the quad core. I just don't think that the article was very clear on this, though.
The power efficiency figures would look different if a lower power PC had been used as a test bed; the use of dual X1900XT cards distorts the figures to a degree. These CPUs are currently only particularly useful for areas where Crossfire setups are not generally relevant.
I used the Anandtech data along with my own C2D data from testing low power systems and came up with the following. The extrapolated figures show the efficiency of each CPU as a percentage of that of the QX6700, which is the most efficient in these two tests:
The PC I used for a comparison uses ~60W less at load than Anandtech’s setup which results in:
130W v 189W for the E6700
172W v 230.5W for the QX6700.
System - Asus P5W DH Deluxe, Nvidia 6200TC, 2 x 1GB DDR2-667, Samsung P120 250GB SATA.
The one thing that was missing for me was the power consumption at idle, as I’d imagine that the dual Dice Kentsfield would take a big hit here. Xbitlabs have figures showing idle power consumption, but they are measured with C1E & EIST disabled which makes them a bit pointless in my eyes. Kentsfield gets a spanking in this comparison although it matches an FX-62.
I can only make assumptions, without any test beds here. Since Quad core is simply two dies of Conroe as this article pointed out, the power consumption of the Quad core should double that of Core Duo. If you use that assumption to compute performance per watt, regardless of what the actual numbers are (as long as Quad uses twice the power of Duo), then Quad actually has lower performance per watt than Duo across the board.
If you could isolate the CPU only, you're certainly correct, and PPW will decrease with each additional core due to diminishing returns from scaling. Fortunatly CPUs are part of an entire PC, so when the choice can be painted as quad-core versus two dual-core machines, then the numbers look much better.
Yeah i agree, the more the rest of the system uses, the more "flawed" the numbers will be, lets say, for arguments sake, that a CPU uses 50 watts, and a twice as fast one uses 200 watts. Tut the rest of the system uses 300 watts, then the total system will use 350 watts in the fist case, and the twice as fast one will use 500 watts, so if you take the whole system numbers, the more power-hungry core will seem like it gives more permformanve per watt, but if you only look at the CPUs them self, the picture is diffrent, the less powerhungry CPU has twice the performance per watt.
You are right that we could be more clear. You can think in terms of efficiency that we're looking at two dual core systems vs. one quad core if you'd like. If we could isolate just the CPU power draw, we could get real CPU efficiency, but doing so is very difficult.
Some sites have indeed isolated the CPU power draw by modifying mobos so that current draw as well as voltage on certain pins can be measured. It is, as you say, very difficult however and each platform you wish to test needs its own modded mobo.
One simpler way to at least get a rough idea of actual power comsumption (which could be easily calibrated to provide more accurate figures), and a quite accurate measure of relative power consumption would be to measure the heat given off rather than the electricity going in.
The most obvious way to do that would seem to be with a modified water-cooling setup where instead of the heat being dissipated by an external radiator into air, it is instead transferred into a *large* insulated tank of water with an accurate digital thermometer monitoring the water temperature. This tank of water is not circulated through the water-cooling system, it is there merely for the heat to be dumped into. You then measure the rate at which the temperature rises which provides a good guide to power consumption. You might start at 20C and could probably run the tests up until the water reaches about 40C without any problems, probably 45C would still result in the CPU being kept within safe temperatures.
With a 10-litre tank, you would have 10Kg of water, and each Kg requires about 4.2KJ of energy to heat up by 1C, so it would take about 42KJ to heat up that tank of water by 1C. 42KJ is equivalent to 42KW for 1 second, or more realistically, 42 watts for 1000 seconds (about sixteen and a half minutes). You can probably see where I'm going here: a processor using about forty watts of power would heat up the tank of water by about 4C per hour. Eighty watts would be 8C per hour, and so on. Although not all the energy used by the processor will be dumped in the water due to heat being lost elsewhere, the vast majority of it will be and it will be consistent between different processor models.
If you want an exact figure for power consumption, or rather heat dissipation, then the system could be calibrated by connecting it to a CPU shaped heater element fed with a measured amount of power. Take measurements of the rate of temperature rise at twenty watt intervals up to say two hundred watts (I suspect the line will be fairly linear above about 40W) and you can now say with a good degree of accuracy how much power a given CPU is actually using.
As I say, that's one way you could do it and one which in theory should work very well.
Wow, that's a insanely round-about way of measuring power draw. You can also measure voltage and current draw at the CPU voltage VRMs. Regardless, CPU power draw truly doesn't matter with this product since it is two of the older products packed into a single package, no new silicon or anything of the sort. What this means is that theoretical efficiency should be the same but in the real world it'll be slightly worse (due to threading inefficiency). That said, measuring power draw for the whole system does measure the system's ability to make the most out of its power draw.
What do you mean it is "a insanely round-about way of measuring power draw"? Can you come up with a better one that doesn't involve cutting tracks on mobos to read the current being passed through them? Or a method which would work equally well with very soon to be released G80 graphics-core which is reputed to dissipate rather a lot of heat (clamp the water-block on that G80 and we'll soon see how much heat it really puts out).
If you can come up with a simpler and better method of determining the power usage of CPUs and other devices, feel free to divulge the details here because their current method of measuring at the AC power-outlet is woefully inadequate, and I think a water-block heat-transfer system is not only a simple but quite accurate way of measuring power use, but one that can be applied to both CPUs and GPUs.
Wow, all you guys have really weird methods of measuring power draw. Nearly all the power for modern processors comes through the 12V Aux power connector. You can measure the current and voltage here and you will get the power consumption of the processor. However, the efficiency of the VRM can skew the results slightly.
quote: It's tough to tell a Kentsfield apart from a Conroe; although it sounds like a lot, 582 million transistors don't really feel any heavier than only 291 million (and it won't even sound like a lot after another week).
Ah I like the little hint on the transitor count for Nividia's G80 when they release next week. Can't wait till Nvidia's G80 is released and we get some benchies :)
Looking at pure encoding performance we can expect only 40-50% increase.
It is very,very bad.
Why don't you compare this CPU with Dual-Core Opteron platform?
Without better cache management this CPU is only for benchmarks same as 4x4 it's with crazy pricing.
quote: Why don't you compare this CPU with Dual-Core Opteron platform?
Why compare cheaper single-socket platform with more expensive dual-socket platform?
quote: Without better cache management this CPU is only for benchmarks same as 4x4 it's with crazy pricing.
Are you kidding? Kentsfield PC will be cheaper than 4x4 PC, if Kentsfield will achieve same level of performance, then it will have better price/performance ratio.
I come from the FUTURE !! In very late 2017, beggining of 2018, quad core CPUs are still very much in use .. even QX6700 and people favourite Q6600 (10$ now) held pretty well, for 11 yo cpus ..
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JJWV - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
I bought a QX6700 for crunching at numbers. The reasoning was simple twice the power, only one MB, disk, PSU, case...The result is disappointing, the maximum throughput I get is not twice an E6700, it is just a little more than one an half : 1,6 to be precise. The bottleneck is definitely the memory. The Northbridge cannot communicate fast enough with the memory. 5I came to this conclusion by varying multiplier, FSB...) Perhaps it would be worthwhile with the faster memory available 9200, but I am afraid even that kind of memory is to slow. The Quadcore is where Intel went over the edge with their memory architecture.
Kougar - Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - link
Any ideas on the Apache benchmarks I am seeing with a QX6700? They are appalling at best, with a QX6700 performing on par to a E6400!! A little of the same problem seems to have shown up in Office Productivity benchmarks. Any thoughts on this?in1405 - Monday, November 6, 2006 - link
<<<No article looking at a new processor release would be complete without benchmarks. However, let us preface the benchmark section by stating that the benchmarks don't tell the whole story. There are numerous benchmarks and tasks that you can run that will actually show quad core processors in a better light. A lot of people will never use the applications related to these benchmarks, so in one sense we could say that most people should already know whether or not they need quad core processing.>>>Some interesting comments here on the relevance of Benchmarks .. This looks interesting as this point of view never came up while the AMD CPUs were being glorified a few months back in this same site!! Wonder where the sudden wisdom comes from.
LTC8K6 - Sunday, November 5, 2006 - link
Why not compare dual to quad by trying to run things in the background while you do something in the foreground? Encode something and play Oblivion, for example. Would we finally be able to do anything like that with quad cores? Are we able to get good framerates in such a situation yet?Webgod - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
How about running http://www.driverheaven.net/photoshop/">DriverHeaven.Net's Photoshop CS2 benchmark? I think one of your standard magazine benchmarks has Photoshop 7, but the DH benchmark is newer and it's somewhat popular. Anybody can download a demo from Adobe, and run the benchmark on their own PC.coldpower27 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Check Intel's current price list here:http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist/proce...">http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist/proce...
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Actually just the 820 and 914 - 805 didn't get a price cut this month. But I fixed the other two, thanks. :)coldpower27 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
oh yeah my bad, didn't mean to add the 805 in there.by the way, check your email please.
OddTSi - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
On page 7 you say "Apple's OS X and its applications have also been well threaded for quite some time..." yet the only two Apple apps in the test (Quicktime and iTunes) didn't scale AT ALL from 2 to 4 cores. I'm not trying to bash Apple here I'm just trying to point out that the facts don't seem to support your assertion. If Apple's media rendering apps - which are some of the easiest to multithread - don't scale well I doubt that the rest of their apps do.mino - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Maybe cause there is a catch?You see, WinXP is not very OSX like, not to mention its apps ;)
archcommus - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Quote form the conclusion page:"We don't expect dual or quad core to be necessary for gaming anytime in the next 9 months..."
Really? That is surprising to hear. 9 months takes us to next July. I thought Alan Wake would definitely be released before then, and I thought that game REQUIRED two cores and would greatly benefit from four. Are you sure that statement isn't supposed to read "We don't expect QUAD CORE to be necessary for gaming anytime in the next 9 months..."?
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I thought Alan Wake was looking more like late 2007 (along with Unreal Tournament 2007 and some other games). We'll have an article looking into this area a bit more soon, but right now the games aren't out; they're in development, but the "when it's done" attitude often leads to launch dates that get pushed back.floffe - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
One game isn't gaming in general ;)johnsonx - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
AT Writers:The first chart on page 1 seems to have a typo. It states the Core 2 Quad has a die size of 162mm^2x2. But it shows the Core 2 die size as 143mm^2. If the Quad is just two Core2 dies, then why are they so much bigger?
The quoted die size of the Pentium D 900 at 162mm^2 suggests the source of the typo.
coldpower27 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
As well if were going to be consistent and and call Core 2 Quad as 2x 143mm2 which is the right figure I might add not 2x 162mm2, then the Pentium D 900's should indeed be 2x81mm2 and not 162mm2 as it is stated right now on the chart.coldpower27 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Continued.. The reason being as the Pentium D is also 2 die on a single package just like Kentsfield as in this case you had 1 core on each die instead of a 2 core per die arragement.Sunrise089 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
All I really needed to know from this article:1) Responsiveness isn't any better from CoreQuad
2) No mainstream software that I might use will take advantage of 4 cores in the near-future.
4) Quad-core does come at a large price increase (it isn't a free-lunch like the first dual-core chips from Intel were)
5) Quad-core doesn't overclock as well.
Decision - almost everyone who buys this at these prices is making a mistake, by the time the software catches up with this everyone will be ready to upgrade again.
eoniverse - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
From a gaming perspective definately. But if you render I like the performance increase. Price does suck. However when AMD 'replies' middle of 07 - the prices will adjust.And I'll be buying 'something'.
rowcroft - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Do you think that with four cores, there are other bottlenecks limiting performance? I would think that moving to a striped disk array would be representative of a system that has a $999 processor.With four cores I would imagine there is some disk access contention happening. Especially since the iTunes test using write/reads pretty heavily doesn't it?
I'm no expert, just my thoughts.
EnzoM3 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Not a fan of one giant strip array. IMO, if disk contention is a problem, isolate the tasks that are contenting for disk access, then put the data on seperate physical drives. I put iTunes on one drive, page file on another, system files on main drive, videos and edits on another, and finally all iso's on one. Disk contention is never an issue even though rest of my system could use upgrades.Sharky974 - Friday, November 3, 2006 - link
Dudes, I remember reading, with detailed benchmarks from a site that specialized in HDD's, that raid array's for speed are COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVICABLY USELESS.It bugs me too, because then as now, people just refuse to accept that fact, even with benchmarks proving it over and over staring them right in the face. RAID DOES NOT SPEED UP YOUR SYSTEM. PERIOD.
If you want to use it for auto backup otoh, fine..
cjb110 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
One question I would like answered, would a quad core help with the gaming and background task usage? (i.e. IM, P2P etc etc) Is Windows intellegent enough to use those cores properly?Reason I ask is I'm planning to go from a 2 pc setup (1 gaming, 1 background tasks) to a single setup, and wondering if quad would be an even better solution for me?
Sunrise089 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Probably not. While this sounds like a good idea, the main benefit in going dual-core is offloading 100% of those background tasts to the second core, so the game gets one core all to itself. Moving from two to four does almost nothing because there isn't anything else to unload. Now, in the future there will be more titles that will use 2 cores, so 4 core chips have their uses, but by then most readers of this site will have upgraded again anyways.JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Depends on the background tasks. If you're running something in the background like media encoding, which can already easily use two cores, I would expect quad core to do better. If you're running BitTorrent plus media encoding plus a TV recording application, then I would expect even more benefit if you try to game. Of course, if you're doing all that, you better have a nice HDD configuration as well. RAID 0 with NCQ enabled should suffice.Sunrise089 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Ok, sure, but when most people ask this question they are talking about a game plus IM and anti-virus and maybe a Firefox window. Not all that many people play fullscreen games while encoding files and bittorrenting.JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Right, in which case there's little difference, at least right now. When games start coming out that can use multiple cores (not just 2 or even 4), then it could become a lot more important. For now, dual cores is plenty for 99% of people.shabby - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I love it how steve jobs is pimping the intel chip now, before his ppc chips were oh so much faster then intel chips. What a two faced whore...Donegrim - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
But before his ppc chips WERE more powerful than Intel ones. Before the core architecture came into being. Now the core is faster than the ppc, so he is using them. Makes sense really, I'm sure I'd do the same.Griswold - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Nah, he was cursing the whole x86 architecture. By your logic, he could have went with AMD while Intel was touting their netburst furnaces.peternelson - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
"4x4 is an entirely new platform using Socket-1207 (not AM2) CPUs. As much as AMD wants 4x4 to succeed, what we're really waiting for is Barcelona. "HAS AMD ANNOUNCED CLEARLY that 4x4 will be only 1207 and NOT AVAILABLE for AM2?
In earlier announcements it looked like 4x4 would be AM2 (hence speculation about how it could dual socket without extra hypertransport links). PLEASE STATE IF AMD HAVE MADE AN UNAMBIGUOUS STATEMENT OR CLARIFICATION TO THIS EFFECT. Note 4x4 and the acceleration coprocessor tech are two different technologies and might be confused if they are in the same conference/press release or anandtech article.
In any case AMD promised 4x4 during 2006, so we will know the answers real soon ;-)
I think 4x4 will not be nice just for two dualcores, but for have TWO QUADCORES. Now depending on if those quadcores can be AM2 or 1207 or available for either, that will alter the price/performance of AMD's offering.
However I am looking forward to an 8 core system from AMD.
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I am quite sure that 4x4 is for 1207 and not AM2. Sorry. I am also quite sure that 1207 will get quad core support, so long-term a 4x4 (dual dual core) can become... 4x8? (dual quad core). Anyway, in that sense it's just like Core 2 Duo and Quad.The questions I don't have answers to: will the 4x4 begin with a K8L chip, or just a tweaked K8? Will K8L be more competitive with Core 2? When will it finally come out? How much will it cost? Actually, I can sort of guess on the last point that 4x4 will cost a lot more than a Core 2 Quad config as you will need a more expensive mobo, RAM, and two CPU packages.
I *think* Anand plans to have an article delving into 4x4 and AMD's plans more in the future. Maybe he's still gathering data from AMD? (Sort of like squeezing water from a dry spongue at times, unfortunately....)
johnsonx - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I don't think you're right on that one; 4x4 CPU's will use the same RAM as AM2 CPU's do. The "more expensive RAM" requirement is only for Opterons, which of course use registered ECC memory. In fact, if your chosen mainboard has memory banks for both CPU's, then you could even save a little since 4 smaller DIMMs tends to cost a little less right now than 2 bigger DIMMs.
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Except that like socket 940 vs. 939, I expect all 1207 boards to require registered DIMMs. I don't know of any dual socket board that doesn't.Griswold - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
The whole "catch" of 4x4 was that there are no ECC/Registered DIMMS required - at least that was the synopsis all the time. It should have very little to do with the socket itself, rather a matter of IMC, no?Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
You're correct, 4x4 will use Socket-1207 CPUs but without Registered memory.Take care,
Anand
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I stand corrected, though I have to say I'm still not at all interested in getting a dual socket motherboard. LOL I guess 1207 CPUs will have to support both registered and unbuffered DIMMs? I can't imagine AMD trying to get people to make sure they get the right type of CPU for the RAM they're using.Second thought: could they have mobos and CPUs that will support both registered and unbuffered DIMMs? I think they have the same keying, so it's possible, right?
smilingcrow - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Two dual-core 90nm 120W CPUs = No thank you.Two quad-core 65nm xW CPUs = interesting!
Jedi2155 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I'm personally a extremely heavy multi-tasker and I can't wait for quad to a hit a more managable price range. At the moment, they're just beyond my reach for a CPU alone. Once it hits around 300-500 then I would definitely buy one, but these right now are still for the rich and video encoders.AlabamaMan - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I am still amazed by the fact that a $300 E6600 consistantly beats the $700 FX62Aikouka - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
That fact, my friend, is why I'm purchasing an E6600 in this upcoming week :). Simply the best performance without overclocking for the buck.Staples - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I will eventually be buying an E6600 but I was hoping we'd see a price drop when these quad cores came out. Now they have and we see that the cheapest one is over $800, the price of the E6600 will probably not drop for a while because these processors are not in the same market.rqle - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Price doesnt really interest me as much, the fact that i have a very hard time getting a lot of low end Athlon64 around 2.8ghz, mines seem to max out at around 2.7ghz. Seem like most athlon for some reason like 2.3-2.4 and sometime lower while a whole group at my lan party have no problem push a E6300 past 3.1ghz.Brunnis - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
The article seems to state that Kentsfield is more efficient that Conroe. This conclusion comes from power measurements of complete systems. This is a little misleading, since a large chunk of that power is consumed by the rest of the system. Since the CPU only makes up a part of the power consumption, but accounts for a very large performance increase, the efficiency is bound to increase when looking at system power consumption.The Kentsfield CPU itself shouldn't be any more efficient than Conroe. That said, there isn't anything wrong in looking at system power consumption and drawing the conclusion that the computer is more efficient with the quad core. I just don't think that the article was very clear on this, though.
smilingcrow - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
The power efficiency figures would look different if a lower power PC had been used as a test bed; the use of dual X1900XT cards distorts the figures to a degree. These CPUs are currently only particularly useful for areas where Crossfire setups are not generally relevant.I used the Anandtech data along with my own C2D data from testing low power systems and came up with the following. The extrapolated figures show the efficiency of each CPU as a percentage of that of the QX6700, which is the most efficient in these two tests:
CPU/Anand PC/My PC
3dsmax7
QX6700 – 100/100
Q6600 – 92.3/92.9
X6800 – 74.7/80.7
E6700 – 69.7/75.7
DivX 6.1
QX6700 – 100/100
Q6600 – 98.4/99.01
X6800 – 92.5/99
E6700 – 87.4/94.4
The PC I used for a comparison uses ~60W less at load than Anandtech’s setup which results in:
130W v 189W for the E6700
172W v 230.5W for the QX6700.
System - Asus P5W DH Deluxe, Nvidia 6200TC, 2 x 1GB DDR2-667, Samsung P120 250GB SATA.
The one thing that was missing for me was the power consumption at idle, as I’d imagine that the dual Dice Kentsfield would take a big hit here. Xbitlabs have figures showing idle power consumption, but they are measured with C1E & EIST disabled which makes them a bit pointless in my eyes. Kentsfield gets a spanking in this comparison although it matches an FX-62.
EnzoM3 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I can only make assumptions, without any test beds here. Since Quad core is simply two dies of Conroe as this article pointed out, the power consumption of the Quad core should double that of Core Duo. If you use that assumption to compute performance per watt, regardless of what the actual numbers are (as long as Quad uses twice the power of Duo), then Quad actually has lower performance per watt than Duo across the board.Sunrise089 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
If you could isolate the CPU only, you're certainly correct, and PPW will decrease with each additional core due to diminishing returns from scaling. Fortunatly CPUs are part of an entire PC, so when the choice can be painted as quad-core versus two dual-core machines, then the numbers look much better.ATWindsor - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Yeah i agree, the more the rest of the system uses, the more "flawed" the numbers will be, lets say, for arguments sake, that a CPU uses 50 watts, and a twice as fast one uses 200 watts. Tut the rest of the system uses 300 watts, then the total system will use 350 watts in the fist case, and the twice as fast one will use 500 watts, so if you take the whole system numbers, the more power-hungry core will seem like it gives more permformanve per watt, but if you only look at the CPUs them self, the picture is diffrent, the less powerhungry CPU has twice the performance per watt.JarredWalton - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
You are right that we could be more clear. You can think in terms of efficiency that we're looking at two dual core systems vs. one quad core if you'd like. If we could isolate just the CPU power draw, we could get real CPU efficiency, but doing so is very difficult.PrinceGaz - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Some sites have indeed isolated the CPU power draw by modifying mobos so that current draw as well as voltage on certain pins can be measured. It is, as you say, very difficult however and each platform you wish to test needs its own modded mobo.One simpler way to at least get a rough idea of actual power comsumption (which could be easily calibrated to provide more accurate figures), and a quite accurate measure of relative power consumption would be to measure the heat given off rather than the electricity going in.
The most obvious way to do that would seem to be with a modified water-cooling setup where instead of the heat being dissipated by an external radiator into air, it is instead transferred into a *large* insulated tank of water with an accurate digital thermometer monitoring the water temperature. This tank of water is not circulated through the water-cooling system, it is there merely for the heat to be dumped into. You then measure the rate at which the temperature rises which provides a good guide to power consumption. You might start at 20C and could probably run the tests up until the water reaches about 40C without any problems, probably 45C would still result in the CPU being kept within safe temperatures.
With a 10-litre tank, you would have 10Kg of water, and each Kg requires about 4.2KJ of energy to heat up by 1C, so it would take about 42KJ to heat up that tank of water by 1C. 42KJ is equivalent to 42KW for 1 second, or more realistically, 42 watts for 1000 seconds (about sixteen and a half minutes). You can probably see where I'm going here: a processor using about forty watts of power would heat up the tank of water by about 4C per hour. Eighty watts would be 8C per hour, and so on. Although not all the energy used by the processor will be dumped in the water due to heat being lost elsewhere, the vast majority of it will be and it will be consistent between different processor models.
If you want an exact figure for power consumption, or rather heat dissipation, then the system could be calibrated by connecting it to a CPU shaped heater element fed with a measured amount of power. Take measurements of the rate of temperature rise at twenty watt intervals up to say two hundred watts (I suspect the line will be fairly linear above about 40W) and you can now say with a good degree of accuracy how much power a given CPU is actually using.
As I say, that's one way you could do it and one which in theory should work very well.
Furen - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Wow, that's a insanely round-about way of measuring power draw. You can also measure voltage and current draw at the CPU voltage VRMs. Regardless, CPU power draw truly doesn't matter with this product since it is two of the older products packed into a single package, no new silicon or anything of the sort. What this means is that theoretical efficiency should be the same but in the real world it'll be slightly worse (due to threading inefficiency). That said, measuring power draw for the whole system does measure the system's ability to make the most out of its power draw.PrinceGaz - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
What do you mean it is "a insanely round-about way of measuring power draw"? Can you come up with a better one that doesn't involve cutting tracks on mobos to read the current being passed through them? Or a method which would work equally well with very soon to be released G80 graphics-core which is reputed to dissipate rather a lot of heat (clamp the water-block on that G80 and we'll soon see how much heat it really puts out).If you can come up with a simpler and better method of determining the power usage of CPUs and other devices, feel free to divulge the details here because their current method of measuring at the AC power-outlet is woefully inadequate, and I think a water-block heat-transfer system is not only a simple but quite accurate way of measuring power use, but one that can be applied to both CPUs and GPUs.
autoboy - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Wow, all you guys have really weird methods of measuring power draw. Nearly all the power for modern processors comes through the 12V Aux power connector. You can measure the current and voltage here and you will get the power consumption of the processor. However, the efficiency of the VRM can skew the results slightly.Gigahertz19 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Ah I like the little hint on the transitor count for Nividia's G80 when they release next week. Can't wait till Nvidia's G80 is released and we get some benchies :)
fikimiki - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Looking at pure encoding performance we can expect only 40-50% increase.It is very,very bad.
Why don't you compare this CPU with Dual-Core Opteron platform?
Without better cache management this CPU is only for benchmarks same as 4x4 it's with crazy pricing.
defter - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Why compare cheaper single-socket platform with more expensive dual-socket platform?
Are you kidding? Kentsfield PC will be cheaper than 4x4 PC, if Kentsfield will achieve same level of performance, then it will have better price/performance ratio.
lopri - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Damn.. I can't get over how gigantic those dice look together.msva124 - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Is the article fully uploaded yet? I got some 404s as I was reading through it.xFlankerx - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Fine for me now. NIce stuff too, as has come to be expected from AT.Chuske - Monday, December 25, 2017 - link
I come from the FUTURE !! In very late 2017, beggining of 2018, quad core CPUs are still very much in use .. even QX6700 and people favourite Q6600 (10$ now) held pretty well, for 11 yo cpus ..