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  • mbf - Monday, July 23, 2007 - link

    I've been wondering how older motherboards will work with the new FSB1333 processors. Specifically I'm interested how an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe without the latest BIOS would react to having e.g. an E6750 dropped in. ASUS claims support for FSB1333 processors for the P5W DH Deluxe as of 2205 beta.

    Would the system boot and run using a pre-2205 BIOS (although not at peak performance), so a BIOS upgrade can be performed? Or would the system fail to boot at all, like when the first Core 2 Duo processors surfaced and needed a BIOS upgrade to run at all on certain boards.

    The reason I ask this is that I've my eyes set specifically on that board (I have several reasons, ECC memory support being one of them). I had originally planned on getting an E6600 after the July 22 price cuts, but right now there's nearly no FSB1066 processor to be had locally. Also, I'd of course love to have a access to the latest processors in any case.
  • myrubbish - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link

    which one is original ?
    http://www.hardspell.com/english/doc/showcont.asp?...">http://www.hardspell.com/english/doc/showcont.asp?...
  • kobymu - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    quote:

    The clock speeds Intel is launching its 1333MHz FSB processors are basically the same ones that Intel first introduced the Core 2 at; we weren't FSB bottlenecked back then, thus there's no reason to expect a huge increase in performance by bumping the FSB today. Quad-core CPUs may see a performance boost, but we'll have to wait until later to find out exactly what that improvement would be
    If at all possible, I would like to see the impact of
    A) 1333MHz FSB with DDR2
    B) DDR3 bandwidth
    C) both 1333MHz FSB with DDR3
    on quadcore in multiprocessing scenarios, preferably the non synthetic ones.
  • myrubbish - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link

    which one is original ?
    http://www.hardspell.com/english/doc/showcont.asp?...">http://www.hardspell.com/english/doc/showcont.asp?...
  • AnnonymousCoward - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    I noticed that last picture shows 1.088V, and my E6600 is rated at 1.325V (and measures 1.328-1.344V). Did Intel lower the voltage for this new series? This wasn't addressed.
  • 457R4LDR34DKN07 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Y should I pick 1 of these up when a 2.66 GHz quad core will be avalable at $266 dollars. much better perfomance even at 1066 FSB and thats before overclock.
  • Chunga29 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    I see both listed, with the same price and same features. What exactly then is the purposed between having two model numbers? Does one of them not have virtualization? Even if that's the case, why bother? I mean, are there times when virtualization (even if disabled) would be a bad thing? Or maybe it's just a mistake in the table and I'm reading too much into it?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    The E6550 has Intel Trusted eXecution Technology (TXT), while the E6540 does not. The model numbers would be far too easy to understand without curveballs like that :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • SunAngel - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    I like the artice and understand it is just based on dual cores. However, I believe that everyone, including myself, really would like to know which will be faster for encoding jobs the 2.4 quad-core 1066FSB or the 3.0 dual-core 1333FSB? Since encoding is big business now, it is no secret that raw power is everyones wish. So, the sooner you can get me this benchmark, the sooner I can get back to clicking on advertisements.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    It's a very valid and important request, but I do believe it's one we've already answered :) If you look back to our article on the Core 2 Extreme QX6800, I tested a Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz/1066/quadcore) and a Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/1066/dualcore). While the X6800 not quite the E6850 (3.0GHz/1333), it's close in performance so you should be able to get an idea of the performance comparison:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">

    To save you the trouble of looking, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 is a better buy strictly for encoding if you're doing DivX/WME encoding. Our Windows Movie Maker and Quicktime tests show the Q6600 falling behind the X6800, but for DivX encoding and heavy WME work (and potentially H.264 encoding on other software platforms) you'll be better off with the Q6600.

    I hope this helps :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Hmm that link didn't work out, lemme try again:

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...
  • ncage - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Ummm everyone wants a new cpu tested for their specific circumstance. Testing the encoding performance you talk of would be a very big task in itself. Think of all the possibilites that could be tested with all the different encoders and even a specific version of an encoder could make a big difference (how parallel the code is in that version). It would be an impossible task for them to make everyone happy. I think anandtech does exactly what they need to do. They test a variety of applications and give you a sense for "General" performance of the cpu. If you look at any cpu review people will say...why didn't you do this test why didn't you do that test. I would just be happy with what you get.

    Ncage
  • 7oby - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    quote:

    even a specific version of an encoder could make a big difference (how parallel the code is in that version). It would be an impossible task for them to make everyone happy.


    definitely, however as a starting point, take these:

    http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/26/the_gigaher...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/26/the_gigaher...
    http://hardware.thgweb.de/2007/04/09/intel_core_2_...">http://hardware.thgweb.de/2007/04/09/in...reme_qx6...
    http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html">http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html
    [sorry, all more or less from the same site]

    Depending on their degree of parallelizm the de-/encoder applications take different advantages of multi cores. Some do not yet scale beyond dual cores. Still a quad core can make perfectly sense:

    . even if your particular video encoder can benefit only from two cores, then just throw two videos simultaneously at the quad core. It will scale ;-)
    . while encoding there are still resources left for other tasks you might want to do while encoding
    . its very likely that future versions of current encoding codecs will scale better with multi cores as soon as those processors become more mainstream and the demand for this requirement raises. Besides - look just as an illustrating example at OpenMP: It may be hard at the beginning to parallize your application, but going from 2 way to 4 way is not that hard anymore. In the simple case of OpenMP you get it for free. Image and video processing scales particularly good with # of processors: you either partition the image into blocks or distribute the different encoding stages.

    7oby
  • TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Ummmm, I couldn't care less how well it performs on a quad-core, since I have absolutely no intention of buying one in the near future. Most people here will do fine with a dual-core, and the market share for quad cores is very low by comparison. Thus, he picked something that makes sense since it will target more people.
  • TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    First of all, why use DDR2 on a 1333 FSB processor? Wouldn't it have been more interesting to show these processors running on DDR3 running at 1333 MHz, instead of DDR2-800 ? It looks like the memory was run at only 800 MHz in both cases, so it's not at all surprising the results weren't enormous, actually it's pretty surprising that the results were as much better than they are. If you ran them each with appropriate memory, you'd probably see the reason for moving to 1333 FSB a lot more clearly. It surely wasn't to run memory at 800 MHz with it.

    I'm not criticizing doing a DDR2 800 MHz review because it does show something, but making it the only tests misses the point. It's more interesting academically, so should be included, but in terms of real world use, it's not very revealing. I suspect most people wanting these processors will not want to shackle it with DDR2-800 MHz memory. And before cost is brought up, keep in mind the processor will not be out for a few months, and the cost of DDR3 right now is not what it will cost then. Clearly it should fall closer to DDR2 as time goes along, so I think it's worth testing to see the true performance increase of the platform.
  • coldpower27 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    I don't see why, as Dual Channel DDR2-800 would provide enough bandwidth to feed a theoretical FSB1600 processor let alone FSB1333. I don't see the point in having memory in a 2:1 ratio with the FSB as DDR3-1333 would be providing exactly 2x the memory bandwidth the processor can take advantage of.

    As well this processor is coming out in a single month, not a few months, so I wouldn't at all expect DDR3 prices to drop all that much.

    I expect DDR3 to provide some performance benefits, but nothing earth shattering compared to the DDR2 as your providing more memory bandwidth then the FSB can handle.

  • mostlyprudent - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    I seem to recall an article here on Anandtech.com about 6-8 months ago that demonstrated a "noticable" performance improvement going from DDR2-667 to DDR2-800 on the Core 2 Duo line of processors. I also wonder if we would see a noticable performance improvement on native 1333 FSB CPU running faster DDR2 or DDR3.
  • coldpower27 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/memory/ddr2/20...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/memory/ddr2/20...

    I don't see much of a noticable improvement here on Core 2, Core just hasn't shown much signs if any of being dramatically affected by memory speed.
  • TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Are you serious?

    Did you read the initial article they wrote on the P35? Then the follow up which showed how much of it was because of the increase in the memory speed. Just about every article on DDR3 shows that it needs higher clock speeds to show real performance. Yet, it wouldn't make any difference here? That makes no sense at all. Besides, if you're getting an improvement by just increasing the FSB and not the memory, that's very interesting indeed. With increased memory speed, you're going to see a pronounced improvement. I'm still surprised there's as much a difference as there was with the same exact memory running at the same speed. Faster DDR3 memory should blow show why Intel went to 1333. DDR2 800 won't.
  • coldpower27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - link

    I am dead serious I don't see much of a performance improvement on the whole. Anyway the results provided on the P35 Chipset cannot be used unless you isolate the variable of memory speed and chipset. So you need to compare DDR2-800 with a 1.33GHZ FSB on the P35 Chipset to DDR3-1333 with a 1.33GHZ FSB on the P35 Chipset to generate any useful data.

    Not particularly most of the benches show that DDR2-800 is about the level of DDR3-1066 due to it's added latency. DDR3-1333 would be somewhat faster but not any dramatic increase as your trying to paint.

    The reason they moved to DDR3/P35 and 1.33GHZ FSB all at the same time (relatively), was because all 3 were needed to generate a worthwhile performance improvement.
  • zsdersw - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    That's the P35 chipset. The article coldpower was pointing to is P965.. and he said modified his statement with "here", meaning "in the article mentioned".
  • TA152H - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    So you think that's relevant? People are going to buy 1333 FSB for the P965???? Again, are you crazy? P965 doesn't even support 1333 officially. P35 is what's important.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    And besides.. the marginal improvement in overall system performance that P35 brings to the table doesn't prove or reliably suggest that Core 2 is particularly dependent on memory bandwidth or speed.
  • TA152H - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    You're seriously confused.

    Most of the information out now shows that you get pretty good performance with higher performance memory running at high clock speeds, especially for DDR3. It's now becoming common knowledge. But, they test DDR2-800 for some reason. To really see the performance of 1333 FSB, they should be using it with the proper memory instead of obsolete memory running at inadequate clock speeds. Luckily, there is another site that promised to do that in the very near future. Why they couldn't figure that out here is a mystery to me though, it kind of hits one in the face.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    That's the expectation: higher performance with memory running at higher speeds. None of that suggests that Core 2's performance hinges upon extracting more and more out of the memory/chipset, though.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    .. or, rather, that Core 2's performance depends on extracting more and more out of the memory/chipset.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    All I'm saying is that you're barking up the wrong tree. coldpower's reference was to the P965, and then you started talking about P35 as if it had something to do with the results of the P965. They're separate.
  • TA152H - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    Are you unable to understand things in context?? Or are you arguing just to argue?

    The P965 is irrelevant, therefore his post is irrelevant, and therefore he has no point. The P965 doesn't matter for FSB 1333 processors, the P35 does.

    My point was that they should be running memory at 1333 speeds, which means the P35. He brought up some nonsense that was irrelevant, and now you think that it was, and the P35 isn't. It's like the Twilight Zone.
  • coldpower27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - link

    No, my post is completely relevant, if your going to argue about official support on the P965 for 1.33GHZ FSB processors then DDR3-1333 is rejected to it being not officially supported by the P35 Express chipset, the only chipset to have official support for that is X38.

    If you need to prod others then I believe it's you who are the one that can't stand losing an argument.
  • zsdersw - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    An established chipset on which the Core 2 processors run is not irrelevant to the issue he was addressing: Core 2 performance vis-a-vis memory bandwidth/speed.
  • yacoub - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Cool, so basically my E4400 oc'd to 3.0GHz @ 1333MHz fsb is essentially an E6850 with half the L2 cache (2MB vs 4MB). For only $135 it's giving me quite the bang-for-the-buck. :D
  • JmsAndrsn - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Cool, so basically my E4400 oc'd to 3.0GHz @ 1333MHz fsb is essentially an E6850 with half the L2 cache (2MB vs 4MB). For only $135 it's giving me quite the bang-for-the-buck. :D


    Actually, an E4400 overclocked to 1333 FSB would be at 3.33GHz. An E4300 @ 1333 FSB would be 3.0GHz
  • yacoub - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link

    sorry, forgot to mention i dropped the multiplier to 9x. =)
    Not enough heatsink to cool 3.3Ghz to a temp i was satisfied with.
  • tim75 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Slightly off topic, but since the 1333 FSB has 10.6 GB/s bandwidth (1333 x 64bit) I can use DDR-667 in dual channel mode(also 10.6 GB/s[667 x 128 bit]) without any performance hit right?
  • bamacre - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Yup. At stock speeds you'll only need 667mhz DDR2 for the 1333mhz FSB C2D's. And of course 533mhz DDR2 for 1066mhz C2D's.
  • gigahertz20 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Gary Key,

    quote:

    We will provide an answer for what board we think best exemplifies the performance and capability of the P35 chipset in our roundup coming in the latter part of June.


    I've been waiting for your promised P35 roundup article you mentioned in your May 30th "Gigabyte GA-P35T-DQ6: DDR3 comes a knocking, again" article. Any word on what day this week it will be posted? I'm eagerly waiting the release of the article so I finally buy my long awaited Core 2 Duo setup, I just need a solid motherboard to go with it.
  • yacoub - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    If you give up waiting, go for the MSi P6N-SLI Platinum. Awesome 650i-SLI board. She's rock solid for me @ 1333MHz fsb, only voltage increase is on the vcore, and I'm running 4GB dual-channel paired in the four DIMM slots. Fast and stable, just as I'd wanted.
  • gigahertz20 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Is the article on time to be published this week?
  • Deusfaux - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    I assume your comparisons of the 2 FSBs are keeping end clock speed the same?

  • sc3252 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Why don't your new articles have tests where you run multiple applications at the same time, I really enjoyed reading older articles how the cpu's stood up to multitasking. Its nice that we have benchmarks showing how much faster the new cpu's are, but I don't think it shows how we will really be using the computer.

    For example I will be using my computer much different then say playing one game strictly. When I play world of warcraft I will usually have itunes open playing a song, and Firefox open looking up where to turn in my next quest. It would be nice if in future articles you could create a benchmark doing some of those things.
  • DeepThought86 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    This will hurt Intel so don't expect to see it at this site. They wouldn't want their supply of nice new chips from Intel to dry up, would they?
  • gigahertz20 - Monday, June 25, 2007 - link

    Exactly

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