4x4 in action...

[Viditor]

Inquirer plays with one

"The system was doing quite a lot, more than any sane player would ever do. It was running a Dell 30 inch monitor with two copies of City of Heroes, two HD movies looping, and one HD movie encoding"

 

[LittleNemoNES]

meh saw this earlier -- debated whether I should have posted...nvm

doesn't seem like it will be enough to fight of Intel

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: gersson
meh saw this earlier -- debated whether I should have posted...nvm

doesn't seem like it will be enough to fight of Intel

I would have thought that just the pics alone would be worth a mention...
I think Charlie hit the nail on the head though...

"Gaming is traditionally about having the fastest CPU you can have, and currently that is Conroe. AMD won't beat Conroe until the Rev H cores come out, and even it might not do it core for core. 4x4 is about doing things more smoothly, and having a lot of things flying around in different ways, basically a traditional workstation workload

As you can see from the above, it will do that quite nicely. Once it comes out, the most interesting test will be running Kentsfield on the same tasks and see how well it performs. If I had to pick a winner right now, I would guess that Kentsfield will take the gaming crown, but lose as the app count climbs because of bus and memory contention. It is going to be one heck of an interesting match up"

 

[nyker96]

well it has the potential to go 2x 4 core in 8 months time. so there's an upgrade path.

 

[Brunnis]

I witnessed this demonstration first hand back in October, at AMD's european Quad Father press conference. As said, the system does cope well with lots of tasks. I just don't believe that it will be enough to fend off Kentsfield. 4x4 systems could still be quite interesting if the prices turn out to start at moderate levels, though.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Being able to upgrade to 8 cores in the future is very tempting for me.

 

[AnandThenMan]

*double post*

 

[Skott]

I'm at work and cant read the Inquirer. Our network blocks it all the time for some reason. LOL If they can price it considerably cheaper than Intel's Quad then they can rub Intel's nose a bit. The upgrade path is interesting but who's to say Intel cant do the same with their Quads? I mean if AMD can do it why cant Intel?

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: AnandThenMan
Being able to upgrade to 8 cores in the future is very tempting for me.

The ability to use 16GB of Ram (vs 8GB on Kentsfield) will also give 4x4 a nice edge in the workstation category...

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: AnandThenMan
Being able to upgrade to 8 cores in the future is very tempting for me.

The ability to use 16GB of Ram (vs 8GB on Kentsfield) will also give 4x4 a nice edge in the workstation category...

The one 4x4 motherboard I've looked at only had 2 slots per CPU. Kind of a shame but it did have dual northbridges to drive 4 16x PCIe slots (2-16x, 2-8x) and 12 SATA2 channels, yet it didn't look much bigger than regular ATX (maybe 1-2" wider, maybe eATX).

 

[n19htmare]

in action? it's pictures of a case with stuff in it........... hardly any action

 

[lopri]

The first pic shows 5 apps pushing all 4 cores to max.

 

[Skott]

I wonder what mobo they are using in that rig? They also mentioned 150w GPUs. Eventually people are going to migrate to G80s so that 150w isnt correct. Figure 220w underload

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: Skott
I wonder what mobo they are using in that rig? They also mentioned 150w GPUs. Eventually people are going to migrate to G80s so that 150w isnt correct. Figure 220w underload

I don't remember the manufacturer of the board, but it apparently uses a yet to be announced Nvidia chipset. Here's a pic of it (sorry, bad quality):

http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/4047/nv4x4wk4.jpg

 

[Regs]

I would be more interested to see the Barcelona (rev. H) in action but this is a start.

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: Regs
I would be more interested to see the Barcelona (rev. H) in action but this is a start.

Yep. The really cool thing is that any 4x4 system bought today can be upgraded with two K8L quad cores the moment they arrive next year. That will be a seriously bad ass system.

Considering Intel's process tech advantage, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd manage to demo a 45nm eight core CPU by then...

 

[atom]

The motherboard is made by Asus. hers a new pic that's been making the rounds at all the hardware websites......

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/8131/4x4nvidianforce680aqq6.jpg

As far as the inquirer article goes

If you look above, you can see the memory and the heat pipe block for one of the chipset components, probably the memory controller.

Nuff said..............

The thing I like about the 4x4 concept is that it's upgradeable to octal core later but the downside is that it's gonna be stuck on HT2.0. I wonder how much a performance hit there will be HT2.0 vs. HT3.0 with 8 cores fighting for bandwidth.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Brunnis

Originally posted by: Regs
I would be more interested to see the Barcelona (rev. H) in action but this is a start.

Yep. The really cool thing is that any 4x4 system bought today can be upgraded with two K8L quad cores the moment they arrive next year. That will be a seriously bad ass system.

Considering Intel's process tech advantage, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd manage to demo a 45nm eight core CPU by then...

I think the possibility of a 45nm demo is quite likely (though I don't expect them on the shelves until the end of next year).
The question will be what that 45nm actually gets you in terms of performance...

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: Viditor
I think the possibility of a 45nm demo is quite likely (though I don't expect them on the shelves until the end of next year).
The question will be what that 45nm actually gets you in terms of performance...

Yeah, process shrinks don't give the same frequency advantage they used to. They do still seem to offer a much lower power consumption and a much higher transistor budget, though. Low power consumption is quite important to me (mainly because I want my computer to be quiet), but I realize that performance is pretty much the only thing that matters to most people.

If I were to make a guess, I'd say that ~3.8GHz will be possible on 45nm. It's hardly earth shattering, when the current 65nm process offers a 3.2-3.4GHz frequency ceiling on 1.2-1.3V. Then again, this is only a more or less uneducated guess, so I might be in for one heck of a surprise...

 

[spiderdk]

Where i can find the estimated prices of this processor?

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Brunnis

Originally posted by: Viditor
I think the possibility of a 45nm demo is quite likely (though I don't expect them on the shelves until the end of next year).
The question will be what that 45nm actually gets you in terms of performance...

Yeah, process shrinks don't give the same frequency advantage they used to. They do still seem to offer a much lower power consumption and a much higher transistor budget, though. Low power consumption is quite important to me (mainly because I want my computer to be quiet), but I realize that performance is pretty much the only thing that matters to most people.

If I were to make a guess, I'd say that ~3.8GHz will be possible on 45nm. It's hardly earth shattering, when the current 65nm process offers a 3.2-3.4GHz frequency ceiling on 1.2-1.3V. Then again, this is only a more or less uneducated guess, so I might be in for one heck of a surprise...

You'd be in the majority on that guess...but remember that those 65nm overclocks are on dual core, not quad.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: Brunnis

Originally posted by: Viditor
I think the possibility of a 45nm demo is quite likely (though I don't expect them on the shelves until the end of next year).
The question will be what that 45nm actually gets you in terms of performance...

Yeah, process shrinks don't give the same frequency advantage they used to. They do still seem to offer a much lower power consumption and a much higher transistor budget, though. Low power consumption is quite important to me (mainly because I want my computer to be quiet), but I realize that performance is pretty much the only thing that matters to most people.

If I were to make a guess, I'd say that ~3.8GHz will be possible on 45nm. It's hardly earth shattering, when the current 65nm process offers a 3.2-3.4GHz frequency ceiling on 1.2-1.3V. Then again, this is only a more or less uneducated guess, so I might be in for one heck of a surprise...

You'd be in the majority on that guess...but remember that those 65nm overclocks are on dual core, not quad.

And yet Kentsfield overclocks to 3.4 - 3.5GHz on air in most reviews. How do you explain that? Intel cherry picks good chips for reviews? XS people are getting good overclocks out of ES Kentsfields too, maybe Intel cherry picks those ES chips as well to gain good publicity?

Seriously though, wattage only becomes an issue with overclocking when it can no longer be sufficiently cooled. I'd fathom a guess that a Kentsfield @ 3.5GHz with a voltage bump would be pushing the 200W mark - probably the limits of effective and quiet air cooling on the best HSFs. Scythe Infinity anyone? If you can afford a $1000 CPU a $50 HSF is peanuts, really.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: Skott
I'm at work and cant read the Inquirer. Our network blocks it all the time for some reason. LOL If they can price it considerably cheaper than Intel's Quad then they can rub Intel's nose a bit. The upgrade path is interesting but who's to say Intel cant do the same with their Quads? I mean if AMD can do it why cant Intel?

Are you kidding? Eight cores on one FSB would be a joke.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: harpoon84
And yet Kentsfield overclocks to 3.4 - 3.5GHz on air in most reviews. How do you explain that? Intel cherry picks good chips for reviews? XS people are getting good overclocks out of ES Kentsfields too, maybe Intel cherry picks those ES chips as well to gain good publicity?

Absolutely. It was also the best marketing ever done by Intel for Core 2 Duo.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: HurleyBird

Originally posted by: Skott
I'm at work and cant read the Inquirer. Our network blocks it all the time for some reason. LOL If they can price it considerably cheaper than Intel's Quad then they can rub Intel's nose a bit. The upgrade path is interesting but who's to say Intel cant do the same with their Quads? I mean if AMD can do it why cant Intel?

Are you kidding? Eight cores on one FSB would be a joke.

Depends on the speed of the FSB.

Currently, Kentsfield uses a 1066MHz FSB, or 266MHz per core. If Intel were to keep this ratio, Octo core would require a 2133MHz FSB. They would need to design a new chipset that can sustain such speeds (currently, only the very best 965P boards can hit such speeds).

I should mention that Intel can also do multiple FSBs on a single NB (ala Tigerton) - not sure if they're gonna bother for the desktop though, as the chipset would cost significantly more. Then again, so would a chipset that can handle 2GHz+...