First Intel Core i9 (Gulftown) review from POLAND

[rge]

They definitely need to offer one in a cheaper category. Especially if i9 does scale well with voltage/temps to 5ghz yet more sensitive to volts with die shrink. I dont mind paying less than 500 to run one 24/7 at or near 5ghz w/?near 1.5 vcore until I kill/degrade it from lack of OCing self control, but not doing that with 1K.

[Mungri]

I want a 32 nm quad upgrade, but there arent any planned for LGA1366 .

[STaRGaZeR]

I want a 32 nm quad upgrade, but there arent any planned for LGA1366 .

No 32nm quads until Sandy Bridge (2011).

[jcool]

There are 32nm ES Quads out there right now (Q3QT)

[JumpingJack]

so all round which is beter having HT 0n or HT off ???

Depends on what you are doing with your PC most of the time. If you can live with a 5-10% performance hit below possible potential in gaming, but enjoy the fruits of media editing and rendering, then leave it on.

http://communities.intel.com/communi...-collaboration
Win 7 is supposedly suppose to include a more 'intelligent' scheduler, meaning that for the available number of threads if threads is < physical core count, it is suppose to distribute the threads over physical cores first, then start populating logical cores (thread counts > physical core count). I have not yet seen a good study that confirms or contradicts this claim.

Depending on your usage, HT can be a detriment, but can also be a significant boost, or can be just mediocre.

[lutjens]

I want 32nm LGA1366 octal core...this hex core crap reeks of Intel cheaping out.

[iTravis]

No complain about performance and all that but price anyone? This is a Westmere's flagship that gonna cost like a grand, does Intel have any plan to release any mainstream 6 cores anytime soon?

[JaD]

I don't think you get what SMT(today's main hyperthreading, there's quite a few types of hyperthreading) is,

SMT means that it tells the OS that one physical core is two cores, so no matter which core you select to do work on, it's still going to be working on a physical core.

Get down from that pedestal, I know exactly how SMT works, I was just simplifying. Let me rephrase:
right now, when a process has less than 4 threads, the OS loads cores in a sequential manner, happening to leave physical cores unloaded because the first two (virtual) cores actually belong to a single physical one. If you launch a single process that has 4 threads, windows throws them to the first 4 cores, and ends up loading 2 phys. cores at 100% while leaving the other two idle. What I'm wishing is for Windows to intelligently detect that the cores it sees belong to fewer physical cores, accordingly managing threads so that the first 4 get assigned to core 0/2/4/6, and start loading "doubled" cores only if there are more than 4 active threads.
Windows should throw threads to a core only if the physical thread it belongs to isn't already working the other virtual core.


Anyway, I hope that along with the extreme 999$ version (the only one planned for release in the consumer market) there will be more affordable socket 1366 Xeons. A 500$ lower frequency exacore would be very interesting.

[Tech Dav]

No complain about performance and all that but price anyone? This is a Westmere's flagship that gonna cost like a grand, does Intel have any plan to release any mainstream 6 cores anytime soon?

No way, this will be their flagship for a year and a half at least but look for mainstream and low power quad cores a year from now when they finnish all the current 45nm quads

[virtualrain]

Get down from that pedestal, I know exactly how SMT works, I was just simplifying. Let me rephrase:
right now, when a process has less than 4 threads, the OS loads cores in a sequential manner, happening to leave physical cores unloaded because the first two (virtual) cores actually belong to a single physical one. If you launch a single process that has 4 threads, windows throws them to the first 4 cores, and ends up loading 2 phys. cores at 100% while leaving the other two idle.

Wrong. Where does mis-information like this come from?

Windows has been HT aware since XP/Server2003...

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...t-windows.mspx

Here's a relevant excerpt...

5.1 Hyper-Threading Aware Thread Scheduling

For the purpose of this discussion, a thread refers to an operating system or application instruction stream. For HT-enabled systems, it is advantageous to schedule any thread to a logical processor on an idle physical processor, that is, on a physical processor that has no instructions executing on either logical processor. This minimizes the impact of competition for shared HT processor resources on overall system performance.

Figure 7 shows an example of a four-processor system that has two active threads. A shaded logical processor indicates an active logical processor; a non-shaded processor indicates an inactive logical processor.



Figure 7. A Four-Processor System with Two Active Threads

Assuming that no processor affinity has been set, the operating system scheduler is free to schedule the next available thread to any of the inactive logical processors. An operating system might randomly schedule the next thread to any of the available logical processors on the system. This section examines the performance impact if the scheduler chooses the wrong logical processor.

Some assumptions about the performance of the system have to be made to simplify the comparison. Assume that there are no significant bottlenecks in the system architecture or in the software, and that adding a thread to an idle physical processor results in a performance increase equivalent to 100% (100) of a similarly equipped non-HT processor. On this basis, the performance of the system in Figure 7 is 200 before the third thread is scheduled.

Scheduling the third thread on either logical processor 2 or 5 would have the following effects:
• The performance increase that is delivered when transitioning from one active logical processor to two active logical processors, on the same physical processor, is typically in the range of 10% (10) to 30% (30). So on average the total system performance would be likely to increase from 200 to 220 (that is, it goes up by 10%).
• This lower performance increase is due to the fact that two threads are competing for the use of the shared resources on one of the physical HT processors. So scheduling a thread onto an HT processor that already has an active logical processor has the following effects:
o Slowing down the performance of that active logical processor
o Limiting the performance of the new scheduled thread on the second logical processor
• The good news is that, for multithreaded applications, the sum of the performance of these two threads will typically be better than the performance of a similarly equipped non-HT processor. The specific performance increase for any application would depend on how its threads use the shared resource.

Scheduling the third thread on logical processor 3, 4, 7 or 8 would have the following effect:
• The performance increase of the system is 100% (100) of a similarly equipped non-HT processor. In this case there is no competition for shared HT processor resources and the total system performance goes up from 200 to 300 (that is, it goes up by 50%).

To take advantage of this performance opportunity, the scheduler in the Windows Server 2003 family and Windows XP has been modified to identify HT processors and to favor dispatching threads onto inactive physical processors wherever possible.

[gumballguy]

So waiting for i9's is a waste of time for anyone without a big budget?

I've been looking at a new* pc, and even a i7 920 seems overpriced for what benefit I get (mainly a gamer). The older q9650, possibly even the x4 965 look much more appealing. But I'm planning on banging a 5870 into the new build, and dont know if it's going to need a beastly cpu to scale well (gaming at 1920*1080)

And I like AA.

*by my standards

[behrouz]

where is Die shot for Gulftown?





i don't know thuban = Istanbul ? but here :

Thuban, like Istanbul, will be a monolithic core and will utilize the same 45nm process as its cousin in the server space

From http://hothardware.com/News/Details-...ore-Processor/

i think at least it can Compete core i7 940.

[initialised]

Excellent comparison, all compared cpus same speed and low settings for game tests

CPUs like this need testing with multi gpu configs.

[G.Foyle]

English version backed up here: http://omgwtfbbq.ovh.org/ (in case they delete the article).

[FlanK3r]

behrouz: not exactly...only very similary. Thuban has some few changes.

[clo007]

The speed in some apps is awesome, but what's the cost of this cpu, $1000 - $1500?

Besides running cooler and faster (huge strides thanks to 32nm process), I can't even see why an i7 user (besides people here on XS, we're not the norm) would need or could utilize this in any way unless you compress stuff all the time.

As an architect who does renderings, the more cores, the faster it will render until GPU computing for rendering becomes main stream.

[clo007]

Too bad Apple will have exclusivity on this thing for some time when it lauynches (3 or 6 months?). Sux.

Where did you hear/read that?

Did anyone notice that the chip reached 4.3 ghz on air at 1.35v?

I am more impressed with the 3.2ghz at .9volts

[Dalten]

Riddle me this, how does i5 and i7 like having cores disabled? I've built several i5 systems but never played with disabling cores in the BIOS, though i've seen the options. I'm thinking slashing that 6 cores down to 4 with more MHZ would be better for most gamers and games. So does disabling cores on i5/i7 enhance overclocking at all?

[ajaidev]

Riddle me this, how does i5 and i7 like having cores disabled? I've built several i5 systems but never played with disabling cores in the BIOS, though i've seen the options. I'm thinking slashing that 6 cores down to 4 with more MHZ would be better for most gamers and games. So does disabling cores on i5/i7 enhance overclocking at all?

Intel does not do this, only AMD does. The core option i have does let me control cores but only the core that are there. On the i9 sample i had the core option showed 6 cores and i could disable which ever i wanted except C0.

I dont know if it will be a consumer feature or if its only for debugging/testing.

[Dalten]

Intel does not do this, only AMD does. The core option i have does let me control cores but only the core that are there. On the i9 sample i had the core option showed 6 cores and i could disable which ever i wanted except C0.

I dont know if it will be a consumer feature or if its only for debugging/testing.

It's definately a production consumer feature for i5 cores, at least on Gigabyte p55 boards that' i've used. I'm curious if anyone has disabled 2 cores on something like like an i5 750 and gotten a higher overclock?? or just lower temps at least to prove it's really using less power??

[Oupavoc]

Man this thing is a beast cant wait

[mstp2009]

Intel does not do this, only AMD does. The core option i have does let me control cores but only the core that are there. On the i9 sample i had the core option showed 6 cores and i could disable which ever i wanted except C0.

I dont know if it will be a consumer feature or if its only for debugging/testing.

What a crock. I can disable 2 or 3 cores on my P6T Deluxe. Works great with no problems (you can even combine it w/ and w/o HT to target a specific number of threads).

[flippin_waffles]

so all round which is beter having HT 0n or HT off ???

It seems to depend. It's nowhere near seemless that's for sure. It's not something a regular consumer should have to worry about. If someone bought a box off the shelf, you'd think they would be more than a little upset if they found out that performance was degraded in their daily activities due to HT. It is not an optimal solution that's for sure, far from it. You'd have to have more than a basic understanding of your computer to be able to adjust your settings(turn HT on or off), depending on what application you are running. Seems very deceptive to consumers.

[JumpingJack]

What a crock. I can disable 2 or 3 cores on my P6T Deluxe. Works great with no problems (you can even combine it w/ and w/o HT to target a specific number of threads).

I think he meant Intel does not disable cores (be them bad or good or otherwise) simply to put a new sku on the market. I.e. you will not see an Intel triple core on the market, even though native quad cores are on the market.

[Hornet331]

It seems to depend. It's nowhere near seemless that's for sure. It's not something a regular consumer should have to worry about. If someone bought a box off the shelf, you'd think they would be more than a little upset if they found out that performance was degraded in their daily activities due to HT. It is not an optimal solution that's for sure, far from it. You'd have to have more than a basic understanding of your computer to be able to adjust your settings(turn HT on or off), depending on what application you are running. Seems very deceptive to consumers.

Yeah BS at its finest... I dare to say that in more then 90% all cases HT doesn't degrade performance, but only adds to it. The other 10% have such a minimal impact (less then 5% degration in performance) that you dont even notice it. Even with that 5% degration ist still faster then the previous generation C2Q... i don't really see whats deceptive here....