Intel ships 4.4 Ghz Westmere dual-cores.

[Skratch]

No, almost all do 3.3 and 3.4 ghz respectively.
So your comment is pure BS for people who don't use OCed PCs. And for the rest...did you try to OC a pair of X5698s, so we can judge if your post has any merit?

what are you talking about?

a 2500k turbos to 3.7ghz and a 2600k turbos to 3.8ghz stock.

so are you saying that most sandy bs cant go past 3.3ghz?

Im benching at 5.3ghz my friend,take a look around as most 2600k are all benching over 5.3ghz and some have hit the 56x multy as there limiter.

a sandybridge boosts to 3.8 on its own,there is no overclocking done at all

[m^2]

what are you talking about?

a 2500k turbos to 3.7ghz and a 2600k turbos to 3.8ghz stock.

so are you saying that most sandy bs cant go past 3.3ghz?

Im benching at 5.3ghz my friend,take a look around as most 2600k are all benching over 5.3ghz and some have hit the 56x multy as there limiter.

a sandybridge boosts to 3.8 on its own,there is no overclocking done at all

I didn't bother to search for turbo speed because it doesn't matter for the sake of comparison - you'd be pressed to find any workload where stock SB would win with a pair of stock X5698s and that was the point.

[eXa]

Your scenario just isnt realistic. Average joe who doesnt overclock doesnt buy 2 X5698 to run in a server board/sr2 for gaming.
No one who has a brain just wouldnt buy 2 x5698 for gaming when 2500K/2600K is just better.

[Johnny87au]

Overclocked SandyB would be still faster?

No chance, ATM yes but when we can finally utilize more cores not a chance!

[ahu]

Your scenario just isnt realistic. Average joe who doesnt overclock doesnt buy 2 X5698 to run in a server board/sr2 for gaming.
No one who has a brain just wouldnt buy 2 x5698 for gaming when 2500K/2600K is just better.

Who was talking about the average Joe. This thread is about the X5698 chips after all

I was just arguing that a pair of these would make currently the ultimate gaming system. Which is most likely true. I just read the Anandtech SB review where the i7 975 was trading blows in game tests with a similarily clocked 2500K.

Now imagine how a similar chip would perform clocked at >30% higher and with six memory channels (albeit slow ECC) vs two on the SB. At stock speed there would be no contest. Overclocking is pure speculation at this point, but clearly these chips would clock at least a little higher than the SB ones.

[DarthShader]

No chance, ATM yes but when we can finally utilize more cores not a chance!

But there's no "more" cores in the chips this topic is about.

Now imagine how a similar chip would perform clocked at >30% higher and with six memory channels (albeit slow ECC) vs two on the SB. At stock speed there would be no contest. Overclocking is pure speculation at this point, but clearly these chips would clock at least a little higher than the SB ones.

There's no six memory channels there, they are not working together on memory reads. And there is additional latency when communicating between the dies. While SB cores have a fast ring bus at their disposal.

Any SR-2 and SB owner willing to do gaming tests with two X5698 ?

[Skratch]

If you're going to compair them at least use the 2600k that has more cache and hyperthreading over the 2500k.its funny how somethink sb don't clock well and have no clue about them.like the guy that said they do 3.3 and 3.4 I guess he hasn't read one of the 40+ review sites that got over 4.5ghz on stock intel cooler.

A 2600k will game at 5.3ghz without much,basically a decent heatsink and a few tweaks in the bios.

How is that not a perfect gaming chip?you get over 5ghz with 4 cores and hyperthreading.don't use the 2500k to compair it has less cache and no hyperthreading.

A 325 dollar 2600k is the best bang for the buck right now for a gaming rig.

[ahu]

But there's no "more" cores in the chips this topic is about.


There's no six memory channels there, they are not working together on memory reads. And there is additional latency when communicating between the dies. While SB cores have a fast ring bus at their disposal.

Any SR-2 and SB owner willing to do gaming tests with two X5698 ?

No, with three memory channels per processor and two processors with two QPI links and NUMA you really have six memory channels. The SB cores might have effective memory handling, but they can't reach the > 30 GB/s memory bandwidth of the Xeons.

Anyway, the GPU's are far more important for gaming performance than the CPU's. Are there any decent SB boards out there where you can pop in 3-4 x16 PCIe cards? Just asking...

[Skratch]

There's a few people getting 28+gb/sec I have mine running 25gb for 24/7 use and can get it to 27 if I remove 2 of my sticks (running 2gbx4 for 8gb)and I can't run my timings as tight with 4 sticks.

Its not 30gigs but very close

[Raja@ASUS]

If you disable 2 cores on a 2600k, you can run VERY low voltage at 4.4 ghz. Try it.

I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of that voltage saving is due to interconnect losses at increased levels of current draw. The absolute voltage required for the operational frequency is going to be almost the same.

[DarthShader]

No, with three memory channels per processor and two processors with two QPI links and NUMA you really have six memory channels.

Duh, there's NUMA in there, right.

Anyway, the GPU's are far more important for gaming performance than the CPU's. Are there any decent SB boards out there where you can pop in 3-4 x16 PCIe cards? Just asking...

Why limit yourself to 3-4, when you can have eight?

[m^2]

Who was talking about the average Joe. This thread is about the X5698 chips after all

I was just arguing that a pair of these would make currently the ultimate gaming system. Which is most likely true. I just read the Anandtech SB review where the i7 975 was trading blows in game tests with a similarily clocked 2500K.

Now imagine how a similar chip would perform clocked at >30% higher and with six memory channels (albeit slow ECC) vs two on the SB. At stock speed there would be no contest. Overclocking is pure speculation at this point, but clearly these chips would clock at least a little higher than the SB ones.

ECC ain't relly slow. And ain't necessary. Though IMHO worthwhile.

There's no six memory channels there, they are not working together on memory reads. And there is additional latency when communicating between the dies. While SB cores have a fast ring bus at their disposal.

It all depends on workload. Yes, there is (much?) bigger latency when communicating between different CPUs. OTOH ring is slower than Nehalem's crossbar, so with 2 cores communication latency should be lower. And when you use both CPUs you use 6 channels of memory, which can be a huge performance improvement in some workloads. With random access to large amounts of memory you would be using 6 channels too, though with increased average latency and I have no idea whether it would work well. How is it with games? Dunno.

If you're going to compair them at least use the 2600k that has more cache and hyperthreading over the 2500k.its funny how somethink sb don't clock well and have no clue about them.like the guy that said they do 3.3 and 3.4 I guess he hasn't read one of the 40+ review sites that got over 4.5ghz on stock intel cooler.

Reading with understanding is hard, I know, so I'll repeat, hopefully this time it will work better:
1. Good majority of gamers don't OC their machines. For them a pair of Nehalems is going to be faster.
2. For those who do - we don't know what is faster. SB may be a great OCer, but what are you comparing it to? To stock numbers? We don't have any OC results yet, so any talk is a pure speculation. And I speculate that Nehalem is going to be faster than SB when it has twice as much power/core available.
ADDED:

Why limit yourself to 3-4, when you can have eight?

Single slot? Bleh.
http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000206

[eXa]

Im saying that a person who isnt smart enought to enter the bios to change the multi to 45+ and maybe raise the voltage a couple of notches wont be a person who uses a SR2 with 2 x5698 either.
So again, your scenario aint very realistic. There is no point in comparing 2 x5698 to stock clock SB, especially on this forum. OC'ed x5698 compared to OC'ed SB, but X5698 is a westmere, there aint that much headroom left, SB would beat it without trouble.
A few GB/s bandwith aint going to make much difference.

A gamer wont use 3-4 graphics card either for that matter, its kinda pointless since it it just gives you more hassle without any gains. 3-4 graphics card is just useful for some benching...

[Skratch]

Are you saying that a gamer is not going to over clock there sandy bridges?have you not seen the intel commercial that shows a grandmother overclocking her game rig??

The K chips come unlocked from intel for the whole purpose of overclocking.

Someone please post the intel commercial as im on my cell.

[eXa]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GR5_X1CfUA

[Skratch]

First you say sandy bs are doing 3.4 and totally missed where the boost to 3.8 on there own trying to say that most chips don't clock over 4.6 and now you say a gamer dosnt overclock.

All I said was who cares about a 4.4 server chip when you can game at 5ghz+ with a 225 dollar sandy b

[Skratch]

Intel put out unlocked sandy bs just for gamers bro.I don't know what else to say.watch the commercial and see for yourself

[Andrew LB]

No, almost all do 3.3 and 3.4 ghz respectively.
So your comment is pure BS for people who don't use OCed PCs. And for the rest...did you try to OC a pair of X5698s, so we can judge if your post has any merit?

SB overclocks better than my i7 860 @ 4.0ghz all day long. So i have absolutely no idea where you're getting your numbers from.

[m^2]

I never watch commercials. I talk with people. Maybe that's why I don't have an impression that everybody overclocks. Yeah, talks here leave much different impressions but XS is hardly representative.
I don't have any hard data on how many OCs, it seems neither you do and I see we're stuck and don't move forward because of this. You love SB because it's fairly cheap or OCs. These babies ain't cheap, that's sure. Do they OC? Nobody knows. I dream about X5698s because when you don't OC, they should be way faster than anything else in single threaded workloads and still give OK number of total cores available for loads that scale somewhat (anybody else thinking about ScaleMP?).

[dartaz]

Likely. But full of DRM crap.

I suggest you read this before you say something like that
http://www.overclock.net/11952623-post1.html

[Iconyu]

I didn't bother to search for turbo speed because it doesn't matter for the sake of comparison - you'd be pressed to find any workload where stock SB would win with a pair of stock X5698s and that was the point.

SB is faster clock for clock anyway, so in all fairness, a pair of 5698's would probably need the clock advantage after the added latency to break even. I doubt Intel released this CPU for anything other than the fact that they could.

But I'll not say it's pointless, as they are only re-purposing chips they are already building and are selling at a steep premium, they could literally have five engineers converting the damn things by hand and still have a supply that meets the demand.

One last thing, your argument against the DRM system is rather weak, hardware DRM will only work if you feed it software DRM.

[eXa]

I dont understand why you wouldnt want to oc SB? Do you really understand how easy it is?
Show me a gamer who would choose SR-2/X5698 over an 4.5Ghz SB. And yes, i do talk to people and most people i know have mild oc on theire machines (yes, 4.5ghz SB IS a mild oc). Shure i have som friends/family that doesnt have an OC, but they certainly doesnt need no SB/SR-2 machine either.

So i still dont think an SR-2/x5698 machine is very realistisk because you got to be pretty mental(in my mind) to choose that over an 2600k based machine.

[Skratch]

Intel nailed the mid/end range with their sandy bs.the kid prolly never read one review on them and missed the 40 plus reviews of everyone getting over 4.5ghz with stock intel cooler.

Enjoy your server board as a gaming rig.

Ps.almost all games overclock.do you think the people you talk to spend 1500 on three gtx 580s and not use the bundled overclocking software that comes with the cards?

For the price of your dream chips you could built a record breaking sandy setup!

[eXa]

I have ignored the price point since it huuugly favors SB, and that when we're talking about the "ultimate gaming system" price isnt an issue. But, more expensive aint always better...

[Hornet331]

I didn't bother to search for turbo speed because it doesn't matter for the sake of comparison - you'd be pressed to find any workload where stock SB would win with a pair of stock X5698s and that was the point.

And whats the point in comparing a system to another system, whree the board alone costs more then a 2600K + board...

Plus the two 5698s won't be cheap.

So if you invest the same money in both systems I bet you could get either a SR2+2x5698 or a nice X58 board with a 990X.

And a 990X will be faster in some workloads @stock then 2x5698.