Core i7 940 Review Shows SMT and Tri-Channel Memory Let-down

[justthefax]

Guys, could we stop the date/which-side-of-the-road arguments and get back to flaming Nahalem's disappointing performance? And how Deneb is looking better and better every day

[T_Flight]

Guys, could we stop the date/which-side-of-the-road arguments and get back to flaming Nahalem's disappointing performance? And how Deneb is looking better and better every day

I believe Deneb is still in the Hype stage. Deneb is just a paper tiger right now. We do have some numbers on Nehalem (Bloomfield) that are pretty promising though from people that have actually worked with these things. Just a few. Nothing about Deneb is "looking" better, because there is nothing to see there yet.

[Bobsama]

It will be on WCG within 5 minutes of firing up..

Remember, the only account that accepts new machines is one by the name of "Bobsama".

[Hornet331]

Back on topic...

I'm loving these threads, becasue this is brand new technology, nobody but people under NDA know anything about how it works, but some of these sites are already proclaiming performance before the CPU is even released, or before there are even programs to benchmark it with.

It's hilarious. Most of it stems from places like the Inq, but I've seen some of these proclamations from Anandtech and other pretty good sites, and that is what is shocking.

It's like the "Memory Voltage Issue" that has already been stated is a nonissue, and that people should Ignore such gossip because those articles were completely bogus.

We've had others that stated the CPU would not OC! Anybody who writes stuff like that should be deported from the OC'ing world forever never to return!

We've had others that stated the ref clock wouldn't go higher than a certain level. Oh boy! We already have seen the answer to that.

It's just bunk to fill a void of unknowns, and I'm glad I ignored it so it wouldn't clutter my mind when this thing actually gets released.

so true.

[Solus Corvus]

Guys, could we stop the date/which-side-of-the-road arguments and get back to flaming Nahalem's disappointing performance? And how Deneb is looking better and better every day

The only people being disappointed are those that had unrealistic expectations of nehalem in the first place (ie. avg +50% IPC). The same thing goes for those that have unrealistic expectations of deneb (4ghz).

It's one thing to hope for the unlikely to happen. But expecting the unlikely to happen is asking to get slapped in the face by reality.

[jaredpace]

The only people being disappointed are those that had unrealistic expectations of nehalem in the first place (ie. avg +50% IPC). The same thing goes for those that have unrealistic expectations of deneb (4ghz).

It's one thing to hope for the unlikely to happen. But expecting the unlikely to happen is asking to get slapped in the face by reality.

It's going to be hard to beat a 4.5ghz Penryn for the next couple years. As far as games are concerned.

[clayton]

Guys, could we stop the date/which-side-of-the-road arguments and get back to flaming Nahalem's disappointing performance? And how Deneb is looking better and better every day

ES I7 chips performing better than Core2Quads in multimedia world is hardly a disappointment...

[Bellisimo]

Possibly true to the percentage, that I am not knowledgeable on but this was the 1700's-1800's and times and people were not as they are today.
I would also harass a guess that the English Navy killed quite a few in their attempts to colonize the world during that timeframe.
The English government wasn't exactly a sea of shining virtue itself during the 1800's.
They refused to open the granaries and sat back and watched Ireland starve to death during the Potato blight of the 1870's.
That lead to the mass migration of the Irish to the US.
And you wonder why the Irish still hate the English?
Let's not have the pot calling the kettle black here

1/ MM is obviously a world-class negotiator

true, instead of staying on the subject (forefathers of today's americans killing native people) he starts about the English people...
It's a common trick, you use it when you want to justify something but you can't, so you point the finger at someone else who also did some horrible facts.
By you using this, you are getting that feel-good sensation back instead of admitting that what has happened was wrong

[K404]

I meant in relation to getting a Bloomfield, not the historical side of things.....

None of the people who were responsible for these acts and/or the repercussions are still alive so any ill-feeling has been handed down through the generations to give a....vague, cloudy, ill-aimed reason for dislike.

In my fairly tolerant world, theres no reason for anyone to hate anyone else based on what happened in the past.

example: Im sure there are people who arent massivley keen on Scottish folk for one reason or another based on historical events. What am I gonna do? Was any of it my fault directly? I cant apologise- I dont/cant represent my whole country (theres a scary thought!) so lets just move on. As long as we learn lessons from our past instead of digging it up every now and then to get our collective blood pressures up we'll do alright.

By the same token I dont hate "The English" for Culloden. What English person can I blame now? Who can I punch to make me feel better? No-one.

None of this has anything to do with computers

[rogueagent6]

instead of staying on the subject

Hi pot, meet kettle.

The subject of this thread is Core i7 and triple channel memory performance, not the actions of some people that died over 200 years ago.

[Metroid]

It's going to be hard to beat a 4.5ghz Penryn for the next couple years. As far as games are concerned.

Triple channel is not working well, give until the launch time and proper reviews. It might be something wrong. Nehalem coupled with triple channel and tighter latencies, games will fly away, also what is the point if the game runs more than 60 FPS? If you play online the servers tend to downgrade the speed to synchronize the players.

Example:

Player 1 = 40 FPS
Player 2 = 27 FPS
Player 3 = 35 FPS
Player 4 = 80 FPS
Player 5 = 60 FPS

The end of this will be each player at 27 FPS. C&C3 works like that, Counter strike no, however a player can not go over 60 FPS.

By the way the gaming test PC Online did was totally worthless.

Metroid.

[villa1n]

Triple channel is not working well, give until the launch time and proper reviews. It might be something wrong. Nehalem coupled with triple channel and tighter latencies, games will fly away, also what is the point if the game runs more than 60 FPS? If you play online the servers tend to downgrade the speed to synchronize the players.

Example:

Player 1 = 40 FPS
Player 2 = 27 FPS
Player 3 = 35 FPS
Player 4 = 80 FPS
Player 5 = 60 FPS

The end of this will be each player at 27 FPS. C&C3 works like that, Counter strike no, however a player can not go over 60 FPS.

By the way the gaming test PC Online did was totally worthless.

Metroid.

Er... by that rationale, what is the point in having a computer capable of more than 60fps at said settings..? if gaming is your main concern...?
And you can play more than 60fps, in CS, it depends on the update rate of the server, which is default 60, but many competitive servers up it to 100. When bandwidth isnt a concern. And there are also other advantages to high fps, like in cod4 for example, you can jump farther and higher if your fps is +125. I dont think you can compare RTS to FPS in regards to frames per second mattering, as an RTS is more about strategy, than it is visual acuity and reaction time in the same sense. I think nehalem will help immensely on the hosting side of things with triple channel ^^

[Macadamia]

well, Then if this is reliable then the old Cinebench-R10 benches we've seen are not R10 but R11. Lmao....

Please don't tell me you were serious.

OMGNEHALEM POOOOWAH! =! 3x Cinebench increase. :x

----------

As for the review like Deneb, I'll wait. Nehalem's tightened integer operations should help it a little, but I'm not extremely sure how the 25% higher latency on L1 and the slower L3 reacts in comparison to Penryn.

Guys, at least be grateful that you can use your existing RAM without big hits (at stock, undervolted tho )

On point! BUT, it does give us an idea of how great a game engine could be if the damn thing was highly multi-threaded. We will see some amazing things happen to K10 and Nehalem when Windows 7 and DX11 show up. Right now though, 8 threads is pretty useless outside of Vantage LOL.

Err, 3DM Vantage CPU score's that high because of the mass amount of (rather crappy) x87 operations in PhysX. They tend to scale VERY, VERY well with SMT based on the raw fact that x87 is almost unused.

Switched to a proper SSE optimized engine like Havok in the benchmark, and the gains will again go back to normal 20/30%s or even lower.

[JumpingJack]

ES I7 chips performing better than Core2Quads in multimedia world is hardly a disappointment...

Good point, you are looking at a bin - 1 out performing the top bin penryn in most cases.... gaming is weak though, weaker than I would have guessed... but then, it is hard to tell on pre-release platforms.

[Metroid]

Er... by that rationale, what is the point in having a computer capable of more than 60fps at said settings..? if gaming is your main concern...?

First FPS = frames per second which determines how many frames per second the game will run, if the game was designed to run at 30 FPS like C&C3, in this case 30 FPS = 1 second cause the game was designed to run twice slower, the game time is counted as 30x60 = 1800 frames per minute. Real time would be 3600 frames per second, but the refresh rate still being 60 frames per second which means each frame will be illuminated twice more times before the next frame is projected.

You can have a fast computer which render most of your games more than 60 FPS no problems about that, you can play normal missions and much more using if you want 200 FPS the only thing that will happen is your units and the enemy will become faster. That is good if you want to train your reflex and timing management, the problem is your eyes you will not see 1/3 of the frames. 60 FPS is the default for games as it means real time which means that your eyes will likely see almost all the frames, up to 70 FPS still fine.

And you can play more than 60fps, in CS, it depends on the update rate of the server, which is default 60, but many competitive servers up it to 100.

Yes and no. The server limits you at 60 FPS in-game cause would make it unfair and advantageous for some users, like you said some servers that competes do it, no problem about that but before that they tell the users about it, however championships are locked at 60 FPS and twice illuminated by CRT monitors at 120Hz.

Latency or ping is not a big issue because many users who have a terrible ping or transfer low refresh rates are actually hard to hit as you see them at a place and after 1 second one square ahead which means these users have lower FPS rate than the required or internet issues that results the refresh rate issues. It is hard but this is actually hard for some people to understand it.

When bandwidth isnt a concern. And there are also other advantages to high fps, like in cod4 for example, you can jump farther and higher if your fps is +125.

Yes but what is the point if you can not see 1/2 of the game? Like I said for training purposes it might be ok.

I dont think you can compare RTS to FPS in regards to frames per second mattering, as an RTS is more about strategy, than it is visual acuity and reaction time in the same sense. I think nehalem will help immensely on the hosting side of things with triple channel ^^

Every game uses FPS, being strategy or first player shooter games and many of them are limited if that is the case.

The truth is even if your monitor supported refresh rates up to 120 that would still be difficult for your eyes to see all the frames if the game also runs at 120 FPS, instead the good thing would be the game running at 60 FPS and the refresh rate at 120 then for your eyes would be very good.

Have you ever tried to make an animation and set it to run at 60 frames per second, movies still at 24 per second to 30 per second like C&C3 the frames are twice illuminated before the next one is called.

All of this results in just one thing, gaming up to 70 FPS still fine more than 70 FPS is pointless.

Yes Nehalem will help the bottlenecks once used with the graphics card just how much is unsure at this moment.

Metroid.

[Katanai]

First FPS = frames per second which determines how many frames per second the game will run, if the game was designed to run at 30 FPS like C&C3, in this case 30 FPS = 1 second cause the game was designed to run twice slower, the game time is counted as 30x60 = 1800 frames per minute. Real time would be 3600 frames per second, but the refresh rate still being 60 frames per second which means each frame will be illuminated twice more times before the next frame is projected.

You can have a fast computer which render most of your games more than 60 FPS no problems about that, you can play normal missions and much more using if you want 200 FPS the only thing that will happen is your units and the enemy will become faster. That is good if you want to train your reflex and timing management, the problem is your eyes you will not see 1/3 of the frames. 60 FPS is the default for games as it means real time which means that your eyes will likely see almost all the frames, up to 70 FPS still fine.



Yes and no. The server limits you at 60 FPS in-game cause would make it unfair and advantageous for some users, like you said some servers that competes do it, no problem about that but before that they tell the users about it, however championships are locked at 60 FPS and twice illuminated by CRT monitors at 120Hz.

Latency or ping is not a big issue because many users who have a terrible ping or transfer low refresh rates are actually hard to hit as you see them at a place and after 1 second one square ahead which means these users have lower FPS rate than the required or internet issues that results the refresh rate issues. It is hard but this is actually hard for some people to understand it.




Yes but what is the point if you can not see 1/2 of the game? Like I said for training purposes it might be ok.



Every game uses FPS, being strategy or first player shooter games and many of them are limited if that is the case.

The truth is even if your monitor supported refresh rates up to 120 that would still be difficult for your eyes to see all the frames if the game also runs at 120 FPS, instead the good thing would be the game running at 60 FPS and the refresh rate at 120 then for your eyes would be very good.

Have you ever tried to make an animation and set it to run at 60 frames per second, movies still at 24 per second to 30 per second like C&C3 the frames are twice illuminated before the next one is called.

All of this results in just one thing, gaming up to 70 FPS still fine more than 70 FPS is pointless.

Yes Nehalem will help the bottlenecks once used with the graphics card just how much is unsure at this moment.

Metroid.

bla bla bla.

Try jumping on a fence from a balcony at 60fps in COD4. Then try it again at 125fps. Then you can speak about this matter again.

[Metroid]

bla bla bla.

Try jumping on a fence from a balcony at 60fps in COD4. Then try it again at 125fps. Then you can speak about this matter again.

It is too much for you to understand, don't feel ashamed you are just a gamer who wants to play games at 400 FPS and see only 15% of it

Metroid.

[dinos22]

WTF Dave
where are the results
it's almost 15th in Sydney

[villa1n]

First FPS = frames per second which determines how many frames per second the game will run, if the game was designed to run at 30 FPS like C&C3, in this case 30 FPS = 1 second cause the game was designed to run twice slower, the game time is counted as 30x60 = 1800 frames per minute. Real time would be 3600 frames per second, but the refresh rate still being 60 frames per second which means each frame will be illuminated twice more times before the next frame is projected.

You can have a fast computer which render most of your games more than 60 FPS no problems about that, you can play normal missions and much more using if you want 200 FPS the only thing that will happen is your units and the enemy will become faster. That is good if you want to train your reflex and timing management, the problem is your eyes you will not see 1/3 of the frames. 60 FPS is the default for games as it means real time which means that your eyes will likely see almost all the frames, up to 70 FPS still fine.



Yes and no. The server limits you at 60 FPS in-game cause would make it unfair and advantageous for some users, like you said some servers that competes do it, no problem about that but before that they tell the users about it, however championships are locked at 60 FPS and twice illuminated by CRT monitors at 120Hz.

Latency or ping is not a big issue because many users who have a terrible ping or transfer low refresh rates are actually hard to hit as you see them at a place and after 1 second one square ahead which means these users have lower FPS rate than the required or internet issues that results the refresh rate issues. It is hard but this is actually hard for some people to understand it.




Yes but what is the point if you can not see 1/2 of the game? Like I said for training purposes it might be ok.



Every game uses FPS, being strategy or first player shooter games and many of them are limited if that is the case.

The truth is even if your monitor supported refresh rates up to 120 that would still be difficult for your eyes to see all the frames if the game also runs at 120 FPS, instead the good thing would be the game running at 60 FPS and the refresh rate at 120 then for your eyes would be very good.

Have you ever tried to make an animation and set it to run at 60 frames per second, movies still at 24 per second to 30 per second like C&C3 the frames are twice illuminated before the next one is called.

All of this results in just one thing, gaming up to 70 FPS still fine more than 70 FPS is pointless.

Yes Nehalem will help the bottlenecks once used with the graphics card just how much is unsure at this moment.

Metroid.

I m afraid you are perpetuating the myth humans can only percieve a fixed FPS rate....

The USAF, in testing their pilots for visual response time, used a simple test to see if the pilots could distinguish small changes in light. In their experiment a picture of an aircraft was flashed on a screen in a dark room at 1/220th of a second. Pilots were consistently able to "see" the afterimage as well as identify the aircraft. This simple and specific situation not only proves the ability to percieve 1 image within 1/220 of a second, but the ability to interpret higher FPS.

source If you want to search visual acuity in the journal of neuroscience im sure you will more research verifying this.

As for having higher frames be relevant. Each frame, for CS as an example, is an index where the game can take input from the mouse / keyboard, and logs your models xyz co-ord, and sends that info to the server which compares it to the other data from other users, and then applies lag correction based on the time stamp of the data and what it correlates too.. in a rough form.
Simply put, the more frames you index, the better chance the data you send to the server registers as data before the other player shot. Some players use the lag correction aspects to their advantage by skewing their settings, but all things being equal, it is better to have more time indexes to send.... its simple sampling, you have a higher sampling rate of data then your oppenent, your data based on Did A shoot first, chances are it will be a more accurate experience, as we are not robots, we do things like PREFIRE etc, based on what we think will happen, and higher sampling makes all of this more effective.

[gOJDO]

bla bla bla.

Try jumping on a fence from a balcony at 60fps in COD4. Then try it again at 125fps.

I tried this multiple times with 60 FPS and 100 FPS, locked by V-sync. I was unable to notice a difference.

Then you can speak about this matter again.

[Katanai]

I tried this multiple times with 60 FPS and 100 FPS, locked by V-sync. I was unable to notice a difference.

I've said 125 not 100 and if you're using V-sync in a competitive multiplayer fps I don't know what to say man...

As Villain explained it's not all about how many frames you see but rather how the game behaves. It's about input as much as it is about output. In COD4 you can move better and much more precise at higher fps. Also I simply cannot understand how someone could play CS1.6 at 60fps.

I will tell you this: when I first played COD4 I had two favorite maps. In those two maps I always placed first. Then I started thinking about tweaking COD4 so I activated the ingame fps counter and let it on for a few days. My game was running somewhere around 60-80 fps. Only in those two exact maps it was running above 100 fps.

Now you people tell me that fps count doesn't matter in COD4. WHY should I believe you over my own experience???

[YukonTrooper]

ES I7 chips performing better than Core2Quads in multimedia world is hardly a disappointment...

Exactly. There may not be any performance improvement in games, but look at how Nehalem rapes many day-to-day Windows applications.

[Nedjo]

but look at how Nehalem rapes many day-to-day Windows applications.

WinAmp? IE? FFox? Word(pad)? Kaspersky? Massinger Live? Nero Burning ROM? Windows Defender? Windows Mail? PowerDVD???

MS Paint?


dude, what are the day-to-day windows apps that Nehalem "rapes"?? SuperPi???

[Caparroz]

WinAmp? IE? FFox? Word(pad)? Kaspersky? Massinger Live? Nero Burning ROM? Windows Defender? Windows Mail? PowerDVD???

MS Paint?


dude, what are the day-to-day windows apps that Nehalem "rapes"?? SuperPi???

Well, Premiere and After Effects are day-to-day apps to me. I sure could use some improvement over my York rig right beside me with both open and running.

If Nehalem proves to be faster in these day-to-day apps I'm all over it.

[Nedjo]

Well, Premiere and After Effects are day-to-day apps to me.

I believe that CoD4, UT3, WoW, AoC, you name it are day to day apps for many people