The Sandy Bridge Preview (Anand)

[xdan]

Not quite , for high frecuencys a very good VRM will still be needed. I mean you will no reach 4.7ghz with 4-5 phases. May with 22nm process.
Still the future is with loses for MB manufacurers, i mean 22nm-14nm we will not anymore powerful VRM's so the motheboards will be cheaper.

[Hornet331]

Not quite , for high frecuencys a very good VRM will still be needed. I mean you will no reach 4.7ghz with 4-5 phases. May with 22nm process.
Still the future is with loses for MB manufacurers, i mean 22nm-14nm we will not anymore powerful VRM's so the motheboards will be cheaper.

Not really, with MSI boards you dont need more then 4, and even with other boards you probably dont need more then 6 or 8 a fraction of what we have now.

Today phases are just for the bling...

[Florinmocanu]

Not quite , for high frecuencys a very good VRM will still be needed. I mean you will no reach 4.7ghz with 4-5 phases. May with 22nm process.
Still the future is with loses for MB manufacurers, i mean 22nm-14nm we will not anymore powerful VRM's so the motheboards will be cheaper.

So? if the MBs will be cheaper to produce than prices will drop, but what is important are the margins. If the margin is good, than they will not care what price they will sell, as long as it makes them money.

[qcmadness]

FMA support is already wide spread in processors and code compilers. C99 supports FMA through the fma standard math library function, nvidia gtx2XX and new gpu's support it, amd's 5XXX gpu's support it, the cell processor, fujistsu SPARC VI, itanium.... BD will support FMA4 and Haswell will support FMA3.

also, windows 7 sp1 will support AVX as does linux kernal 2.6.30

For Evergreen series, only HD5800 and HD5900 series (RV870-based) support FMA.

I hope Intel will implement FMA in Haswell in the right way, keeping a throughput of two instruction per cycle (FMA+FMA or FMA+MUL/ADD). One FMA has no advantage over separated MUL & ADD (except a bit better accuracy), but some serious disandvatages.

What disadvantages?

[570091D]

For Evergreen series, only HD5800 and HD5900 series (RV870-based) support FMA.

i stand corrected, thank you



as for the whole overclocking thing, i look at it this way: intel has brought it's "extreme edition" cpu's to the mainstream market with the "k" series, and cut the price in half. yes, the rest of the line will be very restricted in terms of frequency changes, but unlocked and binned processors are now half the price they used to be (from the blue team, i know amd practically gives unlocked cpu's away). considering that i have bought EE processors from intel in the past, i'm happy that i might not have to pay so much to get what i'm looking for.

[kl0012]

What disadvantages?

Two operations A=B*C & E=F+H can be started on SB in the same cycle while on BD it can be started every other cycle (50% slower). It seems theres only one 256-bit execution port in BD according to techreport article.