Intel® Processors

We all know about the new Montevina platform from Intel; however the company is now explaining to us their roadmap for their Centrino 2 CPU. The processor platform will be with us by Read more

Well it was only a matter of time before someone started to play around with the clock speeds of the OLPC XO, Yep that’s right someone has taken this once innocent UMPC and overclocked the CPU.

One reader who has tried this simple tweak has noticed an increase in performance by 21.8 percent. The one 433MHz is now boasted to 588MHz, the RAM which was 166MHz is now 233MHz. The result is a much smoother UMPC, however as with all computers that you overclock, please be careful as your little OLPC XO could decide to give up on you.

If you are looking for a cheaper processor the AMD might just have the answer with their Phenom X3 Triple Core CPU. Tweaktown tell us that the X3 is in fact an X4 processor but with one of the four cores disabled, this is why AMD are able to offer the Phenom X3 Triple Core CPU at such a cheap price.

In theory a three core processor is still new and it was left to AMD to be the first to use it. The current speeds of the X3 is 8450 clocked at 2.1GHz as well as the 8650 clocked at 2.3GHz, there is also a 8750 clocked at 2.4GHz.

Tweaktown’s final thoughts on the AMD Phenom X3 Triple Core CPU are “AMD may have had a few hurdles with the K10 architecture in the beginning, but so far we have found it to be a good replacement for the K8, and it’s about time too. AMD has fallen behind Intel quite a bit since the Core 2 architecture managed to wrangle the performance crown from AMD two years ago. Since then, AMD has tried to keep up with Athlon 64 X2, but it simply can’t. Its architecture can’t handle what Intel has designed its Core series to do.

The X3 series of Phenom is a more affordable option, making it a perfect choice to replace Athlon 64 X2s, pushing them back towards the Sempron market area. In all, the X3 fills a good void for AMD and will be a definite hit for from our prospective”.

Intel has said that their next-generation Nehalem will be given the name Intel Core i7. The new CPU will enter production in the fourth quarter. As with most of Intel’s processors, there will be a whole range of Core i7’s. However; Intel has not given any details as to the model ranges.

Intel has said that the model numbers used will be the same as they do with their other processors. The new Intel Core i7 CPU’s will be used in high end desktop computers, with a black label version for the highest-end “Extreme Edition.

These processors will contain two to eight cores along with a 4-instruction-wide ISA and two-way simultaneous multithreading. The new Intel Core i7 CPU’s have some great additions, like QuickPath interconnect, an integrated memory controller and up to 25 Gbytes/s per link. The Processors also comes with a new 8-Mbyte shared level 3 cache

On August 19, Intel will be talking about the Nehalem, as well as discussing their Larrabee graphics card at the Intel Developer Forum at San Francisco.

It looks as though the Core i7 is yet another leap ahead in the world of CPU’s, AMD now have a lot of ground to cover.

When people talk about CPUs for their PCs we often talk about the high powered ones like Intel, but we never talk about the cheaper ones like VIA ones. I am not certain if anyone has ever done a comparison of the High powered Intel Atom vs. cheaper VIA Nano processor, but the guys over at Tweaktown have.

Both are high powered, but as wel know the Intel is the more exspensive of the two. Many of us will not want to take the risk with the lesser known VIA Nano CPU, but Tweaktown give us all the details to help us make that choice. Here are their final thoughts “Well, it’s clear the battle for the budget and low power PC market is on. VIA has had driven this home for some time with its EPIA motherboards and now it looks like VIA is able to really push this with Nano. While it may have seemed like VIA finally had some competition, Intel really hasn’t given us much to get excited about.

It’s nice to see Intel has taken up the challenge to introduce a power efficient CPU like Atom with a companion chipset platform. However, a little more thought could have gone into its R&D. First off, the in-order design of the CPU severely limits its processing abilities. Its single channel memory approach really cripples it as well, especially when the IGP has to suck a portion of the system memory and bandwidth in order to operate. Add to this the limiting of peripherals with 10/100 Ethernet only and no HDMI or DVI-out for the IGP, making the Atom a bit too constrictive for a real HTPC market.

Bringing our attention onto VIA; they’ve done it again. Though, not surprisingly, they have had over six years to perfect the mini-ITX standard as well as having quite a long time to refine the CPU process to increase its processing power without raising the amount of power drawn. In fact, Nano doubles the performance of C7, adds 64-bit instructions yet consumes less power.

The platform for the Nano is extremely flexible. VIA hasn’t put any constraints on itself with DVI and HDMI being possible as well as discrete VGA, HD audio and Gigabit LAN inclusions and a plethora of expansion possibilities with the CF card and Mini-PCI slot. VIA undeniably has a winner on its hands here.

Company Intel will offer a new type of processors called »Core i7« until the end of the year.

New processors will be able to calculate data with six cores which were developed with help of a 45-nano-meter technology. Users will be able to communicate with other hardware components through 1.066 MHz FSB, meanwhile it will store all of intermediate calculations in L3 cache which will support up to twelve MB of storage space.

There has been a rumor that the new processors can be used on all existing motherboards which are compatible with i7 Core processors, all you will need to do is to update your BIOS code.

This how you will save some money with motherboard which you will surely need because the price of the new processor Core i7 will be around thousand U.S. dollars or 710 Euro.

We used the Core 2 Duo E8500 engineering sample (3.16 GHz at FSB1333 system speed) for the overclocking tests. Since we wanted the results to fit into the CPU Charts to allow for easy performance comparisons across various platforms and between both AMD and Intel, we worked with the components used when we first created these charts in the summer of 2007 instead of the new Reference Test System. While the CPU Charts system is still up to date (an X38 Gigabyte X38-DQ6 and a Foxconn GeForce 8800GTX), it also offers a nice setting to facilitate overclocking. The Gigabyte BIOS includes an auto overclocking setting, which automatically adjusts voltages once you increase the Front Side Bus speed. Note that the CPU Charts test system does not support DDR3 memory, but only DDR2-800 (which is not much of an issue from a performance standpoint). You really need high DDR3 memory speeds that DDR3-1600 offers to at least get a small benefit compared to DDR2-800. You will find the overclocking test setup below.

We used the Tom's Reference System to analyze and compare the power efficiency of the new 45 nm Core 2 Duo E8000 processor against three older generations of Intel processors.

The Reference System, however, which we use as the base line for many reviews and roundups these days, is based on DDR3 RAM. We used this system based on the Asus P5E Deluxe (X38 chipset) for thepower consumption and efficiency analysis for Pentium 4, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quadprocessors. The RAM speed we selected was DDR3-800 for the FSB800 processor generation, as the 1:1 FSB-to-memory ratio is the fastest setting we could select, and DDR3-1066 for FSB1333 CPUs.

Core 2 Duo E8000 Overclocking

The overclocking approach for mainstream Intel processors is always the same; since you cannot increase the processor multiplier, you have to increase the second factor, which is the Front Side Bus. Every high-end motherboard based on Intel's P35 or X38 chipset will allow overclocking from the default 333 MHz (FSB1333 quad pumped) to at least 450 MHz. Well designed motherboards will extend the threshold beyond 500 MHz.

The big news at the tail end of last year was the launch of Intel's brand new Core i7 chip. Codenamed Nehalem, the Quad Core chip features a brand new architecture, which represents one, if not the biggest architectural shifts in Intel processors for ten years.

Core i7 systems are shipping now from the specialist systems builders such as CAD2,Xworks and Scan, and we should start to see Core i7-based workstations from the likes of HP, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens and Lenovo in the next month or so.

So what is all the fuss about? There are three major architectural changes to
Core i7 that not only look good on paper, but should have a real impact on the way users work with CAD/CAM/CAE and rendering applications, so let's have a look at each of these in turn.

FASTER MEMORY
At the heart of this new architecture is a change in the way the chip accesses memory. Instead of the CPU communicating with the memory via the Front Side Bus, Core i7 can receive data directly from the system RAM. If this sounds familiar, that's because it is, as AMD pioneered this integrated controller strategy with its Athlon & Opteron processors a few years back.

With Intel's Front Side Bus architecture, which is used on the Core 2 Duo and many generations before, there was a lot more latency when accessing memory. Now with Core i7, applications that access a lot of memory, frequently, will see a benefit. This is why AMD's Opteron has remained a popular choice with certain CAE users, despite it being slower in most mainstream applications.

The other change in the memory architecture is that the new memory controller has three channels to the RAM which means that Core i7 systems will work best when memory modules are in multiples of three, as opposed to two. This means we are likely to see workstations with 3GB, 6GB and 12GB memory instead of the usual 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB.

HYPERTHREADING
All Core i7 CPUs have four cores as standard, but they also feature a technology called HyperThreading, which simulates additional threads so each chip actually has eight logical cores.
HyperThreading first came to market with the Pentium 4, but was abandoned for the Core 2. It uses spare CPU cycles on each physical core to simulate additional cores, and these can be seen when you bring up the Windows System Performance Dialogue.

The technology only works with certain multi-threaded applications, and can cause confusion when a process assigns itself to a 'logical core' even when there is a physical core sitting around doing nothing. Our limited tests show that it does make a small but significant difference in rendering applications such as 3ds Max.

TURBO MODE / OVERCLOCKING
Core i7 features a new Turbo Mode technology which can automatically adjust the speed of the cores dynamically. The chip can literally switch off those cores that are not being used and channel additional power to the remaining cores.
Intel claims that for single threaded applications (of which most CAD applications are) the speed of a single core can be boosted by around 400MHz.

While Turbo Mode can dynamically adjust the speed of the CPU, specialist workstations manufacturers are looking to get more out of each piece of silicon by overclocking or permanently increasing the speed of chips.
With Core i7 and indeed Core2 Duo, Intel has built in a lot of headroom into its chips. Some say this is because it has no real incentive to sell faster CPUs at this moment in time, because it could jeopardise future sales if the performance leap is too high.

The good news is that those in the know are able to get more out of the chips for no additional cost, safely overclocking them by around 20%.

Overclocking has never really been used in the CAD/CAM/CAE sector, simply because reliability has been deemed more important than performance. However, even with standard cooling solutions, specialist workstation vendors are now offering overclocked systems. But this is not pony tailed geeks in bedrooms with soldering irons, the system builders are extremely confident that the silicon will not be damaged by overheating and this is being backed up with three year warranties.

At DEVELOP3D, we don't expect overclocking to be embraced wholeheartedly by customers, simply for fear of unreliability. However, if confidence grows, and specialist workstation manufacturers continue to push overclocked systems, it will be very interesting to see what impact this has on the Tier One Vendors as the likes of HP, Dell and Lenovo will have to play by the rules and ship systems at Intel's published speeds. And with the top-end 3.2GHz Core i7 chips costing around £700 it's not only a performance advantage that we're talking about here. Specialist system manufacturers are already offering 2.66GHz Core i7 chips clocked up to 3.2GHz for under £300, so price/performance could also become a major differentiator.

CONCLUSION
Core i7 is a huge leap forward for Intel, introducing a number of new technologies, which not only improve efficiency in multi-threaded applications but enhance performance in single threaded applications. As with any new technology, prices are high at the moment, but deals can be had on overclocked systems and expect significant cuts later this year.

www.intel.com

That is, e6300 processor speed of 1.86 GHz. Intel Core 2 processors - Intel's new, focused on desktop innovation formulated on the basis of dual-core microprocessor - the essence of innovation and energy efficiency. The new processor is designed to accomplish this task in the shortest time using Intel wide dynamic execution, access, smart cache, Intel and Advanced. Intel Core 2 processors and support for greater security, virtualization and 64 - the most impressive bit computing To get a new multimedia processor - the central, high - Mira permission. Other names and brands greatest of all other properties. Sangpyoil suit. Energy - effective functioning. Multimedia productivity. Microprocessor core Intel processor based on the revolutionary Intel Core 2 family, innovative design powerful energy - 2006 costume for the effective functioning again slowed down. We wish the world of desktop processors. 2 Intel Core Duo processor - based on the desktop, and you know, innovation and sound systems response, to ensure energy efficiency. I do not need to slow down scan, more intensive programme of calculation and multimedia downloads - to 4 percent of desktop processors this will happen faster, more energy - efficient, and more than 4 percent. The world leader in mobile processors - now use their example. Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology, mobility received only updates, new Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors. Advanced features multi - productivity tasks, which provides 28 percent for twice the power to use double advantage to achieve strong - all the major pieces, plus the advantage of mobility.

On basis of the nomenclature it gets obvious that Intel distinguishes Txxxx and Pxxx models. According to their TDP (thermal design power), which represents the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate, the chips are categorized. The P models are especially appropriate for compact notebooks, e.g., subnotebooks, or especially slim notebooks with limited cooling capacities.
The L2 cache capacity determines whether there is an '8' or a '9' at the beginning of the model number. Chips with 6 MB L2-Cache follow the nomenclature x9xxx and those with 3 MB L2 cache are called x8xxx.

The P9500 and the T9400 CPU are thereby especially noticeable, because they do not differ at all except of their TDP. It can be assumed that they are generally the same, but because of production tolerances they have either a 25 Watt TDP or higher. So, the TDP of 35W of the T9400 CPU is actually the 'worst-case' for this chip.

The test system was provided by the company Schenker Notebook and was a powerful 17" inch gaming notebook, the mySN M570TU with Geforce 8800M GTXgraphics card. The following test was performed with constant hardware and software configuration. Thereby following processors were tested:

Most recently the development of industry characteristics, determined mainly rivalry two processor giants Intel and AMD, slowly rise to in the evolutionary way. Evolution - so if someone does not know the process, when the vast majority of computer enthusiasts, it is usually not encumbered ultra-high-income, not just remember what the term "upgrade" computer, but also have the opportunity to apply their knowledge in practice. Alas, these "blessed" the times seems to depart in the field of computer tradition ... Naturally, the new processor-requires new sets of system logic - andthe producers are not forced to wait. We struck a real avalanche of new chipset announcements, sometimes simply duplicative and sometimes frankly "paper" so that even many professionals are head range. With much talk about us, unsophisticated user's! Let's try, is not going into the swamp of high technology, a bit streamline all available information to date on the most popular modern chipset for desktop Intel processors. Family Express 915/925 chipsets Happy birthday of a fundamentally new platform should be June 19, 2004, when the company formally announced the Intel chipsetsdiscrete 925 H, 915 R and integrated 915G for the Pentium 4 processorin small-FC PGA2 and LGA775, and the new "south bridge" ICH6, which is included in their composition . All they supported 200 - MHz system bus (the term "FSB 800 MHz" arose from the fact that for a four-stroke transmission of data signals), equipped with a dual universal memory (as working with DDR2-533, and with normal memory DDR400), and PCI Express interface, not only for graphic adapters, but also for the card expansion. The new memory controller, the greatest attention was paid to the convenience of the organization for two-mode users. The so-called Flex Memory Technology allows the three modules while maintaining dvuhkanalnosti - require only the same total amount of memory in both channels. Of course, the system safely carry nonsymmetrical and filling slots in different channels, but then there is speed, like the 865/875chipsets, drops markedly. In an improved version of its flagship 900 - the first family - recruiting 925 HE chips, Intel went further by increasing the frequency of up to 1066 MHz system bus and support for entering the most productive to date DDR2-667 memory. In addition, how would implicitly means that all masthead chipsets will work only under the Socket 775 processors. South Bridge connects to the northern ICH6/ICH6R through bi-directional tires polnodupleksnoy DMI (Direct Media Interface), an electrically modified version of PCI Express x4, and ensuring a capacity up to 2048 Mbps. Among other technological innovations in the southern bridge ICH6 appears support 4 - x PCI Express x1 ports, designed to work with traditional audio peripherals and the new generation of Intel HDA, which supports 24 - bit 8 - channel audio (with the frequency discretization 192 kHz). Curious feature of the standard is a function of HDA Jack Retasking - automatically detect audiorazemu connected to the device and reconfigure the entrances / exits, depending on its type. Disk Subsystem Intel Matrix Storage Technology, the activated in the southern bridges "with the symbol" R ", allows for the creation of dual-RAID array that combines the advantages of RAID 0 and RAID 1. "Topovy" 955X, in contrast to the "massive" 945 R, deprived of support "low" processor (533 MHz with tyres), and memory (DDR2-400), while it can handle a large volume (up to 8 GB) of memory (possibly use modules with ECC), and is equipped with a proprietary system memory subsystems improve productivity Memory Pipeline. C aim of popularizing maximum dvuyadernoy architecture in the budget sector, the company Intel plans to soon expand 945 - yu series of entry-level chipsets. This should be integrated (no graphic port PCI Express x16) 945GZ chipset with the single controller DDR2-533/400 memory and discrete 945PL. As the name indicates, the latest chipset will be "leaner" version of 945P, in which the maximum frequency is limited system bus 800 MHz and dual memory controller will support only DDR2-533/400. Thus, from an ordinary 915 new R 945PL will differ only official support binucleated processor Pentium D (if not take into account the non-DDR). NVIDIA Chipsets One of the most high profile events of the past year was the news of the "admission" by NVIDIA, one of the leading players in the market system logic for AMD processors, to a much more "piece" of the Intel market. Thus for the first time in history in the niche chipsets for hard-fast decisions previously controlled exclusively Intel itself, there is also another player, and not just a "second room", and immediately declared the claim for leadership. And, judging by the successes NVIDIA to "front" solutions for AMD64 platform, a claim is not unfounded. After allchipsets nForce4 SLI Intel Edition, despite not most, to say the least felicitous name - terribly unwieldy and trudnootlichimoe of ordinary nForce4 SLI, is essentially the same so well nForce4 SLI, which has been changed only tire processor and memory controller added . Recall that on AMD64 memory controller integrated into the CPU, so it unnecessarily chipset, which, of course, it's a lot easier to Northbridge. That is why the family of chipsets nForce3 / 4, in contrast to the "Intel Edition" are odnokristalnymi. The only, as you can popenyat MCP - is the lack of modern audiokontrollera HDA. The existing AC'97 though 7.1-channel, but its quality is hopelessly outdated. Unlike in previous years, when the producers of "alternative" chipsetsfor Pentium 4 released their new products almost immediately after Intel (and sometimes even ahead of it), with the introduction of new standards PCI Express/DDR2 Taiwanese "triumvirate" VIA, SiS and ALi / ULi and primknuvshaya to them "© ATI especially not in a hurry, limited only announces decent enough, but unfortunately, or no market demand, or simply" paper "chipsets. Such a "disregard" for whether it is due to progress every obstacles Intel in licensing new tyres multiplied to the power of marketing chief competitor, or second-tier manufacturers really appreciate its too limited competition with a truly advanced Intel chipsets. But it is not deleted, and a simple version of events, when the "alternative" simply awaiting final acceptance DDR2/PCI Express, and only then take seriously for the development of this market. However, according to information available on the Net on the plans of competitors Intel, the majority of their decisions will be aimed at Mainstream or, more likely, the Low-End sectors.