RSSGigahertz Makes a Comeback as Intel Rolls Out 45 nm CPUs
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 12, 2007, 4:56 PM
Within the next 45 days, Intel's first 45 nm processors for both servers and desktops will be available in quantity, the company announced this morning. Along with them comes the return of what many enthusiasts and system builders consider an old friend: clock speed.
Vastly smaller transistors made possible by Intel's truly legitimate breakthrough high-k-plus-metal-gate manufacturing process - previously known as HK+MG, but referred to today by Intel as simply Hi-K - are paying off considerably. At the time the development was first announced, Intel told BetaNews that one of the payoffs of smaller transistors will be reduced heat and power leakage, which would translate into greater clock speeds. This at a time when Intel's chief competitor, AMD, had been telling customers that "gigahertz is dead;" and just after Intel itself had published white papers pronouncing "the gigahertz myth."
Intel is following up today with no fewer than 16 different Penryn processors, including a quad-core Xeon clocked at 3.2 GHz and a dual-core at 3.4 GHz. On the desktop, the next Core 2 Extreme model QX9650 will take over the high-end of its product line, bumping down the 65 nm QX6850 at the $999 price point (in 1000-unit quantities). The company's complete price list has yet to be updated.
But perhaps the news that's just as big as the arrival of the first 45 nm generation - news which may still take a few weeks to germinate - will be how far down the current Core 2 desktop processor generation will come down in price. Already, its midrange 65 nm processors are competitive with AMD, whose 65 nm generation is still its high end, though Intel's top-of-the-line carries a certain value premium. Now that premium for the existing Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core is due for a bit of a trim off the top, and enthusiasts may be waiting to see what kind of value is in store.
Also speeding up along Intel's "tick-tock" evolutionary path is its front-side bus speed, which is now officially cranked up to 1.6 GHz (1600 MHz). But we know for a fact now that the front-side bus itself will soon become a remnant of computing's past, as Intel is slated to adopt its new QuickPath Interconnect architecture - analogous to AMD's long-standing DirectConnect - with its second-generation 45 nm architecture, slated for late 2008.
Naturally, the Penryn generation won't just be a universal drop-in component. While existing motherboards featuring Intel's existing 5000-series chipsets (5000X, 5000P, and 5000V) will support Penryns, they're not exactly ancient systems just yet. Part of Intel's plan with the "tick-tock" cadence is for the existing high-end chipset at the time of each "tick" to become the drop-in support chipset when "tock" comes along, and vice versa. It's with that background that the 5400-series chipsets are coming for what will likely be numbered the Xeon 5400 series CPUs; and we can probably expect a high-class and mid-range X and P series for servers and a V class for workstations as well.
Today, a motherboard with a 5000X chipset typically sells for under $500. So given Intel's apparent plan to match price points between the current and Penryn generations, we can probably expect "5400X" motherboards to sell for around the same level by after the holidays.
This afternoon, Intel gave us the first peek at Penryn performance in the server class, reporting an unofficial benchmark result: A Fujitsu-Siemens Primergy RX300 S4 server with a 5400-class chip installed reportedly turned in a 138 peak score on the SPECint_rate 2006 test. That's extremely impressive given the fact that the RX300 is an older and venerable design, first appearing on the scene in early 2004; according to Intel, though, the system did have its chipset swapped out for a 5400-series.
For comparison: SPEC's database this afternoon reports a Primergy RX300 S3 with a 3.0 GHz Xeon X5365 processor installed, turned in a peak score of 107. That system probably featured the Primergy's current, native 5000-series chipset.
Intel what can I do with your $1000 chip? My drive can't write fast enough or fully utilize it. Microshaft Word will not utilize any of it. Maybe the VMWARE virtualization but thats only 2 processors on the free version.
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|Vista SP1 will utilize it. Most probably your computer will be underpowered ;-)
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|clock speed is nothing without proper architecture, luckily intel is very good at that too. ...now if they could just make an HD that doesnt cause bottlenecks.
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|thank you.
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|... (and)
They do make 15,000 RPM HD's... they're just so prohibitively expensive that nobody but large server companies buy them :P
A seagate drive on newegg costs $700 (although I'd never buy a seagate ever again)
An HP 147GB costs a cool $570
Although Fugitsu is actually very nicely priced, although at 15,000 RPM you're almost assured you're going to need an extra fan and/or an open case design to allow for heat control :P
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|What happened with Seagate? People are usually gushing about them and their 5 year warranty...
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|Even though High Ghz is important, you can't forget good FSB speed!! Good thing Intel is trying to crank it up.
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|I used to be a big AMD fan and their Athlon processors were incredible, at the time. But that seems like such a long time ago and the years just went by without AMD coming with anything new. I mean, all they kept doing was bumping up their stupid processor rating every few months from 3200+, 3400+, 3600+, 3800+, etc. while barely increasing actual clock speed. When AMD does something like bumping their core speed from 2.1GHz to 2.2GHZ it's rather hard to get excited about it. Several years went by and AMD *still* couldn't break 3GHz with their aging Athlon processors. I mean, come on. AMD was kind of like a golden goose who laid a single egg and then sat around doing nothing. Meanwhile Intel actually researched and developed all kinds of new technologies and improved their processors. I doubt AMD will ever catch up and be competitive again. Hey, I could be wrong, but it's going to take a miracle now.
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|6000+ is 3.0 Ghz
6400+ is 3.2 Ghz
Not that Ghz is everything, you got to somehow calculate IPC x clock cycles to get somekind of realistic performance number.
Im using the AMD 6000+ and its not bad.
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|I have the 6400 and it is a screamer. I messed by not getting the black box which is pretty much wide open for over clocking.
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|they're moving slower than intel, but they're trying to achieve the low budget consumer market which is a smart play since that's where the most money ends up with chips. The margins are really low though and if their showing in 2008 doesn't include a significant quadcore speed improvement, no one is going to care if they have DDR3 or a native quadcore or on board gpu or any of that. They're just always going to be the one who's slower than intel at getting where they need to be. If native quadcore is to be really as important as they claim for performance and value, they need to make a showing on the performance end of it.
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|6000+ is 3.0 Ghz
6400+ is 3.2 Ghz
The numbers I was using were old numbers and they were used just to illustrate a point. I wasn't implying those were still the top processors from AMD. Yes, they finally broke the 3GHz barrier, but it took them SEVERAL years. Also, I wasn't implying that clock speed was everything. That certainly isn't true. But when you have a good design that gives you great performance at a low clock speed and then you don't make many improvements other than slowly bumping the clock speed, you end up getting left behind.
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|Which is kind of funny, because the last time I had purchased a computer (not actually too long ago, approx 2 years) the AMD processors were either on par or more expensive than the one I got.
They've got to budget speed and agility of their processor with price.
Although I do have to say that Intel's new $1k price for a freaking processor is ridiculous.
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|Well let's just say Intel is on fire. They are on one heck of a vicious release cycle. Amd was given a chance by Intel hanging out for as long as they did with the pentium 4. Amd has yet to release something that stands up to core 2, I was all for Amd but considering how much of a loser they are now with Graphics and processors, I mean they are getting murdered in everything, late to market no where close top performing, I mean what the heck?
Let's hope they get their act together, with out Amd who is quite simply the only competition in both areas, Intel and Nvidia have no reason for this crazyness with product refreshes and increases in performance like we have seen. I am pretty amazed that they are not just sitting there considering how ahead they are already.
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|Exactly. AMD scared Intel, awoke the giant, and AMD is paying for it now. Intel is unstoppable for the past year and a half. AMD's response is to buy a company that is losing market share and profits.
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|I presumed they were buying AMD so they could hands down beat anything intel tried to offer as a bundled CPU / GPU. I could see them pulling an intel and slapping two chips on a single die, only make it an ATI GPU on a AMD CPU die. i could see huge performance and value gains for laptops or all in one pcs like the imac clones. Sorta be like the best of the PS3 and the 360 combined. little bit of special processing, little bit of general processing, whole lot of stats.
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|I sure hope AMD has something to answer this. Otherwise prices will not drop as quickly or as far.
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|Hello!
I'm looking forward to install Windows 98 SE
on 3400 MHz dual-core (Penryn) Wolfdale CPU ...
http://www.msfn.org/boar...ex.php?showtopic=107001
Cheers, Roman
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|Yuck! I've been NT since '97 and haven't looked back once.
Win9x.crash.crash.crash
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|I'm looking forward to it going:
"Eh? Two cores?"
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|Good luck with that. Non-existing drivers, registry hacks, and INI changes galore will be needed before that can happen, but with the AMD socket AM2 boards I'm afraid nothing short of a miracle will be required for 98SE to even run in safe mode...Windows 9x is just too pickey about choosing it's own optimisation settings that it "thinks" will work for it. MS never patched those bugs, but you're welcome to try.
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|shoot can't install windows 95 on my AMD 6400+, time to sell the processor :)
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|This should help slow global warming, I'm sure.
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|Sure, on a 1cpu system. Now those 16x16 boards...those will speed it up nicely. :)
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|If that's sarcasm, then you're wrong.
If that's not sarcasm, then you're (probably also) wrong.
Stuff getting processed quicker = less time computer is on.
It's probably about equal, power consumption-wise.
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|Less time computer is on, ha! What world are you living in?
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|..which means we all have to go out and buy new crap. Which I'm all for BTW.
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|New crap for us means lots more old crap in the landfills. W00t!
Can't beat that with a wet noodle. ;)
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|"Stuff getting processed quicker = less time computer is on."
Wrong.
Stuff getting done quicker = more time to surf the net for Porn. Duh?
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|Without those landfills how are archaeologists in the future supposed to figure out exactly how we destroyed our world? That's if it's all not under 20 feet of water as according to Global Warmism, the new religion of the total moron.
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|Couple of underwater drilling platforms should take care of that for those archaeologists quite nicely. :)
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