New Intel processor generation, any comments?

[Adrian Wainer]

I did have some Knowledge on the matter.. I've played the game, not to mention I read your guys entire little discussion, Quote train, handsome frog fest. whatever it might have been. and i simply thought enough was enough. thats why I said Wow, are you guys done..

That's fair enough and not to continue this thing, but I didn't have any problem about you wanting to put a stop to it. And for the record I don't like FSX and I rarely play it, for the reason MS improved the eye candy over FS2004 but made things like Air Traffic Control which are of particular interest to Flight sim enthusiasts only a little better, whilst makeing much of the scenery difficult to convert from FS2004 to FSX, so I went back to FS2004 which unlike FSX runs very happily on 939 socket generation Athlon 64 machines frame rate wise. Anyway we should be talking about the Intel processors so back to business, so I hope that's the last comment I have to make about FSX in thread.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

[Adrian Wainer]

Gunther, then what is it everywhere, saying that dual core are better for gaming (the games of today)? Is there any truth in there and is a quad simply better as for in the future, or are the numbers (2 or 4) really more important?

Thanks for cutting off the discussion, guys...

Amplid

I think and it is only my best guess that programming for two cores for something as dynamic as a game is difficult, for three or more cores it is getting near impossible. Where I presume multiple cores would be of advantage is that it would allow stuff which had nothing to do with the game to be placed on a different core, whereas with a single core everything is fighting for the one processor, which would be a major issue if we did not have multi-core, since Intel tried to build much faster single cores and couldn't.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

[skunksmash]

i think we just have to realize there is no good time to upgrade....
& there is no such thing as ''future proof''...

i mean the C2Ds & C2Qs are a pretty recent development & regardless of what new tech comes out these will keep us computing for years & years to come...

the P4 is still in strong service..
god ..i still have a fully functioning P3 rig with XP on it & its still great for surfing & other light playback tasks

i wont be looking to jump on the ''i7'' bandwagon anytime soon
due to the fact its a full rebuild & for what..??
most apps are not even coded for 2 or 4 cores let alone 8

& then there's all that talk about these chips being laser locked so OCing will be impossible (not sure how that will pan out)

but time will tell

 

[amplid]

That is the most head-on thing said in the thread skunk

Cheers,
Amplid

 

[Adrian Wainer]

& then there's all that talk about these chips being laser locked so OCing will be impossible (not sure how that will pan out)

but time will tell

Really I would need to know a lot more about these chips, to give a firm opinion but locking the overclocking does not make sense to me, in that one of the principal arguments in favour of the present Conroes is that whilst there was not a huge difference between the Athlon 64s and the Conroes whilst running at stock speeds, the Conroe really pulled ahead when it came to overclocking the chips. Unless the Nehalen is so much better than anything that AMD can scrape together to compete with it, if Intel lock the overclocing down they risk loseing hardbitten overclockers to AMD who would object to such tactics full stop and more opportunist overclockers who might be tempted back to AMD if they had an attractive overclock possability / price combination. So really it does not make any sense to me for Intel to do that. Also people might start asking themselves if they [ ie Intell ] start doing that when AMD is still in business, like what would Intel do if AMD went out of the processor business?

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

[Fumz]

No difference between Conroe and Athlons at stock speeds? As an old AMD fan I had a hard time admitting it, but Conroe just wiped the floor with AMD's, stock. Conroe's ability to overclock was just icing on the cake.

In terms of sheer ability to process physics and AI as well as feed a hungry graphics subsystem, Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 is anywhere between 22 and 55% faster than AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62.

AnandTech: Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back Even a lowly 1.8GHz E6300 Conroe gives the Athlon 64 5000+ a run for its money. AnandTech: Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back Another representation of the glaring difference between Conroe and the Athlon: AnandTech: Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back They're not even remotely close here.

Things just get worse for AMD with Wolfdale. This sort of kills 2 birds with 1 stone: X-bit labs - The Youngest of Yorkfields: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Processor Review (page 9) Not sure exactly why the Quads don't run games as well as dual cores, but they don't. Scroll past the 3DMark scores, because as you'll soon see it's a meaningless indicator of game performance, and you'll see the Exxxx's clearly ahead. There's a couple games where the quad is better, but for the most part, dual cores own gaming.

Having said that, I can easily see this next year transition to quads as more and more titles are released that have better multicore support. I know that Frontlines minimum requirements are at least a dual core. Granted the game is coded like crap and it's not really that great a representation of the current situation, but I can easily see more games coming out along the same lines: more cores = better performance. In a year from now, most serious gamers will probably have Nehalem quads.

 

[skunksmash]

i dunno about that m8...... not gamers!!

you're right... dual core does currently provide more than enough power for any game ....& will do for a good while to come

so hypothetically in a year ...''maybe''...games will be coded for 4 cores ..
it will take years to utilize Nehalem

& im sorry ...''visually''.... we have reached a pinnacle for performance gaming is far more GPU dependent than ever
its like bolting another PC to your own these days
the CPU is becoming LESS important in regard to gaming

unless they radically change the way a flat panel monitor operates ...& the human eye for that matter we cant go any faster than screen & eye refresh rates.

so now its left to GPU & driver developers to create better visuals
b/c processing high FPS was never a problem.

so more cores aint gonna prompt too many gamers to build complete new rigs for no actual gain...IMO

 

[Adrian Wainer]

No difference between Conroe and Athlons at stock speeds? As an old AMD fan I had a hard time admitting it, but Conroe just wiped the floor with AMD's, stock. Conroe's ability to overclock was just icing on the cake.

Exactly agreed, but if my memory serves me right AMD were doing various sorts of offers that allowed one to go up a level in the AMD processor range, so even though the Conroe was faster there was not a huge lot in it as the Conroe was competeing against a one level up AMD.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

[Fumz]

... & im sorry ...''visually''.... we have reached a pinnacle for performance gaming is far more GPU dependent than ever its like bolting another PC to your own these days the CPU is becoming LESS important in regard to gaming

hmm, I think I recall some guy named Bill something or another saying we'd never need more than 4MB RAM... now who was that Bill guy?

AMD had nothing in it's arsenal that could compete with the E6600. An E6300, even in the hands of a novice overclocker, become an E6600 or better with no trouble at all; there was nothing AMD could do about any of this.

 

[sidewinder]

hmm, I think I recall some guy named Bill something or another saying we'd never need more than 4MB RAM... now who was that Bill guy?

You recall incorrectly!

What you misremember is Gates being quoted as saying that "640K of memory should be enough for anybody."

Urban legend. Gates never said any such thing...

S-

 

[Fumz]

Damn urban legends get me every time. :huh:

Well, at least Moore's Law can still be applied.

 

[sidewinder]

Guys,

AMD has had its lunch handed to it the last 18 months or so by Intel in the processor wars and there is no real end in site for this trend. AMD has some architectural advantages but none that make a big enough difference in the real world. If I were to build a high-end gaming system, going Intel would be a no brainer.

In regards to utilizing multiple cores, that's not really a choice programmers make. Compilers are used to generate apps and they control how multiple processors are used. Most (all) games today are written higher level languages that offer the programmer no ability to specify anything in relation to multiple cores. Also, most of the work is done by the video card hardware and DirectX so multiple cores is of no real help.

You want better game performance? Get the fastest dual-core processor you can afford and get the biggest baddest video card you can get. Two if your mobo supports it!

S-