latest Intel Processors Features

Intel Debuts New Xeon 5500 Series Processors:

Apple may have secured them first, but Intel's 17 newest enterprise-class processors are finally available for all that care to grab them. As we saw yesterday with Lenovo'sannouncement, Intel's freshest Xeon chips (previously referred to as "Nehalem") are now available to other OEMs and channel partners, and given the depth and breadth of this new class, it'll probably take awhile for you to fully digest the news. Led by the Xeon 5500 Series, these new chips are hailed as the outfit's "most revolutionary server processors since addressing the market with the Intel Pentium Pro processor almost 15 years ago" -- a pretty bold statement.

Just how exactly are these things revolutionary? For starters, they can automatically adjust to specified energy usage levels, not to mention Turbo Boost (which increases system performance based on the user's workload and environment, dynamically boosting the clock speed of one or more of the individual processing cores), Hyper-Threading, integrated power gates and Next-Generation Intel Virtualization Technology (VT). The new 5500 Series has already set 30 new world computing records and established new standards for two-socket performance while delivering gains of more than double the previous-generation Intel Xeon processor 5400 series. These also offer triple the memory bandwidth of previous server processors, and on the green front, they offer automated energy efficiency enhancements, providing users with greater control of their energy expenditures.

For server applications, processor frequencies peak at 2.93 GHz with DDR3 memory speeds up to 1333 MHz and power levels of from 60 to 95 watts. Throw in Turbo Boost, and you could see operating frequencies up to 3.33 GHz, depending on the processor and system configuration.  Starting today, more than 230 unique systems based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series are expected to be announced by more than 70 system manufacturers around the world -- including a new Intel customer, Cisco, along with Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems and others.

To conclude this extensive benchmark here are the results we get from AMD NBench 2.0. NBench is a program, made by AMD, that measures the ability of a CPU to render complex 3D scenes. It's obviously not optimized for the Pentium 4. Nonetheless I thought this was interesting to publish those results. As you can see the Pentium 4 2.2GHz/i850 is on top of the race outperforming the Pentium 4 1.7GHz/i845SDR by 55%! Once again we see the association of a Pentium 4 to SDR memory is really catastrophic in lights of those disastrous results. The Pentium 4 2.2Ghz/i850 is 4% faster than the same CPU used on the i845D platform. We see a 10% performance increase for the Pentium 4 2.2GHz when you switch from a i845SDR to a i845D platform once again demonstrating the Pentium 4 is nothing without powerful memory. Finally the Pentium 4 2.0AGHz is 7% faster than the Willamette 2.0GHz.

Inside Intel's Harpertown Processor:

Apple yesterday announcedsignificant updates to their Mac Pro and Xserve lines featuring Intel’s “Harpertown” processor–but what’s in a name?

Intel’s quad-core Xeon 5400-series “Harpertown” processors run at up to 3.2GHz and are based on the new 45-nm Intel Core microarchitecture. The new chips are known for high performance and energy efficiency.

Apple’s previous Mac Pros were equipped with either a) two dual-Core Intel Xeon 5100 “Woodcrest” processors running at 2.0, 2.66, or 3.0GHz, or b) two quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 “Clovertown” processors running 3.0GHz in an “8-core” configuration. More on the whole Xeon family is here.

The biggest benefit over the previous generation Xeons are Harpertown’s 64-bit 1.6GHz dual independent frontside buses (up from 1.33GHz). These buses deliver processor bandwidth up to 25.6GB per second (up from 21.3GB/s). Then there’s 12MB per processor of L2 cache with 6MB shared between pairs of processor cores (up from 8MB per with 4MB shared).

Intel® Pentium® processor Extreme Edition logo	Intel® Pentium® processor Extreme Edition processor die

Intel cooks an Easter Egg:

First INQpressions Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800

INTEL HAS CHOSEN Easter Sunday to launch its latest product known by the full name as Core 2 Extreme QX6800, displacing its predecessor's dual-core X6800 and quad-core QX6700. Most enthusiasts will however, just name this model Kentie at 2.93 GHz.

This CPU is not based on a new revision of Conroe or WoodCrest, but rather evidence that Intel worked on improving the packaging of the dies. Now, two X6800 dies have enough tolerance to run at their full clock speed, instead than one notch lower as it was the case with QX6700. We already wrote about how Intel created QX6700 here.

When it comes to the performance pedigree itself, Intel Core 2 series of processors took the world of enthusiasts by storm, which boosted Chipzilla's sales across the board, even with lower-end, NetBu(r)st CPUs such as Pentium 4 or Pentium D. While in the lower-end segment AMD has performance lead (Athlon 64/X2 will just slay P4/PD), mainstream and high-end is the domain of Conroe and Kentsfield (and Kentsfield is nothing else but two Conroes slapped on the same organic package). I have been working with Conroe and now Kentsfield for over half a year now and have to admit that performance leap that Conroe offered over anybody is just a brilliant demonstration of Chipzilla's engineers. If Athlon showed Pentium III the door and Athlon 64 wiped the floor with Pentium 4 and later Pentium D, Core 2 wiped the floor with Athlon 64 X2 and sent Pentium D into Oblivion.

However, CPU performance is not all. If you do not have appropriate platform to work on it, performance will be stifled - we have tested Conroes in several chipsets and found that for networking and moving massive amount of data, Nvidia's nForce chipset will give you better performance than an Intel one. Nevertheless, if we would have a choice between a good P965 motherboard and a Killer NIC card or an Asus Striker motherboard - there would not be much of a dilemma in our heads what choice is better for networking and gaming aspects.

Packaging
We have received the CPU earlier this week, and from our checking of the markings, it looks the same as any Intel LA Confidential processor. Dead ringer to our QX6700, for all that we can say.

CPU lying comfortably on its new home

I like the fact that this processor is one of rare ones that did not require a delivery of new Intel D975XBX "Bad Axe" motherboard, which was the case with almost every Extreme Edition in the past year and a half (EE955, EE965, X6800, QX6700). Even though Intel has the same socket for the past couple of years, newer CPUs were usually incompatible with older motherboards. However, as of summer of 2006, new CPU should support older S775 motherboards.

As CPU-Z sees, this CPU does not show any improvements over QX6700

Installation of the processor was simple as always, but this time we even had no need to update the BIOS or anything similar. We just replaced old QX6700 with the new QX6800 and we were ready to go. Our water-cooling kit Corsair Nautilus 500 was in charge of cooling the monster, but almost any off-the-shelf cooler will do, just do not try to combine this baby with a stock cooler. We are not certain why Chipzilla is not putting a better cooler in the package and is continuing to scrounge on a few dollars difference, since margins on this CPU are fat enough. Company could and should have afford to bundle an aftermarket cooler - we have tried to cool the QX6800 with four year old CNPS7000Cu with a Socket 775 adapter, and found that ever 4yr old product can cool better than an Intel branded one from 2007. By close to 15degC (74degC stock vs. 61degC with Zalman), and our water-cooling kit kept this baby purring all the time at sub 40degC temperatures.

The test
With this review, we are introducing Modo 203 to the benchmark suite. Ever since I wrote a review of original Kentsfield, yours truly wanted to find software that would be a cross-platform, 32- and 64-bit test. With Modo, our wish has been granted. This 3D-modelling tool exists for Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X, and it proved quite handy in our initial evaluation. We have talked with Ben and crew from Luxology and we can say that development of Modo will continue, and the team will probably be able to manage utilizing GPUs in the future as well.
For the rest of the benchmark suite, we have combined latest Everest Ultimate Edition (4.00), PCMark05, Cinebench 4.5, Prime95, and Xmpeg 5.0.3. For games, we chose F.E.A.R. and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - games with lot of dots in their respective names.

Our testing configuration went through a wintery refresh, and now INQtest#2 is based on following components:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 or QX6800
Corsair Nautilus 500
EVGA nForce 680i
EVGA e-GeForce 8800GTX ACS3 in SLI mode
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB
Plextor PX-760A
beQuiet! 850W, tested with Corsair 620W and OCZ GameXstream 1000W

We are also currently updating other testing configurations, in order to be able to give you a more actual review service, starting from next week. INQtest #2 is now being designed around all-water-cooled setup from EVGA, and we will be bringing you a review of this extraordinary kit during the next week. INQtest #3 is the most interesting one, since it features an all-AMD setup with two R600 boards in Crossfire, and we will publish the benchmark results as soon as AMD finally delivers their final version of R600 Video/RealTek Audio multi-function board. We do not intend to post R600 results in 3DMark06 with drivers from January and woe you like those scores are important as the second coming.

Nevertheless, to get back on the subject: INQtest #2, the QX6800 test machine had Windows XP Professional SP2 with all of the updates installed until April 5th. Office 2007 Professional was also installed, as were ForceWare drivers 97.94 for the graphics cards and 6.53 for the motherboard. nTune was also installed, and with benchmarks, that was it - as far as software part is considered. Games and applications were patched to their latest versions, including S.T.A.L.K.E.R... This game had that luck to royally piss yours truly, after half a decade of delays, developers managed to get gamers in a situation that a hotfix patch was released 10 days after the game hit retail market. That patch killed off saved games, so if anyone is trying to figure the reason why PC gaming is going to a hot place, just ask Ukrainian gamedevs.

Test setup in question had only one change during the testing: CPUs. To compare improvements that QX6800 brings, we have compared that CPU against Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Conroe-4M, 2.66 GHz), Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Conroe-4M, 2.93 GHz) and QX6700 (Kentsfield 2.66 GHz). For Modo 203, we have placed a green bar, for comparisons sake. This green bar is an Opteron workstation based on two Opteron 280 processors (dual core, 2.4 GHz each), 8GB of Corsair Registered ECC DDR400 memory, Tyan Thunder K8WE motherboard, MSI GeForce 8800GTS 640MB card, Killer NIC Ethernet card, Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 400GB and Tagan 580W power supply. This was top-of-the-line machine from May 2006, just prior to introduction of Socket F systems and AMD Santa Rosa processors (not to be mixed with Intel's own Santa Rosa, a codename for next-gen Centrino).

Everest Ultimate Edition 4.00

Guess who is the fastest one in CPU intensive benchmarks...

Everest essentially showed us that the difference between QX6700 and QX6800 is less than those physical 266 MHz that divide them, but performance difference between these four could not be any greater. For a synthetic test such as this one, there really is no doubt about where these four processors are in the food chain.

PCMark05

This synthetic test only goes to show that Kentsfields rock the place. File compression and decompression is one especially impressive result.