[Eug]

Intel Core i9 (Gulftown) - 6 cores, 32 nm: hands-on review :: PCLab.pl





It seems like each of the Nehalem cores performs like other Nehalem cores, except now there's six of them.

That's why I wouldn't get the Mac Pro over the i7 iMac until the Mac Pro gets updated to i9 (in 2010 Q1), unless you need the expansion capabilities and you need it right now.

[mduell]

Unsurprising benchmarks. The primary gain of the process shrink for workstations/servers is to fit 50% more cores in the same power envelope.

Sad they didn't benchmark the places where Westmere improves architecturally on Nehalem: 7 new instructions to improve AES performance 3x, reduced virtualization latency, and the all important 16-bit virtualization guests.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

It's great and all. But in reality how often are you encoding movies for any other reason other then benchmarking and because you can?

Even in Photoshop the CPU is't even being fully used most of the time, just RAM and hard drive caching.

[Eug]

Encoding movies? I was quite often... until I ran out of space on my 24" iMac. (My iTunes directory is well over 100 GB, and most of that is H.264, which I've ripped from DVD to work on my iPhone.) And movie encoding takes forever. Furthermore, my new dSLR has HD movie support. I don't use that anywhere near as often, but working with it is slow as hell too.

Also, RAW conversion can be slow on my old 24" iMac if there are a lot of pix. Any speed boost is welcome.

Even in Photoshop the CPU is't even being fully used most of the time, just RAM and hard drive caching.

I'm surprised you say "even in Photoshop", since for most people, Photoshop (excluding batch RAW conversion) is lighter usage. iMovie taxes the computer way more than Photoshop in most instances, and iMovie is just a consumer level app.

[P]

Any word on if Gulftown gets the improved Lynnfield cache latencies, or if it's stuck with the Bloomfiled ones?

[Simon]

As a workstation CPU Gulftown will use a 2x6.4GT/s QPI, not DMI like Lynnfield.

[P]

It uses QPI to the other CPU and the Northbridge, and it has that to do it that way to be able to support more than one CPU. The platform still uses DMI to the Southbridge just like Lynnfield does, so the only place where Bloomfield uses QPI is to another processor - which Lynnfield doesn't support - and to the Northbridge - which is internal to Lynnfield anyway.

That wasn't my question, though. The cache latencies for Bloomfield are 4 cycles to L1 and 11 cycles to L2. This is unaffected by the uncore design, yet Lynnfield manages to cut these to 3 cycles to L1 and 9 cycles to L2 (and even 8 cycles in some reports), while also improving the communication to the uncore. I was just wondering if anyone had heard what the Gulftown latencies were - I assume that they will improve uncore communication even further to be able to support 6 cores competing for L3 cache access, and the 965 and 975 have higher uncore frequencies than Lynnfield anyway.

The reason I'm asking is that Intel made some news out of increasing L1 cache latencies for Bloomfield over Penryn - to support higher clockspeeds - and now they're dropping back to 3 again. Were they planning for clockspeeds that Bloomfield couldn't reach, and what are their estimated future clockspeeds for Gulftown?

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by Eug 

I'm surprised you say "even in Photoshop", since for most people, Photoshop (excluding batch RAW conversion) is lighter usage. iMovie taxes the computer way more than Photoshop in most instances, and iMovie is just a consumer level app.

So more people buy high end hardware to use low end consumer apps vs more people buy high end hardware for Photoshop. Interesting, guess those home videos fall under "time vs money" as well.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

So more people buy high end hardware to use low end consumer apps vs more people buy high end hardware for Photoshop. Interesting, guess those home videos fall under "time vs money" as well.

Lynnfield is not high end hardware. It's just that Apple makes it "higher end" in their lineup. On the PC side, sub-$1000 machines already have quad-core. Furthermore, most half-decent home video recorders are HD these days. HD takes a LOT of CPU power to deal with. Sorry, but I'm not happy in 2009 having to deal with 12 hour video encodes like which is necessary with one of my old iBooks.

Lynnfield is actually designed and marketed as a mainstream part. In fact, it actually costs LESS to buy the Core i5 iMac than it does to buy the 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac with the same screen and GPU, because in bulk, the Core i5 CPU costs less than the older 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo.

In truth, had the 21.5" had the Radeon 4850 and Core i7, I would probably have bought that instead of the 27". The 21.5" is better ergonomically for people who aren't 6 feet tall. There's still too much chin on Apple's iMacs.

Now, you may make money with Photoshop, but the truth of the matter is that the "pro" app Photoshop really doesn't stress the CPU as much as many consumer apps these days. Ironic, but true. Arguably much more important for pro Photoshop use these days is stuff like screen quality and colour management. The CPU is secondary.

[P]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Lynnfield is actually designed and marketed as a mainstream part. In fact, it actually costs LESS to buy the Core i5 iMac than it does to buy the 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac with the same screen and GPU, because in bulk, the Core i5 CPU costs less than the older 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo.

The i7-870 is actually "Performance" for the next year at least, according to Intel's way of speccing things. The 860 is "MS3", or the top of the Mainstream segment, and the 750 is MS2. Note that the E8600 is also MS3 (along with the i7 920), so a 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac ought to be more expensive than the i5 model.

Intel does play with its naming, though. I wonder what percentage of the sales are something lower than MS1 - probably most of it.

Originally Posted by Eug 

In truth, had the 21.5" had the Radeon 4850 and Core i7, I would probably have bought that instead of the 27". The 21.5" is better ergonomically for people who aren't 6 feet tall. There's still too much chin on Apple's iMacs.

I would also have picked the 21.5" if it had a Core i5 or i7 - and I'm 6'2". I don't have an ergonomy problem, but it takes up more desk space than I'd really like.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by P 

The reason I'm asking is that Intel made some news out of increasing L1 cache latencies for Bloomfield over Penryn - to support higher clockspeeds - and now they're dropping back to 3 again. Were they planning for clockspeeds that Bloomfield couldn't reach, and what are their estimated future clockspeeds for Gulftown?

Higher than expected power consumption + no competitive answer from AMD = why push clock?

[P]

Yes, that's what I'm thinking too, and that's why I'm asking. I'm trying to see how worried Intel is about future AMD chips.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

It's great and all. But in reality how often are you encoding movies for any other reason other then benchmarking and because you can?

I do it at least on a monthly basis. Not for movies, but for TV shows or music videos that are in the wrong format for the iPod. I redo them in the right format for the iPod and then I can play them on the iPod or on the TV from the iPod.