Intel Developer Forum comes packed with Penryn related news, and those include overclocking. Using a Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 motherboard and a Core 2 Extreme QX9650, they were able to hit 3.87GHz on air and 4.1GHz with water cooling (not showed).

From the pictures provided, we see their heatsink looks rather unimpressive, wich means 4GHz should be between reach of the best air coolers out there.

The reason for using a single channel setup, they say, is to avoid DDR3 being a limiting factor in the pursuit of the highest overclock. Whether it's that, a BIOS problem or a chipset issue remains to be seen. Hopefully, those of us with P35 and P965 chipsets running DDR2 will scape the single channel scenario.

Link: Legit Reviews.

 

 

Intel will launch eleven 45nm dual-core notebook processors in the first half of 2008, five of them as soon as January: X9000, T9500, T9300, T8300 and T8100 (ranging from 2.8GHz to 2.1GHz). Quad-core versions will arrive in the third quarter, according to sources at motherboard makers (remember that Intel "cannot comment on unannounced products and technologies").

"[The] 45nm quad-core notebook CPU codenamed Penryn QC [will be] comprised of two Penryn cores in a multi-chip package. The CPU will adopt Socket P (35mm × 35mm) and have 12MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB and 45W maximum TDP."

The only mobile quad-core that we know for sure will be available next year pertains to the Core 2 Extreme series, a similar situation to the one we face now with desktop parts. Prices are usually around $1000 for these CPUs, so those wanting something less expensive will have to wait until 2008/2009 (for desktop/mobile).

Link: DigiTimes. 

After so much waiting, the new AMD architecture comes to life as a server CPU and it doesn't look like it will be enough.

DailyTech has posted a list of articles dealing with this new offering, including performance numbers, and there's were it gets nasty. It's better than the K8, no doubt about it, but not nearly as much as it should've been in orther to regain the crown it lost to Intel more than a year ago.

Core 2 was so much better than the P4 than it easily surpassed it and the Athlon64. Hoping for AMD to do just that was optimistic to say the least. Even though the charts we can see now are using server motherboards with limitted RAM speed and Phenom is still expected to do better, it won't do well enough to compete with Penryn. And that's problem number one, the delay of the processor and the slight advancement from Intel's part will have it pitted against Kentsfield's successor. That's not what AMD had in mind, they were barely in a position to fight that battle, but Penryn will be just out of reach. It has better clock for clock performance and higher overclocking capabilities.

What's AMD going to do now? Probably continue with the only war they can still wage: a price war. But it's unclear for how long the company can sustain loses, they aren't exactly swimming in Uncle Scrooge's money pool, after going out ATI-shopping.

Above you can see a Penryn die, but until those chips arrive in the November timeframe, Intel has another ace up it's sleeve: a Core 2  processor for the MP (4-way) server market.

Since the release of the Opteron, AMD has enjoyed several years of leadership in this profitable segment, and the launch of Barcelona was meant to consolidate that position. Unfortunately for them, Intel has plans to hold a launch briefing next Wednesday with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems, to preview Tigerton. Just a few days ahead of Barcelona.

Tigerton will be more powerful and power-efficient than the Netburst microarchitecture it replaces. Intel has already made the transition to Core 2 in its desktop, notebook and dual-processor server products, but is still selling chips for multiprocessor servers based on Netburst.

You can take a look at models, clock speeds, cache sizes and prices here (DigitTimes), but unless you own a server board you can forget about running one of those.

The Xeon 7300 series will have about twice the performance of Tulsa and over twice the performance per watt of these processors. The Tulsa chips are still based on the old Pentium 4 (good riddance).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week we could see the logo AMD has prepared for their new server version of the Athlon 64 successor (to be launched in a couple of weeks). Now it's the desktop CPU that gets the spotlight.

If you are thinking the same than most people do, remember the logos don't have any influence in the quality of the product.

Don't you want to e-buy? The retailer next door doesn't give a damn about steppings? Anandtech has all the relevant information compiled for you. Not just regarding the Q6600, but all G0s out there. As stated previously, you still need to get a hold of it, but you don't even have to open the box. OEM parts can be distinguished in a similar fashion.

In the case of Q6600 it comes down to it being the G0 based Q6600 (S-Spec: SLACR) or it's B3 predecessor (S-Spec: SL9UM).

They also conducted a couple of tests: power consumption and overclocking. The first one tells us what we already knew from Intel specs (10W lower power consumption), but the second one is somewhat deceiving (not much better than the older stepping). It all depends on particular chips. Just keep in mind that, even at the same speed, the new Q6600s run much cooler, almost 20W @ 3.33Ghz.

This is not the first e-tailer to sell G0 stepping Q6600s especifically, but alternate is the first one I see that doesn't expect you to be on a long waiting list or that sells them at a premium. You pay the same for the "regular" boxed Kentsfield as you do for the tray G0, which more or less means that you pay the same (who wants the retail cooler with a CPU that's begging to be overclocked?). Price could be better, and I expect it to be over the coming weeks, but for the time being, €254 isn't too much. Unfortunately, that's what most people must have thought, because there is no stock left at the moment. Keep looking, if your motherboard doesn't support Penryn, you aren't satisfied with the fact that we don't yet know how much they will cost or you are just plain impatient, you don't have many more options. Reminder: Penryn is still scheduled for next quarter, but it remains unclear... well, everything else.

CPUs with two cores were introduced in 2005 and made popular in 2006 after the release of Intel's new offerings and the price war that ensued shortly after that. This year will probably see a similar situation when AMD launches Phenom and Intel makes it's move, only this time we will be talking about four cores, not just two. And all this while gamers still wonder if a second core is of any use at all. 

Legion Hardware has an article about CPU scaling performance when using different Geforce 8 cards. Conclusions are easy to anticipate, but comparing an Intel Celeron 440 (2.00GHz, one core, 512Kb) with a Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.00GHz, two cores, 1Mb) paints a rather clear picture of how an up to date game like Far Cry can take advantage of the additional processing power, no matter what kind of a GPU you have. In fact, is intriguing that the cheaper one gets the bigger boost (67% at 1280x1024), when all would point to it as the major bottleneck.

8600 GTS buyers beware, if you play new games, they are likely to benefit from dual core CPUs, even if it's trough patches (Far Cry). In this case, you better buy at least a Core 2 Duo from the "E" series along with your graphics card.

On the other hand, it's main competitor is quite confident in the possibilities of Penryn. Should it be necessary, it looks like they can raise the working frequency of the CPU to 4 Ghz, some leaks indicate.

The sheer notion of Intel getting behind in the clock-for-clock battle doesn't seem very realistic, though. Just take a look at these benchmarks:

- a 115.63% increment in DivX encoding speed (thanks to SSE4)

- a 31.12% fps gain under Half Life 2 (thanks to the bigger cache?)

- a huge reduction in power consumption (thanks to the die shrink)

If you forgot about all the innovations the new processor will bring along, Daily Tech has an updated summary of all those changes, as well as a recap on different versions and the road ahead after Penryn.

For a long time now, over a year, you have heard nothing but bad news coming from the AMD camp. Neither their main business nor their new graphics venture was going as planned, but you might see something worthy coming from them before year's end.

Barcelona will still be released a little bit late and a little bit slow, but the desktop part you are probably most interested in, won't be (late/slow).

Here's an excerpt from xbitlabs:

"Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday demonstrated its highly-anticipated enthusiast-class quad-core AMD Phenom processor that functioned at a clock-speed that has been widely considered as unachievable for initial microprocessors based on the company’s new-generation micro-architecture.

This is already above AMD expectations for this year, which didn't place quad-core chips at frequencies of more than 2.60GHz. Now, we only have to see if it performs better than Core 2 for the battle to be renewed.