Time marches on. PC processors get faster. But this one is unusually quick, especially when overclocking. The cool-running 3.3GHz Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition is a $1000 quad-core chip currently aimed at gamers who can afford to spend $8000 on a PC, but don't let that discourage you. This will be an average processor a couple of years from now.
It starts getting geek-gasmically astonishing when you hear tales of the guys at Hot Hardware Review overclocking this sucker, revving it up beyond 4.1 GHz. They reported the chip wasn't even breathing hard at that much-higher speed, and only noticed a "small voltage bump" when the chip reached its 50°C maximum temperature. And that was with a normal heatsink, no fancy liquid cooling required.
Get one of these babies, and you'll be living the future. For a short while.
Hot Hardware Review and PC Perspective, via Engadget
Although processors are the stars of the show in computer design, without their supporting circuitry they're only printed sand. And as processor design advances in speed, complexity and capability, the chipsets that surround them must change to support those capabilities with new and faster features.
Intel's latest motherboard chipsets, previously codenamed Alderwood and Grantsdale, are aimed at high-performance motherboards and designed to work primarily with new and repackaged Pentium 4s ranging from the Pentium 4 520 at 2.8GHz to the P4 560 at 3.6GHz. All come with 1MB of Level 2 (L2) cache and an 800MHz frontside bus; there's also a repackaged Extreme Edition part. All are housed in a new Leadless Grid Array LGA775 package. This presents the chip's connections as a grid of conductors flush with the bottom of the case -- a technique previously used on the Pentium II core.
925X and 915G/P chipsets
Alderwood and Grantsdale -- more properly, the Intel 925X and the 915G and P Express Chipsets -- introduce a set of upgrades and new features. Most are shared across the family: PCI Express, 800MHz frontside bus, dual-channel DDR2 533MHz memory support, integrated Gigabit Ethernet, four serial ATA and eight USB 2.0 ports, and Intel's High Definition Audio. The 925X supports ECC memory, unlike the 915 chips, while the latter work with a selection of older Pentiums and slower memory options. The 915G also includes integrated graphics, Intel's new Graphics Media Accelerator 900, and the chips include some high-level support for wireless access points (although the wireless network adapter itself isn't included).
The chipsets support legacy PCI as well as four PCI Express (PCIe) x1 'lanes' (a lane is a single uncontended bidirectional 500MB/s bus running around 6.5 times faster than PCI). Intel has dropped AGP in favour of PCI Express x16. This combines 16 PCI Express lanes into one slot, together with 75 watts of available power. With 4GB/s available simultaneously in both directions, PCI Express x16 has around four times the total bandwidth of AGP 8X and is the performance graphics bus of choice for the next generation of PCs. Intel claims it can render four simultaneous 720-line high-definition TV images at 50 frames per second (fps).
The 915G's integrated graphics are DirectX 9- and OpenGL 1.4-compatible, support QXGA (2,048-by-1,536 pixel) resolution at 85Hz and include hardware-accelerated pixel shading, shadow maps, volumetrix textures, depth bias and two-sided stencils. Intel says that the 915G delivers around 1.7 times better 3DMark 2001 performance than the graphics subsystem on the previous 865G chipset.
High Definition Audio
The High Definition Audio on the chips runs at a maximum of 192KHz 24-bit sample rate with eight channels, plus Dolby, DTS and DVD-Audio support. It also supports array microphones with up to 16 elements, a rather under-utilised technology that's useful for noise-cancelling voice recognition systems. This may be a feature of future operating systems. The final trick that the audio subsystem knows is 'jack retasking': it senses whether you've plugged a microphone, speaker or line-level audio connection into each jack and routes the audio signal appropriately. This could spell the end of the incomprehensible audio icon.
Matrix Storage Technology
Intel is introducing its Matrix Storage Technology with this chipset -- strictly speaking, with the ICH6R southbridge chip. This has support for RAID 0/1 on a single two-drive array, as well as other configurations, including two RAID arrays on the four Serial ATA ports. It also includes native command queuing, where the hardware can re-order disk reads and writes to make optimal use of the head position over the disk surface, increasing performance by up to a claimed 74 percent.
DDR2 memory
Memory is faster and more flexible, thanks to DDR2 533MHz parts and a dual-channel memory path that can have the same or different amounts of RAM on each channel. The faster speed is unlikely to affect some classes of application much -- gamers can expect a couple of percent improvement over slower memory, if that -- but is useful for things like video editing and DVD playback.
Outlook
With these chips, Intel is presenting its vision of how high-performance home and office desktop PCs will be configured over the next two to three years. Although none of the technologies introduced will result in major performance improvements by themselves, they will be able to track future processor enhancements without presenting I/O bottlenecks.
There'll be some lag while the rest of the industry introduces motherboards, graphics cards and other peripherals with drivers to take advantage of the new features, and it will take some time to be sure how the improvements translate into performance increases in real life, but the shape of this sector of the market has now been cast.
Following AMD’s launch of its latest server chips last week, it’s Intel’s turn to be in the spotlight.
Intel plans to launch its newest generation of desktop processors on Monday. Called Core i7, the chips are aimed at the high-end desktop and gaming market.
The move puts Intel ahead of its rival AMD by more than a few months, as AMD’s comparable desktop processor isn’t scheduled to launch until early next year.
"AMD now just doesn’t have a competitive chip against Intel on the desktop," says Patrick Wang, an analyst with brokerage firm Wedbush Morgan.
And until AMD launches its product, Intel is going to be the only option for consumers who want the latest chips for their computers, says Wang.
The Core i7 will be almost four to six times faster than Intel’s current platform, says the company, and will have greater power efficiency than ever. It is based on the 45-nanometer production technology that first appeared in a server chip called Xeon (aka Penryn), which debuted earlier this year.
The 45-nm chips utilize smaller circuitry than the previous, 65-nm generation, making them faster, and also enabling Intel to manufacture them more cheaply.
The new Core i7 chips are based on a newly designed microarchitecture called Nehalem, which includes major design changes in areas such as power management and integrated memory control.
The first three quad-core Core i7 chips from Intel will reintroduce "hyperthreading" technology, which gives the chips the ability to execute 8 threads simultaneously on 4 processing cores, greatly increasing their processing power. Hyperthreading was seen earlier in Pentium 4 chips and some Xeon processors from Intel.
Core i7 processors are also different from their predecessors in that they have "QuickPath," a new microarchitecture that integrates memory controller into each microprocessor. QuickPath will replace Front Side Bus used in
Xeon and Itanium platforms.
The move increases the bandwidth directly available to the processor, reducing lag time before a CPU can begin executing the next instruction.
"Core i7 will be one of the first Intel chips to integrate a memory controller," says Shane Rau, PC analyst at research firm IDC, "though it is something AMD has had for a while."
Intel is taking no chances with Core i7. The company has spent millions to test the chips and ensure flaws in it don’t trip it up, says The New York Times.
In the past, both Intel and AMD have paid a big price for bugs in their chips. In 1994, Intel’s Pentium chips sported a tiny error in floating-point calculation that led to a product recall.
More recently, AMD’s Barcelona range of chips that launched last year were delayed by months afterdiscovery of flaws that among other things caused systems to lock up and crash.
Intel is by no means conceding the high-end market to AMD's FX line (see "First Tests: FX-60 Powers Superfast PCs"), having recently launched its high-end dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 955 CPU. No manufacturer was ready to ship a 955-based PC in time for this article, so we built a reference system featuring the processor and Intel's new 975X Express chip set.
Our test machine's WorldBench 5 score of 109 was more than 10 percent higher than that of any other dual-core Intel-based PC we've evaluated, but our reference system lagged behind the fastest FX-60-based machines in WorldBench 5 performance by a significant margin (23 percent).
Intel's new dual-core 3.46-GHz chip, which will sell for about $1000, carries 2MB of Level 2 cache per core (twice the amount the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 holds).
Other new features in the Extreme Edition 955 include a faster frontside bus (running at 1066 MHz) connecting the CPU with RAM, and Intel's Virtualization Technology, which allows a PC with the appropriate software to run multiple operating systems simultaneously without having to reboot.
We equipped our reference desktop with an Intel D975XBS motherboard; 2GB of DDR2-887 RAM from Crucial Technologies; a single EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO graphics card with 256MB of memory; a couple of 7200-rpm, 160GB Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS hard drives striped in a RAID 0 array; and an Antec Turbo-Cool 510 ATX-PFC power supply.
How soon will systems be available commercially? Alienware and Gateway have already announced high-end models based on Intel's newest processor, and several other vendors likely will have joined them by the time you read this.
The event highlights more than 45 research projects demonstrating the latest in technology innovation from researchers at Intel Corporation. Intel Labs pulls back the curtain to give media a peak at the future in the areas of eco-technology, enterprise IT, graphics, and the latest in mobility. Not in silicon valley on June 18th? Join us online here LIVE on June 18th throughout the day to see the highlights: Intel CTO Justin Rattner welcome keynote and the most popular research demonstrations. What's New for Research Day 2009
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