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A couple questions about Haswell

B

bigbrave

Junior Member
With the Haswell CPUs, the voltage regulator is built into the die, but Intel will move the regulator back onto the motherboard for the Broadwell CPUs. So my question is if I have a Z97 motherboard, does it already have a built in voltage regulator in case I decide to upgrade to Broadwell in the future? How will that work?

In regards to the first 8 core CPU from Intel, the 5960X Haswell Extreme, how much will Windows 7 bottleneck it? Would it be better to go with that god-awful Windows 8 crap? I'm sure Windows 8 will handle the 8 cores, 16 threads better, but just how much better is my question.
 
Broadwell got the voltage regular ondie like Haswell.

Windows 7 wont bottleneck the CPU at all. Server versions of Windows 7 runs fine with up to 256 cores.
 
Broadwell hasn't been released yet so we don't really know what its compatibility will be. You are right to be concerned about the voltage regulator change, that could very well impact on compatibility and we don't know in what way. Its an unreleased product and I don't think any official word has yet been said on compatibility.

Windows 7 64 bit (Premium) supports 256 processors. There shouldn't be a problem with using it with an 8c16t CPU at all. Windows 8 does have a better scheduler however, especially around core parking and power saving features so it tends to produce better behaviour in games and on the desktop when its in something other than performance mode. To get Windows 7 to behave similarly you need to remove core parking and run it in performance mode all the time. But I think you can make Windows 7 behave well enough with just those 2 tweaks and it shouldn't be much down in performance in very heavy CPU loads, so far at least the differences between the 2 OS' is pretty small in benchmarks. You could just use Start8 or some other Windows 7 skin for Windows 8 of course and then you also get DX11.2 that is also Windows 8 only.
 
BrightCandle said:
Broadwell hasn't been released yet so we don't really know what its compatibility will be. You are right to be concerned about the voltage regulator change, that could very well impact on compatibility and we don't know in what way. Its an unreleased product and I don't think any official word has yet been said on compatibility.

Windows 7 64 bit (Premium) supports 256 processors. There shouldn't be a problem with using it with an 8c16t CPU at all. Windows 8 does have a better scheduler however, especially around core parking and power saving features so it tends to produce better behaviour in games and on the desktop when its in something other than performance mode. To get Windows 7 to behave similarly you need to remove core parking and run it in performance mode all the time. But I think you can make Windows 7 behave well enough with just those 2 tweaks and it shouldn't be much down in performance in very heavy CPU loads, so far at least the differences between the 2 OS' is pretty small in benchmarks. You could just use Start8 or some other Windows 7 skin for Windows 8 of course and then you also get DX11.2 that is also Windows 8 only.
Click to expand...

Windows 7 is limited to 2 physical processors. But core amount can be up to 256.

And again, Broadwell is exactly like Haswell. Nothing has moved anywhere.
 
Actually, I have read from multiple places that Intel is in fact moving the voltage regulator back to the motherboard with Broadwell. They are doing this because the V.R. causes too much heat. The Z97 boards are suppose to correspond with the Broadwell CPUs, but Intel is having too many problems with the 14nm die so they are very late.

Being that the V.R. is moving off the die, I just wondered how Intel would make this work. Hell, it might not even be worth thinking about.
 
Windows 7 premium seems to be limited to 2 physical processors and up to 256 cores across those processors. So unless secretly you are intending to buy a quad CPU motherboard its not going to be a problem.
 
bigbrave said:
Actually, I have read from multiple places that Intel is in fact moving the voltage regulator back to the motherboard with Broadwell. They are doing this because the V.R. causes too much heat. The Z97 boards are suppose to correspond with the Broadwell CPUs, but Intel is having too many problems with the 14nm die so they are very late.

Being that the V.R. is moving off the die, I just wondered how Intel would make this work. Hell, it might not even be worth thinking about.
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They may do it with Skylake it seems. But certainly not Broadwell. Broadwell mobile and desktop, including E/EP servers contains the FVIR.

Most 8 series boards work with Broadwell too. And there is no chipset update for the entire business segment for Broadwell, desktop and mobile.

Also you couldnt fit desktop Broadwell in the LGA1150 or E/EP broadwells in LGA2011-E, if they had removed it.

The change you talk about is this:
Intel-Broadwell-9-Series-Power-Ratings.png


And its incorproated in most mobos.
 
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bigbrave said:
With the Haswell CPUs, the voltage regulator is built into the die, but Intel will move the regulator back onto the motherboard for the Broadwell CPUs. So my question is if I have a Z97 motherboard, does it already have a built in voltage regulator in case I decide to upgrade to Broadwell in the future? How will that work?

In regards to the first 8 core CPU from Intel, the 5960X Haswell Extreme, how much will Windows 7 bottleneck it? Would it be better to go with that god-awful Windows 8 crap? I'm sure Windows 8 will handle the 8 cores, 16 threads better, but just how much better is my question.
Click to expand...

I would still opt for windows8, simply cause, well, you know microsoft, they will make every excuse to patch the new and shiny and leave the old behind. That being said, I remember reading (cant find the source right now) that the win7 kernel would really begin to outshine XP with 10 cores+.
I would not consider win7 to bottleneck an 8 core haswell-e - beyond what microsoft decides to.

edit : ie. suppose ms were to roll out a tsx patch, would win7 recieve it? hell no.
 
Windows 8 is anything but godawful crap.

Those who perpetuate it never gave it a chance. I used windows 8 since the first beta was out. I hated it. Then I learned to use it. Now everything is upgraded to Windows 8. I'd never go back to Windows 7 ever.
 
I'm still not sold on the FVIR being dropped with Skylake. It was a huge increase in power efficiency and probably cost quite a bit of R/D. I still consider this a rumor or has anybody got solid prove from Intel?
 
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I cant see my employer, a community college going to Win 8/8.1/8.2. We run too many server based applications and I think a lot of corporate America is going to wait and see what Win 9 is going to look like and just skip Win 8 altogether. I tried win 8 but it did not work with my older 775 socket, core 2 duo, motherboard. The video was horrible. It seems like win 8 and even worse win 8.1 was implemented poorly when it came to legacy support.

I can only report on my personal experience. Maybe using a video card would yield better results.
 
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I doubt Windows 9 will add legacy support back in. It might bring back the start menu but its unlikely to go backwards and start supporting what today are absolutely ancient machines. Anyone running a Core 2 duo should absolutely not expect to be able to run a modern OS, why would they expect that?!
 
Adding Start8 or Classic Shell to Windows 8/8.1 makes it very comparable to Windows 7 in appearance/function but with all the advances built into 8.

I got a copy of W8Pro for $40 at the start, used it briefly and absolutely hated it, just too different from XP/7. Didn't use it for like a full year or so. Then rebuilt my gaming machine, installed it because didn't have a key available for 7. Hated it again, but had heard of Classic Shell at that point, installed and it was mostly good. Definitely boots up faster than 7, from a user standpoint I don't really see much else different.
 
BrightCandle said:
Anyone running a Core 2 duo should absolutely not expect to be able to run a modern OS, why would they expect that?!
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Are you joking? Why wouldn't a Core2-era machine support any modern version of Windows? It supports ACPI, PCI-E, SATA, AHCI. About the only thing it doesn't support is UEFI, and that's only necessary to boot greater than 2TB HDDs.

Edit: Forgot to include the obvious - Core2 fully supports x64.
 
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tential said:
Windows 8 is anything but godawful crap.

Those who perpetuate it never gave it a chance. I used windows 8 since the first beta was out. I hated it. Then I learned to use it. Now everything is upgraded to Windows 8. I'd never go back to Windows 7 ever.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I think most people who still choose to hate Windows 8 do so out of ignorance or just following the crowd, i.e. it's fashionable to hate on Win8. There are certainly aspects of it that were poorly implemented but most of the big complaints I had with the first release have since been rectified with 8.1. And now that I know my way around Win8 I find I much prefer it to Win7.
 
Especially for gamers, what's the difference? I mean you can set it up to boot into desktop and still have all your little icons for your games. Or you can at it to the modern UI interface.
 
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