Cheaper Intel 6C/12T CPU coming? Core i7-3910K spotted

[NTMBK]

For a moment I thought you are talking the 6c/12t Westmere L5639 that's flooding ebay. You can get them for around $100, and these can be overclocked easily. I'm wondering if I should get one and an x58 board. What would be the performance like vs sandy?

Woah, looks like someone's ditching a lot of servers. NSA must be due for an upgrade.

 

[TerryMathews]

I guess my point should have included the fact that today we are comparing these retired server pieces not against SB, but Haswell, and shortly IB-E. I've been a fan of repurposed server stuff in the past, but while the performance per dollar is pretty good, and they make for a solid system, ultimately the performance just isn't there compared to a current desktop setup for what most of us really do day-to-day. For me it turned out to be not really worth the effort, but for those who think it is, rock on.

If I'm reading Bench correctly, this chip should benchmark like an i7 970 with those two extra cores, if we hit 3.2 GHz like I think we will.

Good performance numbers for the money involved. Looks like it should whip my 8150 and at a price where I can flip my 8150 setup and nearly break even.

 

[crashtech]

If I'm reading Bench correctly, this chip should benchmark like an i7 970 with those two extra cores, if we hit 3.2 GHz like I think we will.

Good performance numbers for the money involved. Looks like it should whip my 8150 and at a price where I can flip my 8150 setup and nearly break even.

Hard numbers aren't easy to come by for this config. I'd love to see some performance data once you have it sorted out.

 

[gbeirn]

If I'm reading Bench correctly, this chip should benchmark like an i7 970 with those two extra cores, if we hit 3.2 GHz like I think we will.

Good performance numbers for the money involved. Looks like it should whip my 8150 and at a price where I can flip my 8150 setup and nearly break even.

They have a 16x multiplier and best info I can Google looks like you can set it up to 18x due to it's 2 turbo bins. If your board can do 200 BLCK, you should be able to get anywhere from 3.2GHz-3.6GHz. Most likely our motherboards will be the limiting factor here, not the chips.

 

[TerryMathews]

Hard numbers aren't easy to come by for this config. I'd love to see some performance data once you have it sorted out.

Will do. I'm going to have some comparisons run between my 8150 rig and this one.

They have a 16x multiplier and best info I can Google looks like you can set it up to 18x due to it's 2 turbo bins. If your board can do 200 BLCK, you should be able to get anywhere from 3.2GHz-3.6GHz. Most likely our motherboards will be the limiting factor here, not the chips.

TBH I'm not 100% on how the turbo bins work, I haven't had an Intel system since the Netburst era. Assuming you are right, I got one of the best x58 overclocking boards and an 850w PSU so I should be able to run it up pretty far. I think this might end up being one of those crazy performance values.

 

[aigomorla]

Oh, I don't have one. If you read my post again I was saying I would be interested in picking one up to play with. I'm running a Xeon in my Bloodrage but it's a W3520, so the Bloodrage doesn't balk at Xeon chips but I don't know about a 32nm 6 core. If I had to guess one way or another though, I'd say it would work...6 core Gulftowns do. I'd make sure you are running the P11 BIOS though before trying it, I don't remember at which point they updated to support Xeon and Gulftowns.

A quick search turned up someone having an engineering sample X5670 Westmere working.

ALL XEON CHIPS WILL WORK ON LGA1366
This is B4 intel got PMS at our overclocking and gimped us across platforms.
So u dont have to worry very much on the LGA1366.

As long as ur bios has the microcode update it will work.
Ive even booted on 2xqpi chips on 1xqpi boards. (Gainestown... not Bloomfield)

Ive run just about almost every Xeon possible on my Asus, Giggy & classified when i was a tester / reviewer.
(my favorite 3... well... eVGA not so much so more on boards since shimano left... shimano was the designer of the classified + SR2)

W3580 / W3520 / X5580 (very limited overclocking tho) ... and Several Gulftowns.
You guys see why these new platforms now annoy me with class separation? :\

 

[Dave3000]

What would be the point in buying an i7-3910k if it is going to be a 6-core but only 3GHz. Most likely an i7-4770k would be almost as fast as a 6-core SB-E running at 3GHz, including turbo boost, in multithreaded apps and much better in current gaming. Wouldn't it make more sense for Intel to lower the price of their 3930k to around $400 and skip the 3910k?

 

[crashtech]

I don't suppose they want old Sandy Bridge chips competing with their new offerings, so maybe a 3910K makes sense as a way to sell SB Xeons that don't make the cut, without taking away from their new stuff.

 

[TerryMathews]

What would be a good benchmark or set of? I'll run anything if it'd freely available or I already own it.

 

[YBS1]

What would be a good benchmark or set of? I'll run anything if it'd freely available or I already own it.

Cool, when you get it together and if your motherboard can pull off ~210-215bclk (assuming the chip can of course) I'd like to see what it could do at 3.7-3.8GHz in the Handbrake benchmark thread going on in here as that's mainly what I use my lga1366 pc for is encoding. I'm thinking it would be faster than my W3520@4.2 but I don't know if it would be enough to be at all worthwhile.

 

[jihe]

Woah, looks like someone's ditching a lot of servers. NSA must be due for an upgrade.

I heard it is facebook upgrading their servers. Pity good cheap x58 boards are hard to come by, so this is only worthwhile if you already have an x58 setup.

 

[crashtech]

Odd to me that a massive upgrade would be executed just ahead of the IB-E launch. Maybe they are helping Intel clean out excess inventory, lol.

 

[TerryMathews]

Odd to me that a massive upgrade would be executed just ahead of the IB-E launch. Maybe they are helping Intel clean out excess inventory, lol.

Executed ahead of a retail IB-E launch. As massive as Facebook is, they may have bought Intel's entire capacity of IB-E up front and that's why the product hasn't retail launched yet.

 

[crashtech]

Executed ahead of a retail IB-E launch. As massive as Facebook is, they may have bought Intel's entire capacity of IB-E up front and that's why the product hasn't retail launched yet.

That would be a juicy bit of news, if true. You'd think something like that would have leaked by now?

 

[TerryMathews]

That would be a juicy bit of news, if true. You'd think something like that would have leaked by now?

I don't. And the reason I don't is that we don't know what Facebook was running before.

Someone has said maybe these L5639s came out of their servers, with no source to cite. Prior to that, I had no idea what Facebook was operating on, and technically we still don't.

 

[aigomorla]

Someone has said maybe these L5639s came out of their servers, with no source to cite. Prior to that, I had no idea what Facebook was operating on, and technically we still don't.

APPLE is trying to go NOMNOMNOMNOM....
since we weren't faster... were gonna assimulate and make u guys late on your original supporter!
resistance is futile! We are APPLE!

its an APPLE conspiracy i tell you!!!

(sarcasm... however i wouldnt be suprised if apple did gobble up a majority of IB-E for their mac pro's.)

And this cpu kinda would fit a MAC pro style...

 

[crashtech]

I love conspiracy theories.

 

[aigomorla]

lol... i love conspiracy theories too

well facebook stock did finally reach IPO price... so maybe they did a refresh on all their cloud servers.

This cpu is most likely a cloud server CPU... more so then a full blown workhorse due to its lower clock.

However its still so much easier just to blame APPLE.

 

[Makaveli]

lol... i love conspiracy theories too

well facebook stock did finally reach IPO price... so maybe they did a refresh on all their cloud servers.

This cpu is most likely a cloud server CPU... more so then a full blown workhorse due to its lower clock.

However its still so much easier just to blame APPLE.

Yup I heard that tim cook was using a weegie board and jobs told him from the grave to do it so its all apple's fault.

 

[blackened23]

edit: nevermind

 

[Tsavo]

I have it on good authority that all the IB-E allocation are going into the iPhone 5 and iPad 5.

Doubters gonna doubt, and all that...but this comes from high up within the company.

 

[blackened23]

Did a joke fly over my head? I shouldn't post without reading an entire page for context. Oops.

 

[crashtech]

@blackened23: Why so serious?

PC guy here, but I'd love me one of those new Mac Pros regardless. It's a paradigm shift, probably about the coolest thing I've seen for the desktop, ever.

 

[TerryMathews]

Oh jeez, Apple hatred.

Don't like Apple? Vote with your wallet. It's just too bad that they have by far the best ultra thin computer on the market in the rMBP and the best tablet (IMO), while the likes of Dell, HP, etc are more concerned with bottom dollar garbage machines with garbage screens to match with low resolutions. Yawn. I know, though, if you like Windows you're obligated to hate Apple. And wintel users are obligated to post rants about them whether warranted or not. Whatevah.

By the way, Apple uses Xeon processors in Mac Pros, they will not use IB-E.

Wow. I've heard of half cocked. Is this no cocked?

 

[blackened23]

Yeah. I definitely replied without reading the entire page for context. My badskies.