Core i7 LAUNCH Pushed forward: 11/03/08

myocardia

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2003
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Haha, "per some dude on XS forums". That's damned near an official announcement, isn't it?:D Man, it really sucks not having any actual news to dicuss, doesn't it?

Originally posted by: Denithor
So, when will you start upgrading your MetaTrader crunchers, IDC?

I have the feeling he may have learned his lesson with being an early adopter with his ~$4,000 QX6700 system. IIRC, he paid $1,700 for the processor, $500 for the motherboard, $6-800 for the 4GB of RAm, and that didn't include the ~$1,000 for the phase change cooler.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
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Originally posted by: myocardia
Haha, "per some dude on XS forums". That's damned near an official announcement, isn't it?:D Man, it really sucks not having any actual news to dicuss, doesn't it?

Originally posted by: Denithor
So, when will you start upgrading your MetaTrader crunchers, IDC?

I have the feeling he may have learned his lesson with being an early adopter with his ~$4,000 QX6700 system. IIRC, he paid $1,700 for the processor, $500 for the motherboard, $6-800 for the 4GB of RAm, and that didn't include the ~$1,000 for the phase change cooler.

Yeah, but it's only 1K to get into a Nehalem build (assuming you don't get hit with MSRP markup).

$300 CPU + $350 MB + $350 RAM (~6GB) = ~$1000

Sound's fun to me; especially for those that may have been waiting to uprade and have a decent GPU plus other parts already. It's only really about a $500 price premium over a C2Q build - $200 CPU + $200 MB + $100-150 RAM (4-8GB)...
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
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hehe, you guys have good memories.

Yeah that first QX6700 system was a doozy. Nearly $10k when she was all done.

$1.5k on the areca raid card, $1k on dual 4GB IRAM drives, $1k on pointlessly fancy shmancy Mushkin redline 4Gb DDR2-1000, another $1k on an inline UPS (didn't want my phase investment crashing and dying on a power hickup).

Mind you it was all aimed at speed, uptime, and somewhat mission critical aspects. And it was worth it for the timing involved and where my business was at back then. Were it 2006 again then I'd do it again, but I don't need that kind of firepower concentrated in one box anymore.

None of the aggregate performance needs have gone away in the past two years, I've just gotten a little more sophisticated in how I manage and address the risks.

Speed for example was addressed by migrating away from a single super-duper overclocked computer (4GHz QX6700 was pretty helpful for making money Q4'06) to a farm of five slower 3.3GHz quads. I get more done per unit time with the extra quads but it took me time upfront (about 6 months) to program everything I needed so my system would work when distributed across a course grained cluster like that.

Uptime was addressed by going with parallel systems instead of pressing high-dollar components into a single-box to reduce fail rates. Why pay $50 for a single good fan with low MTBF (but you are still dead if the fan dies) when you can buy 5 fans for $10 with much lower MTBF and survive even if two or three fans die before replacement. Same idea with Raid5 and Raid6 of course.

At any rate Nehalem won't be practical for a business upgrade for my metatrader crunchers until the upfront costs become cost competitive with the power consumption savings and performance gains relative to my Q6600's. For example if I can replace all 5 Q6600 quads with say just 3 Nehalems and get the same amount (or more) work done while saving enough electrical bill over the course of a 2-3yr projection then I can see the argument.

Incidentally because of my initial impressions of Nehalem I don't foresee me replacing my Q6600's until Westmere comes out. The performance/watt of nehalem just doesn't push it across the threshold for my situation.

And yes I am totally bummed out by this because I really would love to have no argument against me buying a Nehalem. But buying an i7 system for hobby purposes *might* have merit depending on whether anyone ships a 9-dimm mobo (that is ATX form factor) that I can populate with 2GB dimms and create a superior ramdrive to the one I have setup now.
 

myocardia

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2003
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Originally posted by: Idontcare
And yes I am totally bummed out by this because I really would love to have no argument against me buying a Nehalem. But buying an i7 system for hobby purposes *might* have merit depending on whether anyone ships a 9-dimm mobo (that is ATX form factor) that I can populate with 2GB dimms and create a superior ramdrive to the one I have setup now.

You might be a bit better off buying 4x4GB of DDR2, although honestly, it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun.:) BTW, I had forgotten about your dual IRAM drives.


edit: Nevermind, you're running P35 boards, aren't you? It seems that only P45 & X48 boards are handling 4x4GB, without choking.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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*trying to escape unharmed from the sharks in this post*

:X

OBR... heheh... he said NDA.

NDA and launches are a bit different. :T

u guys are probably dying the see the other side of the picture on the chip i was showing off in high res. :)

actually i think your dying even more to see what numbers i can pull from that chip. :p
 

myocardia

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Jun 21, 2003
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Originally posted by: aigomorla
actually i think your dying even more to see what numbers i can pull from that chip. :p

I'm willing to bet that there isn't a chip out there that can hang with it, when it comes to folding proteins. Would that be a good guess?
 

aigomorla

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Sep 28, 2005
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Originally posted by: myocardia
Originally posted by: aigomorla
actually i think your dying even more to see what numbers i can pull from that chip. :p

I'm willing to bet that there isn't a chip out there that can hang with it, when it comes to folding proteins. Would that be a good guess?

with 8 simulatanous threads off 1 chip what do you think? :p
 

myocardia

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2003
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Originally posted by: WaitingForNehalem
Well this confirms it! I can not wait! :D

You shouldn't be able to wait. I've upgraded probably six times since you have, if not more.:)
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: myocardia
I have the feeling he may have learned his lesson with being an early adopter with his ~$4,000 QX6700 system.

I just remembered the one major lesson-learned with my jumping in on this system, which is why I absolutely won't do this ever ever again, was the motherboard.

I jumped into Kentsfield with the $500 Striker Extreme 680i and while it served me well because I slowly but eventually figured out how to set everything sooo conservatively that my system was stable 24x7 for nearly a full year, that motherboard blew chunks compared to the $250 x38 P5E WS Pro that I migrated to.

But this wasn't so much a motherboard issue as it was a chipset issue. The 680i chipset had problems that just never went away no matter who tried to use it. I knew there must have been something rotten in Denmark with the Striker Extreme when months and months went by and Anandtech never did a full review of the board, nor any other high traffic site with a reputation to protect.

So even if I were super excited to buy an i7 system asap, I'd wait until the early x58 chipset LGA1366 mobos were fully vetted by the standard reviewers including Gary and his Anandtech employer.

The second lesson learned, and really this is just an observation that anyone can pickup on, is that the time-zero retail release stepping is always eventually replaced with a much better performing (power consumption and OC'ability wise) stepping. B3 vs. G0. C0 vs. E0.

If Nehalem was in my future you can bet I'd wait the 3-6 months to pickup the stepping that is probably being validated and taped-out at Intel right this very minute (which means silicon in the channel in 3-4 months).