Dual Intel I7?

[RadiclDreamer]

Does anyone know if it will be possible to do dual I7 cpus? Or is there going to be a Xeon line based on the same architecture coming out in the next 1-1.5 months?

 

[alcoholbob]

You mean like skulltrail? They'd have to have a dual CPU board for i7 first...

 

[Lonyo]

Considering Nehalem is pretty much made for servers, yes, they will have a Xeon version.
There are also rumours that there will be a 2 socket board, since the X58 chipset is supposedly just a server chipset used on a desktop board (IIRC) and will support 2 CPU's.

Whether they will appear soon is another matter entirely.

 

[faxon]

the question i have is why in the name of god do you NEED 2 I7 CPUs in a desktop system? 2 8 core nehalems will equal 32 virtual cores with SMT, then once you overclock the shit out of it you could probably outperform some enterprise class mid range server systems with a setup like that. would be nucking futs for F@H though! cant wait to see someone make a rig with that + a few cell processor add in cards running F@H in 1 rig

 

[zsdersw]

Just so we're clear, the 8-core version is a little further off into the future than the "ordinary" 4-core version.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: faxon
the question i have is why in the name of god do you NEED 2 I7 CPUs in a desktop system? 2 8 core nehalems will equal 32 virtual cores with SMT, then once you overclock the shit out of it you could probably outperform some enterprise class mid range server systems with a setup like that. would be nucking futs for F@H though! cant wait to see someone make a rig with that + a few cell processor add in cards running F@H in 1 rig

Medical Imaging workstation

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer

Originally posted by: faxon
the question i have is why in the name of god do you NEED 2 I7 CPUs in a desktop system? 2 8 core nehalems will equal 32 virtual cores with SMT, then once you overclock the shit out of it you could probably outperform some enterprise class mid range server systems with a setup like that. would be nucking futs for F@H though! cant wait to see someone make a rig with that + a few cell processor add in cards running F@H in 1 rig

Medical Imaging workstation

Bell Rang.... Did you happen to see if your application is supported by CUDA? Scientists and Researchers are going full blare towards CUDA and trying to port as many scientific/medical imaging programs with the CUDA SDK. Maybe you should check this out before you spend a fortune on a Dual Nehalem/Xeon system? Just a heads up.

 

[ch33zw1z]

You can be sure they'll be multiple CPU boards, maybe not for Desktop use however.. with Multi-Core CPUs, why would you need one? Only the heavy usage production servers would be utilizing that much processing power anyways.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
You can be sure they'll be multiple CPU boards, maybe not for Desktop use however.. with Multi-Core CPUs, why would you need one? Only the heavy usage production servers would be utilizing that much processing power anyways.

Most servers these days require less power than most workstations. how much CPU power do you need to host web, serve up files, print serve (heavy traffic database servers excluded of course) as opposed to crunching medical data? Ideally, the workstation should be as fast as possible. Some of these calculations can take weeks, depending on the app, and data file size.
If users terminal into a mainframe or a large cluster to process their work unit, that is a bit different, but today, I'd say most of the actual work is done on the heaviest workstations configurable. So I have seen first hand, why this guy may need the most cores possible in his desktop. And why I also suggested he looked to see if his app was supported by CUDA. Maybe he can run it on 3 GTX280's. Who knows.

I used to work at one of the worlds largest laboratories (2000 - 2005) and users processed data one of two ways, depending on the app.

1. Locally on a brute force configured workstation.
2. Remotely across the LAN to a Linux Cluster, or UNIX 8 core system (multiple).

Option one was more preferable because of network traffic and work load scheduling. When the clusters were weighed down, people would complain how long things took and found their workstations could do it a bit faster. We are talking mapping the human genome here, and cancer DNA research. Heavy stuff.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
You can be sure they'll be multiple CPU boards, maybe not for Desktop use however.. with Multi-Core CPUs, why would you need one? Only the heavy usage production servers would be utilizing that much processing power anyways.

Most servers these days require less power than most workstations. how much CPU power do you need to host web, serve up files, print serve (heavy traffic database servers excluded of course) as opposed to crunching medical data? Ideally, the workstation should be as fast as possible. Some of these calculations can take weeks, depending on the app, and data file size.
If users terminal into a mainframe or a large cluster to process their work unit, that is a bit different, but today, I'd say most of the actual work is done on the heaviest workstations configurable. So I have seen first hand, why this guy may need the most cores possible in his desktop. And why I also suggested he looked to see if his app was supported by CUDA. Maybe he can run it on 3 GTX280's. Who knows.

I used to work at one of the worlds largest laboratories (2000 - 2005) and users processed data one of two ways, depending on the app.

1. Locally on a brute force configured workstation.
2. Remotely across the LAN to a Linux Cluster, or UNIX 8 core system (multiple).

Option one was more preferable because of network traffic and work load scheduling. When the clusters were weighed down, people would complain how long things took and found their workstations could do it a bit faster. We are talking mapping the human genome here, and cancer DNA research. Heavy stuff.

Thanks for the info and clearing up what I meant by heavy usage servers..I was working on a server like this a couple weeks ago, had a bad IO board. 4 quad xeons, 16GB of RAM, I was impressed

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer

Originally posted by: faxon
the question i have is why in the name of god do you NEED 2 I7 CPUs in a desktop system? 2 8 core nehalems will equal 32 virtual cores with SMT, then once you overclock the shit out of it you could probably outperform some enterprise class mid range server systems with a setup like that. would be nucking futs for F@H though! cant wait to see someone make a rig with that + a few cell processor add in cards running F@H in 1 rig

Medical Imaging workstation

Bell Rang.... Did you happen to see if your application is supported by CUDA? Scientists and Researchers are going full blare towards CUDA and trying to port as many scientific/medical imaging programs with the CUDA SDK. Maybe you should check this out before you spend a fortune on a Dual Nehalem/Xeon system? Just a heads up.

F@H supports CUDA -- much much faster crunching than CPU-based clients. You can get as many ppd from a $50 9600GSO on a cheap X2 or e5200 as you will from two SMP clients running on the fastest >$1000 C2Q processor. I7 isn't going to change this picture. I think going forward we are going to see more and more applications using CUDA (or whatever coding language becomes the default for GPU processing).

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
You can be sure they'll be multiple CPU boards, maybe not for Desktop use however.. with Multi-Core CPUs, why would you need one? Only the heavy usage production servers would be utilizing that much processing power anyways.

Try rendering a cat scan sometime and you will see why its needed

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Considering Nehalem is pretty much made for servers, yes, they will have a Xeon version.

This. Just like every other CPU architecture of the whole decade.

Folks who think Intel's world revolves around gamers and overclockers seriously need to take the blinders off! They make considerably more money from Xeon products than desktop ones, and this will absolutely be true of Nehalem.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
Does anyone know if it will be possible to do dual I7 cpus?

Regardless of possibilities, having dual i7 on one ATX-sized board will be an engineering feat! Then again, Skulltrail was EATX.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
Does anyone know if it will be possible to do dual I7 cpus?

its called gainstown.

And no, i7's cant be dualed because of there pathway.

The gainstown has 2x the pathway a normal bloomfield has.

So, a gainstown can work in a bloomfield board, but not the otherway around.

So a skulltrail i7 would need to be new processors based on gainstown and not bloomsfield.

Im getting a gainstown this week, so if lucky a board should follow from sponsors, but as for grabbign a i7 965 and grabbing another one in the future line, im sorry, but as of this moment, i highly doubt it.

Which is why i gave up getting another i7 965, and isntead i asked sponsor for 2 gainstown cpu's. :T

This could change, but this is what i heard, and as of this moment im not bound to NDA on it, so i can talk to you guys on what i heard.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Foxery

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Considering Nehalem is pretty much made for servers, yes, they will have a Xeon version.

This. Just like every other CPU architecture of the whole decade.

Folks who think Intel's world revolves around gamers and overclockers seriously need to take the blinders off! They make considerably more money from Xeon products than desktop ones, and this will absolutely be true of Nehalem.

which is why nehalem is built to increase IO operations, giving large performance boost for databases and the like, but tiny if any to games.

 

[waffleironhead]

I have a spot in my heart for dual processor systems ever since my asus p2b-d days(still have it btw). Heres hoping dual socket motherboards become more mainstream.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: waffleironhead
I have a spot in my heart for dual processor systems ever since my asus p2b-d days(still have it btw). Heres hoping dual socket motherboards become more mainstream.

yeah me too.

I had a harper system up, but i had to take it down.

However i always keep this guy for sentimental reasons. [i may need to take it down soon tho].

http://i125.photobucket.com/al...aigomorla/IMG_1112.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/al...aigomorla/IMG_0013.jpg

Ahhh.. love SMP systems.

 

[BasariStudios]

the question i have is why in the name of god do you NEED 2 I7 CPUs in a desktop system?

I know i am new on the forum and first of all HI to all but...
Try running few Audio plugins and few Samplers and you'll
see why even 320 Cores wouldnt be enough for me. I have
a 32GB MacPro and RAM is still not enough sometimes, some
people find it funny. A Dual I7 920 i can probably freeze it in
like 30 minutes, there will be no juice left in it, just using it
on a regular basis, nothing NASA or Scientific.

 

[ilkhan]

So build a 4 way quad core machine. Your needs are fairly unique.

Also, this thread is a year old. We know what the dual nehalem chips are, they're the xeon 5500 series and they've been available for 6 months (and have heavily outsold i7, as expected).

 

[aigomorla]

Lind:

Intel 5520SC
Intel Gainestown x 2 cpu
Oh and a Supermicro SAS controller.

Thought i should show u guys what a dual i7 gainestown looks like. :T
Thats also how a MAC looks like.

Why do i need one?
Enterprise is L33T!!! LOL...

Ok dont get the pitch forks out now please..

 

[faxon]

/stabs aigo and runs with his stuff

 

[Gillbot]

isn't that i9, not i7?

 

[aigomorla]

isn't that i9, not i7?

no if it was dual gulftown's id have people knocking at my door right now.

 

[daw123]

Aigo, is that for tweedledum and tweedledee?

They're 2x W5580 if I remember correctly.

Haven't you had them for 6 months or so?

I thought you would be on to Gulftown by now