Intel to discontinue the cheap i7's 920 & 940

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: alyarb
I don't know what you're talking about. Intel has not announced any 32nm dual core parts and all of the 45nm dual cores have been cancelled.

http://www.dailytech.com/Intel...rinks/article14225.htm

I wouldn't worry about Neelie Kroes either until there is a court order that says intel has to pay. Until then, she's the chick holding a slot-1 processor in 2009.

http://www.reuters.com/resourc...P00_RTROPTP_0_EU-INTEL

I believe that Intel must front up the cash into an escrowed account right now, even with an appeal pending.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Originally posted by: Shaq

It's obvious the late-early adopters (920 came out later than the 965) got too good a deal and Intel wanted to stop it. I was pondering this very question a couple of days ago as to why Intel would allow us to have such great hardware at a cheap price. I don't claim any responsibility for this decision though. lol Heck....I might buy an extra motherboard and 920 D0 as they may jump up in price because of this. Now, who knows what Intel will do to Sandy Bridge to squeeze more money out of us. There may not be a great deal like we have today.

The reason could be not to cannibalize Lynnfield sales. Core i7 takes only 1% of the total marketshare right now, which is far less than 10% of Core 2 Quads and 20-something of AMD. Performance is there for Core i7, but not profits, and for gamers the performance advantage is where they don't care.

To a vast majority, Lynnfield is much more attractive than than Bloomfield. Extremely low percentage of people use SLI, and most use single GPU setups, and Lynnfield will be BETTER than "high-end" Core i7 at that. It'll probably cost less on the motherboard front, which will have more attractive features like Braidwood.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=3448&p=5

According to the above, Triple Channel offers practically 2% max in applications compared to Dual Channel. To the target market, Lynnfield is going to end up faster than Bloomfield.

 

[taltamir]

last week i bought a used q9400 for 165$ on ebay... i sold my Q6600 for 160$ today (free shipping though). power difference will be at least 10$ a year so i am actually gonna make a "profit" from the upgrade...

ill probably upgrade to a used i5 when they are selling i17 to people... L)

Although, I am tremendously tempted by the nice new SSDs from indilinx and intel.

 

[dennilfloss]

cheap i7's 920 & 940

I was pondering this very question a couple of days ago as to why Intel would allow us to have such great hardware at a cheap price.

Does not compute...

 

[Deadtrees]

Originally posted by: OILFIELDTRASH
alyarb Wow what an exclusive club. How do I join? Oh I know. Pay top dollar on a processor, mobo, triple channel memory and for what? Faster video encoding times and being able to run 3 gtx295's(which I refuse to pay for as well). Your right core i7 is performance king in cpu. I recently got a ssd and found out that by far the hard drive was the biggest bottleneck in my system. I am willing to wait a few more seconds on the most demanding applications. 99.8% of the time for what I really use my computer for I will see no difference from your core i7 and my qxxx. By the way i5 will offer almost identical performance so much so that i7 pretty much got dropped.

:wine: Heres to my next i5 rig.

If you don't see any difference, it's all good. However, there're people out there who do see great differences. For those people, i7 is good.
In my case, SSD wouldn't benefit me much and I find it crazy expensive. Maybe, I can borrow your words:

'alyarb Wow what an exclusive club. How do I join? Oh I know. Pay top dollar on a single device called SSD? Your right SSD is performance king in drive market. I recently got a i7 and found out that by far the CPU was the biggest bottleneck in my system. I am willing to wait a few more seconds on the most demanding applications. 99.8% of the time for what I really use my computer for I will see no difference from your SSD and my HDD.'

That sounds dumb, doesn't it?

Anyway, upon checking cureent prices of i7 setup, I decided sell Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz setup for i7 setup until this news broke out. Well, I'm not in hurry to buy i7 setup so I'll pass but for those who need it, it's more than good enough. In fact, when I was setting up my friend's Q9550 system, I realized the price difference between Q9550 setup to i7 one was only $60: if someone is in need of a new computer, i7 still would be the best deal. For those of people who have been using it, it was a good decision because it provided the best performance in that given time. Don't we all know that there's always better thing coming out in the furture and the best(worst) way to buy a computer is getting it right before you die?

 

[aka1nas]

i7 will still be the platform of choice for the high-end as i5 won't have enough on-die PCI-E lanes to accommodate SLI/CF. For those of you who would never be interested in such a setup, than i5 will be a steal.

For those of us who "need" that feature set, then we'll just have to pay the premium and pony up for the more expensive chips. Hex-core is still coming exclusively on the desktop for the i7 platform next year, and I probably will upgrade to that eventually.

 

[2March]

Originally posted by: Shaq
I fail to see why early adopters are "screwed" by this news. 1) We got an extreme high-end motherboard/CPU for under $500. 2) We can upgrade to G300 SLI without worrying about a PCI-E bottleneck which the P55 will assuredly have unless the motherboard manufacturers add more PCI-E lanes. Less PCI-E latency vs. more bandwidth...we'll see about that one. But if X58 is now "high-end" it hints at the winner here. 3) We get triple channel memory. It only adds 2-5% but it is a plus. 4) We have the opportunity to upgrade to a 6-core 32nm CPU next year. But now, because of this news, that 6-core chip is looking to be $1000 and no cheaper slower variants for the 1366 socket.

It's obvious the late-early adopters (920 came out later than the 965) got too good a deal and Intel wanted to stop it. I was pondering this very question a couple of days ago as to why Intel would allow us to have such great hardware at a cheap price. I don't claim any responsibility for this decision though. lol Heck....I might buy an extra motherboard and 920 D0 as they may jump up in price because of this. Now, who knows what Intel will do to Sandy Bridge to squeeze more money out of us. There may not be a great deal like we have today.

I totally agree with you. When I bought my system I was originally going to get a cheap upgrade but you soon find out that If you want a quad with a lot of cache it was going to be more than that anyway. The 9550 was 300 euro's, a good OC board 200 and the difference between DDR2/3 close to nothing. I ended up paying about 50 euro's more for the i7.

Sure, if you only use you system for gaming... but then you don't need a Q9X50 either. I use mine for Flight Simulator X but I also use Max8 and do a lot of packing and unpacking of large files. With that kind of work this system is in a league of it's own.

The 920/940's have all the specs the EE's have, that's what got me to buy this system. I can't believe they sold these chips for that money, and I'm really happy I got one now that they are going to discontinue it. What buggs me right now is the future of socket 1366. Intel promised longevity but what will happen now?

Anyway, when the 6-core Nehalems arrive, who knows what will happen. We just have to wait and see.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: OILFIELDTRASH
Zensal that pretty much sums it up. Very well put. I can only hope AMD comes out with a cpu that will compete with the i7's so intel can't make us squeel like pigs.

Just buy the PHII. Buy what you want. Intels just saying. If you want top performance your going to pay . Intel is also sort of saying . If you pay that extra . Well make sure cheaper setups won't overtake yours . Now to me that sounds like justice. It sounds RIGHT. It seems to be as it should be. But I am sure many will disagree. As I said this will piss many off.

Alot of debate about this. Hay wait till ya see Clarksdale perform . You will all understand than , I didn't think intel would attack with it . But they are . EU going to fine INTEL again. Intel is pissed to be taken such a chance . Abold move indeed.

Intel is really doing a bad job with the 2 core product. If I were intel this product would also be XS part . @ $500. Unlocked . It would rattle everones sabers. LOL. EU would follow up with another fine of about 5 billion . Reason over innovating and killing competion with unfairly priced silly . LOL.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

cheap i7's 920 & 940

I was pondering this very question a couple of days ago as to why Intel would allow us to have such great hardware at a cheap price.

Does not compute...

He is a fanboy of Intel no matter what anyone says.

 

[2March]

There is going to be a run on these chips now. I was thinking about trying to get my hands on a D0 and sell my C0 say 6 months from now...

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1

Originally posted by: OILFIELDTRASH
Zensal that pretty much sums it up. Very well put. I can only hope AMD comes out with a cpu that will compete with the i7's so intel can't make us squeel like pigs.

Just buy the PHII. Buy what you want. Intels just saying. If you want top performance your going to pay . Intel is also sort of saying . If you pay that extra . Well make sure cheaper setups won't overtake yours . Now to me that sounds like justice. It sounds RIGHT. It seems to be as it should be. But I am sure many will disagree. As I said this will piss many off.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Intel is doing exactly what it must do in order to be acting within fiducial responsibility to its shareholders...maximizing it's EPS.

Any public company really only has one product (their stock ticker) and the real customers are the would-be buyers of that product. Intel's management exist to increase the value of their sole product, INTC, so that existing owners of this product can resell it for a higher price to would-be customers.

All this stuff about processors and end-users are just the side-show, if Intel thought they could deliver better EPS and increase the value of their product INTC better by selling tires instead of CPU's that is exactly where their management would take the business.

Contemplating this is of little value unless you are trying to figure out the motivations of a company for eliminating products, etc. Then it becomes quite relevant to the analysis to properly comprehend the function and purpose of the business from an executive decision maker's POV. We aren't the customer, we are merely end-users, the business customer is DELL, Newegg, etc...but the actual customer is the shareholder.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: 2March
There is going to be a run on these chips now. I was thinking about trying to get my hands on a D0 and sell my C0 say 6 months from now...

Really . Why. Are you forgetting about the server chips that are DO. Priced great and over clock like banshee from hell moving on up. . They aren't dissappearing.

This is for the consumer market. We don't count LOL. Hay I was going to take my P4 offline and replace with PHII. But No way I can do 2 core 32nm. Cheaper and Have a world class over clocker with a WEB browser LOL. :laugh:

 

[2March]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1

Originally posted by: 2March
There is going to be a run on these chips now. I was thinking about trying to get my hands on a D0 and sell my C0 say 6 months from now...

Really . Why. Are you forgetting about the server chips that are DO. Priced great and over clock like banshee from hell moving on up. . They aren't dissappearing.

This is for the consumer market. We don't count LOL. Hay I was going to take my P4 offline and replace with PHII. But No way I can do 2 core 32nm. Cheaper and Have a world class over clocker with a WEB browser LOL. :laugh:

Crap,

There goes my plan to become incredibly rich

But these server D0's are more expensive because of the active second QPI, aren't they.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Now people talk about unfair this and that . What intel has done here really is funny. They take a cpu away from the consumers. Than they force US. To buy the server part that is = to 920 DO. Reasonably fast and great overclockers.

So it doesn't hurt us . and it doesn't hurt consumers. The funny part is How these Server parts are counted. We buy for desktopbut intel counts them as server salses just like AMD did back when. Pretty cool take market share without taking market share. LOL!

 

[Denithor]

Man there are a lot of trolls in here.

Intel has simply decided that i7 will be the highest tier chips and are going to price accordingly. If you need that level of performance you're going to pay for it.

If you need a (small) step down the i5 platform will suit your needs (and wallet) fine.

Otherwise grab a C2Q (while they last) or a PhII and be happy with saving some cash.


One question - anyone know if Intel plans to release a 32nm quad (with or without HT) for i7 anytime soon? I saw the comment from IDC about 45nm quad without HT but would prefer to get into this new architecture with the 32nm generation. (I've been much happier with the cool-running performance of my e8400 & e7200 vs my older e6400 & e4300 chips.)

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: 2March

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1

Originally posted by: 2March
There is going to be a run on these chips now. I was thinking about trying to get my hands on a D0 and sell my C0 say 6 months from now...

Really . Why. Are you forgetting about the server chips that are DO. Priced great and over clock like banshee from hell moving on up. . They aren't dissappearing.

This is for the consumer market. We don't count LOL. Hay I was going to take my P4 offline and replace with PHII. But No way I can do 2 core 32nm. Cheaper and Have a world class over clocker with a WEB browser LOL. :laugh:

Crap,

There goes my plan to become incredibly rich

But these server D0's are more expensive because of the active second QPI, aren't they.

Na the low end is pretty cheap chip. Its funny about New tech launches . Everone points here and there at little bugs . and the lack of supporting hardware. DO revision is good example. 2 months ago ya had good posters saying there would be NO revisions of Nehalem 45nm. I lol. DO is really very good. But M/B support right now sucks X58. There should be a 2 socket performance setup out by now yet none.

I try to look at each generation differantly from intel. When C2D came out I had to look at P4. That was intels backup to C2D . Not good. Than Penryn came with Merom as Back up. Better but really nothing special. Now we have Nehalem great . But its backup is penryn not the Best in this situation. But as I look forward from here . The landscape changes dramaticly. As Intel movies to 32nm . 45nm Nehalem slides into place. Bot still lacking because of low numbers. But when Nehalem 32nm movies to sandybridge 32nm . That leaves a very strong Nehalem 32nm as intels Backup low end, ranging from 1 core to 8 cores.

This will give intel a position in the market place it has never had. If AMD BD can't compete with sandy . There DONE! Its that simple . IF BD fails to win in performance AMD is over.


If Haswell is what I suspect it to be . Intel is going for the kill with sandybridge as I suspect its Intels last X86 processor in cpu class. So Intel can do the kill . Because Haswell takes them out of X86 segment. Arm NV AMD IBM Sun ect.ect ect. all have compute processors. All make cpus(NV) . No monoply with haswell making switch away from x86 decodes. If Intel has better compilers you can't yell foul AMD. It is justice if it goes as I see it . AMd wanted very much that which they stole from Intel. I like that Intel has set itself up to do the right and proper thing and jusy hand AMD the X86 market . In doing so saying . Here you wanted this we gift it to you . We know longer requirer X86 decoders as we Spent billions of dollars on our compilers threw the years and we simply can do all code without those decoders. Look at what Haswell is suppose to be .

Vector unit on die / FMA. We don't even have to wait for haswell to know . If AMD BD comes with FMA. I say it will suck big time compared to AVX with prefix of vex for SSE2.

If it does . Intel will not introduce FMA with SSE units ondie. or decoders. Look at 8 core Nehalem already using Itanic tech . FMA on die is just the completion of the uni- socket. If what I say is true . I sure would like to here the comments from around the world at that time. Its coming . MS talks openly about intels direction. They don't like it much either. But intel threw compiler tech . Software. Has thrown down the gaunlet . No one is rushing into to pick it up . Even Apple is a little put back by it all. Intel as a software giant. Thats what compilers are. Who would of thought. If you don't believe others are bitching about intels compilers . Google be your friend.

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: Zensal
Socket 1366 seems like its going to be Extreme Edition only from here on out. They are trying to keep people like us from buying the low-end parts and then OCing them up to EE speeds. They want to prevent things like the E6600 or the 920 from happening again.

I think the problem with Intel dropping the lower i7s is lack of competition from AMD.

Just Look at what AMD is doing with their Black Edition (with unlocked multi) triple core CPUs<---Apparently these have a fourth core a person might be able to unlock through certain motherboards.

Back in the socket 939 days just being able to buy a CPU with a unlocked multiplier meant big bucks but now they are even throwing this idea of being able to unlock an additional core.

 

[Zensal]

Originally posted by: Just learning
I think the problem with Intel dropping the lower i7s is lack of competition from AMD.

Just Look at what AMD is doing with their Black Edition (with unlocked multi) triple core CPUs<---Apparently these have a fourth core a person might be able to unlock through certain motherboards.

Back in the socket 939 days just being able to buy a CPU with a unlocked multiplier meant big bucks but now they are even throwing this idea of being able to unlock an additional core.

I don't believe so. It seems like the 920/940 were only going to be temporary SKUs from the start. They needed an upgrade path from Penryn but Lynnfield wasn't ready yet. Intel can't have performance parity with itself, so when Lynnfield comes out, the SKUs have to change.

LGA-1366 is only going to be for EE or bleeding edge CPUs, similar to AMD using Socket 940, but Intel is changing the game. They are making the high end architecture expensive, not just higher clockspeeds and unlocked multipliers as with former EE or BE procs. Also, I can't imagine a lower priced Gulftown is in the works.

As for the AMD tri-core, I believe it was supposed to be bad quad-core chips, but the yields are probably better then expected so they are probably just disabling the cores to sell them at that price point.

As far as the Black Edition goes, they could price them high back in the day because they had a better product then Intel. Now it's because they have to to be competitive.

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: Zensal

Originally posted by: Just learning
I think the problem with Intel dropping the lower i7s is lack of competition from AMD.

Just Look at what AMD is doing with their Black Edition (with unlocked multi) triple core CPUs<---Apparently these have a fourth core a person might be able to unlock through certain motherboards.

Back in the socket 939 days just being able to buy a CPU with a unlocked multiplier meant big bucks but now they are even throwing this idea of being able to unlock an additional core.

I don't believe so. It seems like the 920/940 were only going to be temporary SKUs from the start. They needed an upgrade path from Penryn but Lynnfield wasn't ready yet. Intel can't have performance parity with itself, so when Lynnfield comes out, the SKUs have to change.

LGA-1366 is only going to be for EE or bleeding edge CPUs, similar to AMD using Socket 940, but Intel is changing the game. They are making the high end architecture expensive, not just higher clockspeeds and unlocked multipliers as with former EE or BE procs. Also, I can't imagine a lower priced Gulftown is in the works.

As for the AMD tri-core, I believe it was supposed to be bad quad-core chips, but the yields are probably better then expected so they are probably just disabling the cores to sell them at that price point.

As far as the Black Edition goes, they could price them high back in the day because they had a better product then Intel. Now it's because they have to to be competitive.

Maybe the lower Lynfield CPUs have some parity with Core i7 920 but the P55 chipset doesn't support dual x16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. (With GT300 and RV870 coming out this will probably be very important to crossfire/SLI users as x8 PCI-E 2.0 is only equal to x16 PCI-E 1.x)

 

[Zensal]

Originally posted by: Just learning
Maybe the lower Lynfield CPUs have some parity with Core i7 920 but the P55 chipset doesn't support dual x16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. (With GT300 and RV870 coming out this will probably be very important to crossfire/SLI users as x8 PCI-E 2.0 is only equal to x16 PCI-E 1.x)

Intel had to compromise on something and they chose QPI. DMI was not fast enough for PCI-E 2.0 so they chose a direct link to the CPU. This is part of the compromise they deem acceptable for a cheaper priced platform.

And it is the Express chipset. The P45 only had x8/x8 to the MCH and it only had a 10.6 GB/s link with the CPU and 6.4 GB/s with the RAM. The P55 keeps the x8/x8 but increases the PCI-E bandwith to the full 16 GB/s to the CPU and 8.5 GB/s with the RAM. Plus the added low latency from both controllers being integrated into the CPU.

So it's not a great solution, but it is better than what we have currently, unless your using and X48 board.

 

[imported_Shaq]

Originally posted by: Just learning

Originally posted by: Zensal

Originally posted by: Just learning
I think the problem with Intel dropping the lower i7s is lack of competition from AMD.

Just Look at what AMD is doing with their Black Edition (with unlocked multi) triple core CPUs<---Apparently these have a fourth core a person might be able to unlock through certain motherboards.

Back in the socket 939 days just being able to buy a CPU with a unlocked multiplier meant big bucks but now they are even throwing this idea of being able to unlock an additional core.

I don't believe so. It seems like the 920/940 were only going to be temporary SKUs from the start. They needed an upgrade path from Penryn but Lynnfield wasn't ready yet. Intel can't have performance parity with itself, so when Lynnfield comes out, the SKUs have to change.

LGA-1366 is only going to be for EE or bleeding edge CPUs, similar to AMD using Socket 940, but Intel is changing the game. They are making the high end architecture expensive, not just higher clockspeeds and unlocked multipliers as with former EE or BE procs. Also, I can't imagine a lower priced Gulftown is in the works.

As for the AMD tri-core, I believe it was supposed to be bad quad-core chips, but the yields are probably better then expected so they are probably just disabling the cores to sell them at that price point.

As far as the Black Edition goes, they could price them high back in the day because they had a better product then Intel. Now it's because they have to to be competitive.

Maybe the lower Lynfield CPUs have some parity with Core i7 920 but the P55 chipset doesn't support dual x16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. (With GT300 and RV870 coming out this will probably be very important to crossfire/SLI users as x8 PCI-E 2.0 is only equal to x16 PCI-E 1.x)

Lynnfield won't have QPI either which may be why SLI/XFire perform much better on X58 than on the Nvidia 690 and 790 boards. Intel decreased the latency of the PCI-E by integrating 16 lanes on the Lynnfield die but took away QPI and replaced it with the much slower DMI. The P55 is supposed to add some PCI-E lanes but they will be slower than the 16 on die lanes. So with 2 G300's, 2 RV870's or 1/2 of the dual chip RV800 it will be slower. They will need 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes each for maximum performance.

People say only a select few need the X58 and SLI. If that's true then the average consumer has no need to upgrade anyway. Why purchase a much faster CPU and bottleneck it with a 9600GT? CPU's generally don't bottleneck high-end GPU's as fast as GPU's bottleneck a CPU. It takes 280 tri-SLI to come even close to reach a CPU bottleneck @ 1024X768 with an i7 @ 3.2Ghz (according to this http://www.guru3d.com/article/...-performance-review/19 ) And this is with QPI and 40 lanes of PCI-E 2.0.

And what about the quote below. Is this the end of $160 X58 motherboards?

In light of this, motherboard manufacturers have said that they're already working to adjust their X58 product lines to cater for the price range and market future LGA 1366 processors will target.

Intel had to compromise on something and they chose QPI. DMI was not fast enough for PCI-E 2.0 so they chose a direct link to the CPU. This is part of the compromise they deem acceptable for a cheaper priced platform.

And it is the Express chipset. The P45 only had x8/x8 to the MCH and it only had a 10.6 GB/s link with the CPU and 6.4 GB/s with the RAM. The P55 keeps the x8/x8 but increases the PCI-E bandwith to the full 16 GB/s to the CPU and 8.5 GB/s with the RAM. Plus the added low latency from both controllers being integrated into the CPU.

So it's not a great solution, but it is better than what we have currently, unless your using and X48 board.

Will the P55 x8/x8 be additive to the 16 on-die lanes for 2 true x16 bandwidth slots?

 

[Zensal]

Originally posted by: Shaq
Will the P55 x8/x8 be additive to the 16 on-die lanes for 2 true x16 bandwidth slots?

No, I was referring to the on-die lanes. Theoretically you could get another x4 off of the 2.0 GB/s DMI, but it is shared with USB, HDDs, etc.