Octocore Sandy Bridge (Intel LGA 20XX) 2011

[Markfw]

It's not the processor you get for gaming either.

You get this for one of two reasons:

#1. You want the fastest thing around.

or

#2. You do a lot of photo/video editing.

Or you do anything that uses a lot of horsepower to crunch !




(F@H)

 

[ehume]

Meh. What good is a hyperspeed hyperthreaded cpu cluster that you can't overclock? Where's the fun in that?

 

[bryanW1995]

You're right, this isn't the processor you get for browsing the web

unless you want to browse really, really fast.

 

[Kakkoii]

I don't understand the reasoning behind 2 logical cores per actual core. What is the benefit from that? Seems like all it would do is trick older programs into only using a single core, because it sees it as 2.

Because it allows for double the amount of threads to be executed per core. Increasing performance. Whether you only have 1 physical core, or 6.

 

[Scali]

I don't understand the reasoning behind 2 logical cores per actual core. What is the benefit from that?

x86 code is very inefficient by nature.
A lot of the time, execution units are sitting idle, because there aren't enough instructions for them to process. All instructions are waiting for other instructions to complete (dependencies).

So by using two logical cores, you can feed two independent instruction streams to one set of execution units, and make more efficient use of your physical core.

It's quite common practice in the server world. Both IBM and Sun have been using this for years. And on a larger scale too... like having 4 or even 8 logical cores on one physical core.

 

[taltamir]

why?

because an xbox uses it?

now when did consoles get upgrades like this b4 pc's did post year 2k?

he is referring to so many "A" games today being console ports...

 

[cbn]

This.

Until the consoles have more cores, games wont use them.

I thought consoles did have more cores than PC since 2006? I have been under the impression PS3 has 7 cores (6 for games plus one core for the OS).

 

[Ben90]

I thought consoles did have more cores than PC since 2006? I have been under the impression PS3 has 7 cores (6 for games plus one core for the OS).

I don't know if that really counts. You can't just port Cell optimized code to x86 with a compiler. Thats a reason why the PS3 didn't really have that many games at first compaired to the other systems. It was a total PITA to program for the PS3.

 

[taltamir]

I thought consoles did have more cores than PC since 2006? I have been under the impression PS3 has 7 cores (6 for games plus one core for the OS).

the xbox 360 has 3 cores @ 3.2ghz of powerPC architecture.
The PS3 has 1 serious out of order core (CPU like), and 7 tiny in order cores (atom like). Also PowerPC based.

for all its faults, x86 is much faster than powerPC. And it doesn't take all that much to match or even exceed the capacity of the xbox360 or the PS3.

 

[Acanthus]

I thought consoles did have more cores than PC since 2006? I have been under the impression PS3 has 7 cores (6 for games plus one core for the OS).

6 garbage cores that are specialized and one real core.

Cell is "7 cores" as much as a GTX480 is "480 cores."

For all intents and purposes, Cell is a single core PPC with some specialized tasks offloaded (like physics, music, sound, some other small overhead tasks that can be streamed).

The 360 is a triple core PowerPC as well, which is slower than any tri-core made by AMD.

Game studios coding for consoles is the primary reason we dont have much triple/quad/more core support in the vast majority of games.

 

[solofly]

How soon can I buy one...?

 

[secretanchitman]

definitely am waiting to upgrade my parents desktop to this. looks so effing awesome.

 

[extra]

Now that's more like it, screw that 1155 crap. I've gotta build one of these--time to start saving...I want a 2011 box and a bulldozer box. lol