Why do people get the E8500?

[BlueAcolyte]

Why? It costs as much as the future Q9350, which is about $100 more than the E8400. It only has .5 multiplier more than the E8400... What are people thinking?

 

[JAG87]

its easier to make it to 4 ghz, thats why

 

[BonzaiDuck]

JAG is probably right for intuitive common-sense, and certainly right if he or others have direct empirical experience on this.

It's intuitively sound that a quad will have a lower OC'ing potential for sheer Ghz. Some may question that logic, but it was apparent to me for an E6600 compared to the Q6600. I can't see how it would be any different for the new Penryns.

And don't ask me to explain my intuition. I think I could find my way through the explicit reasoning, though, if I had to . . . .

 

[ThePhantom]

Higher binned?

 

[tallman45]

People are thinking why pay more in power draw every hour for a Quad when a 4ghz Dual will outperform it is most instances

 

[harpoon84]

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Same reason why people paid $90 more for an E6850 instead of an E6750.

In terms of price/performance, the E8400 just blows the E8500 away.

 

[ThePhantom]

Some people aren't worried about price/performance and just want the best.

 

[nerp]

And not everyone buys a CPU with the intention of overclocking it. . .

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Not everyone overclocks.

 

[harpoon84]

Overclocking or not, it doesn't make a difference.

$266 - 3.16GHz = 11.88 MHz per $
$183 - 3.00GHz = 16.39 MHz per $

I think that explains things quite clearly.

 

[ThePhantom]

I think you're missing the point. The E8500 would still be the faster chip.

 

[Cheex]

Faster, but marginally so.

 

[JAG87]

Nobody that has brains would buy the E8500 if they aren't going to overclock it.

Its pretty silly to spend an extra 80 dollars on 160 mhz, a speed increase that you will never notice and hardly measure.

The whole point of the E8500 is the higher multiplier, period. 4000/9 = 444 FSB while 4000/8.5 = 470 FSB which is harder to achieve.

Anybody buying it for any other reason, is a door knob.

 

[ThePhantom]

You mean 4000/9.5 = 421 for the E8500 and 4000/9 = 444 for the E8400. The E8500 is higher binned and have more headroom to overclock. "To overclock" is your answer OP.

 

[covert24]

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Why??

because their moms are pairing for it so they say well hey. why not?

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Originally posted by: JAG87
Nobody that has brains would buy the E8500 if they aren't going to overclock it.

Its pretty silly to spend an extra 80 dollars on 160 mhz, a speed increase that you will never notice and hardly measure.

The whole point of the E8500 is the higher multiplier, period. 4000/9 = 444 FSB while 4000/8.5 = 470 FSB which is harder to achieve.

Anybody buying it for any other reason, is a door knob.

You forget some people have more money then sense.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp

Originally posted by: JAG87
Nobody that has brains would buy the E8500 if they aren't going to overclock it.

Its pretty silly to spend an extra 80 dollars on 160 mhz, a speed increase that you will never notice and hardly measure.

The whole point of the E8500 is the higher multiplier, period. 4000/9 = 444 FSB while 4000/8.5 = 470 FSB which is harder to achieve.

Anybody buying it for any other reason, is a door knob.

You forget some people have more money then sense.

the multis are 9.0 and 9.5

 

[JAG87]

my bad, but the same concept remains.

 

[lopri]

It does indeed pose an interesting situation with the multiplier thingy. If these chips themselves are capable of 4.0GHz for 24/7, then the burden is going to be on the motherboards. Motherboard manufacturers are no dummies, and they make many boards that do 450FSB+ with dualies these days. But they rarely tell you the internals of the MCH..

I do not have much experience with P35 boards (not to mention X38), but boards based on previous Intel chipsets tend to max out around 420~450FSB under 266 strap. Past the threshold, the board will (often without telling you) change to 333 or even 400 strap. Now, I hear that P35/X38 boards are mostly optimized for 333 strap then it could be a moot point. But if a board lets you select the straps and sets the parameters correctly per strap, then there is a dilemma, because it's probably not easy to maintain 444FSB under 266 strap. Some will do, and some will not. And the performance difference can be tangible for memory sensitive apps. (444FSB under 266 strap vs 444FSB under 333/400 strap) In this scenario, that 0.5 extra multi can be extremely handy if you want to keep the chipset tight at 266 strap @4.0GHz, since most boards will handle 420FSB under 266 strap. (except some ASUS boards that changes strap at 400FSB)

Now, 8x500 will probably be superior to 9x444 on a board optimized for 333/400 straps, but how many boards will be able to maintain 500FSB and how long? Note that chipsets are just like CPUs.. (they got their multies and base clock speed) 500FSB will put a great strain on motherboards and I'd be uncomfortable to keep 500FSB for 24/7.

Well, I guess this is really not a big deal in a grand scheme of things, but my thought anyway. I personally think the return of half-multies is beyond ridiculous. Why couldn't they give us 3.19GHz with 12 multi (or 15/16 multi with 200 base FSB would be even sweeter) instead of 3.16GHz with 9.5 multi?? I bet that the former would perform better than the latter in all counts. (OK you can OC' the latter to 3.19GHz to make even but it'll still lose) I do understand Intel's desire to sell chipsets (hell, they're even planning to mate ONE CPU with ONE chipset before FSB finally dies), but this is such a lame tactic to my eyes. I'm sure everyone also noticed over the past couple years how hasten Intel has been with FSB updates and how useless they really are, outside the competitive benchmark scenes. (200->266->333->400 in just 2 years compared to 100->133->200 in.. some forever years)

From my observations, Intel's core logic has hit its limit long time ago. (when 975X came out) Since then, it's just up'ing the clock speed of the MCH (which is FSB) at the cost of latency thanks to the improved manufacturing. Now, I can't totally dismiss the impact of quad-cores (which benefits better from higher FSB than dualies in theory), but even then I am not so sure its benefit is enough to justify looser straps.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3169&p=5

I think the end results are highly dependent on individual boards and BIOS programming.

 

[dmens]

Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck
JAG is probably right for intuitive common-sense, and certainly right if he or others have direct empirical experience on this.

It's intuitively sound that a quad will have a lower OC'ing potential for sheer Ghz. Some may question that logic, but it was apparent to me for an E6600 compared to the Q6600. I can't see how it would be any different for the new Penryns.

And don't ask me to explain my intuition. I think I could find my way through the explicit reasoning, though, if I had to . . . .

quads generate more heat so they will not overclock as well since they are on a more restrictive thermal environment than duals. so your intuition has plenty of scientific backing.

with more exotic cooling solutions where thermals become less of a concern, quads will still probably have less frequency margin. they most likely have more severe power delivery droop issues to the gate level and less IO (FSB) margin. that is all i can think of at the moment.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

I meant E8400 --> E8500... But ok.

Anyway, to reach 4GHz (4000MHz)

for the E8500 you need a 421MHz FSB. (not quad-pumped)
for the E8400 you need a 444MHz FSB.

If you OC, is 23MHz really that big of a deal (waits for incoming flames)
If you don't OC, is 166MHz worth $80?

 

[mellondust]

Originally posted by: JAG87
Nobody that has brains would buy the E8500 if they aren't going to overclock it.

Its pretty silly to spend an extra 80 dollars on 160 mhz, a speed increase that you will never notice and hardly measure.

The whole point of the E8500 is the higher multiplier, period. 4000/9 = 444 FSB while 4000/8.5 = 470 FSB which is harder to achieve.

Anybody buying it for any other reason, is a door knob.

Everytime I hear some one compare the price difference and 160mhz I can't help but remember when I got a pentium 166mhz and thought I had a pretty dang fast computer.:laugh: Look at us now!

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Well, who needs more than 640k of memory?