Why is SNB impressive?

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Who buys EE chips. :\

I just checked and Intel lists a non-EE 4GHz P4 with 2MB cache (double the normal amount) on a 1066MHz FSB (also higher than normal) while the fastest non-EE Core 2 was the E6700 at 2.66GHz.

Wikipedia's list failed me. I don't see that chip anywhere that's not Intel's site, though. Even there, info on it seems incomplete. :hmm:

I was just looking for the fastest chips.

 

[Ben90]

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=27510

It is in the list of P4 chips. *SHRUG*

Looks like Intel may have been planning a 4GHz CPU that never officially launched. I'm not an expert ark.Intel interpreter, but there is a LOT of missing information on that 4GHz CPU. The big two being no model number and no listed steppings. Instead we get "ordering and spec information not available for this product"

 

[Kalessian]

Intel scrapped the 4ghz P4: http://www.pcworld.com/article/118165/intel_shelves_plans_for_4ghz_p4.html

 

[Acanthus]

So, I checked out that THG clock-per-clock, core per core comparison, and it looks that SNB is *barely* faster than Nehalem (10%, right?). What was Intel doing for the ~5 years of the development of SNB? Why didn't they just shrink Nehalem and clock it higher? (So don't tell me "oh, SNB overclocks well!")

Because the 10% stacked with enormous clockspeed increases adds up to quite a bit.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Because the 10% stacked with enormous clockspeed increases adds up to quite a bit.

This.

Turbo on SB ramps up higher than the previous generation. That plus the 10% makes the charts look much better for SB.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Because you can get a ~$200 super power efficient and insane OC chip with a $100 board.

 

[ydnas7]

because after 6 months (or 3 if you consider the chipset fault) SNB has spawned about 67 variants and still increasing. intel has never ramped like this before
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeName=29900

 

[VirtualLarry]

because after 6 months (or 3 if you consider the chipset fault) SNB has spawned about 67 variants and still increasing. intel has never ramped like this before
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?codeName=29900

Curiously, the SB Celeron G530/540 is missing from that list.

 

[yottabit]

What was so miserable about it? Core Duo/Solo were based on the Pentium M, which was a kick ass CPU. It had poor floating point performance but for some applications it had excellent performance, not to mention it put P4 and K8 to shame in terms of power usage.

There was a desktop motherboard with an adapter that let you use a Pentium M CPU. One site benchmarked the Pentium M overclocked to 2.4 GHz. It actually whupped the P4EE and came very close to the A64FX in a lot of gaming benchmarks.

Here I found the link: http://techreport.com/articles.x/7927/1

I guess there was nothing particularly miserable about it, except my school decided it was a great time to upgrade their laptops when they really should have held out for Core 2 Duo. I had friends who bought Core Duo Macbook, etc... Many people thought "Core" was going to be the 64 bit processor and were upset when they found out it wasn't. And I remember Core Solos being quite slow in practical usage- probably not a function of the architecture but the poor clock speeds.

The impressive thing about Sandy Bridge to me is the way they've incorporated so much overclocking headroom, virtually guaranteed, while still increasing IPC significantly.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Curiously, the SB Celeron G530/540 is missing from that list.

They still haven't been officially launched. It should be less than a month from now. For $50-55 the G530 should be great bang-for-buck for a very inexpensive system with great efficiency and decent performance. Obviously, they been priced that way should mean the Pentiums will fail. The G620 is now priced at $75 and should only be 10% faster or so than the G530.

 

[OCGuy]

Faster and more OC headroom and better efficiency. Also years ahead of anything the competition is offering.

 

[mhahnheuser]

Faster and more OC headroom and better efficiency. Also years ahead of anything the competition is offering.

...64Bit, Hardware Virtulization, USB 3.0, GPU's, APU's, backward compatability, on-board mem controller, 6 cores, first past 1.0GHz, Eyefinity ......years ahead?? lol....... geeze i'd like to see your definition of "behind the eightball" Sure not every step along the way has gone smoothly for AMD....but being behind is not one of them.....

 

[edplayer]

...64Bit, Hardware Virtulization, USB 3.0, GPU's, APU's, backward compatability, on-board mem controller, 6 cores, first past 1.0GHz, Eyefinity ......years ahead?? lol....... geeze i'd like to see your definition of "behind the eightball" Sure not every step along the way has gone smoothly for AMD....but being behind is not one of them.....

pretty sure he was talking about Sandy Bridge vs. AMD's current selection (not name AMD's past accomplishments). I wouldn't say they are years ahead