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Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
You don't want to turn HT off, it will improve performance any time you've got more threads running than cores. It may not be worth paying extra for if you don't frequently use heavily-threaded apps, but there's no reason to give it up if you're getting it.

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Marinmo
Jan 23, 2005

Prisoner #95H522 Augustus Hill
Does anyone know if (U)EFI will be the default on the motherboards coming out with SB (which would be sweet!)? Think I saw a video by some Swedish site previewing UEFI, but I don't know if it was a SB-related thing or not. Anyone?

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

I think MSI's entire SB line will be UEFI only

some dillweed
Mar 31, 2007

Marinmo posted:

Does anyone know if (U)EFI will be the default on the motherboards coming out with SB (which would be sweet!)? Think I saw a video by some Swedish site previewing UEFI, but I don't know if it was a SB-related thing or not. Anyone?
I think I remember seeing that video, which was basically a preview of ASUS's implementation of UEFI for their Sandy Bridge lineup. I'm guessing most motherboard manufacturers will be moving to UEFI because of the improvements/enhancements. Like being able to boot from drives over 2 TB.

The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003

Marinmo posted:

Does anyone know if (U)EFI will be the default on the motherboards coming out with SB (which would be sweet!)? Think I saw a video by some Swedish site previewing UEFI, but I don't know if it was a SB-related thing or not. Anyone?

It sounds like Gigabyte will still be using a standard BIOS in their Sandy Bridge compatible products with an EFI update coming later.

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

Alereon posted:

You don't want to turn HT off, it will improve performance any time you've got more threads running than cores. It may not be worth paying extra for if you don't frequently use heavily-threaded apps, but there's no reason to give it up if you're getting it.
The problem I see is that game performance might get a little negative effect by using Hyperthreading. The Windows 7 thread scheduler is HT-aware, but if for some reason it keeps dispatching secondary threads to an already loaded core, it may affect performance.

japtor
Oct 28, 2005

Combat Pretzel posted:

The problem I see is that game performance might get a little negative effect by using Hyperthreading. The Windows 7 thread scheduler is HT-aware, but if for some reason it keeps dispatching secondary threads to an already loaded core, it may affect performance.
Is this a theoretical concern or does this happen with the current HT implementation?

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Marinmo posted:

Does anyone know if (U)EFI will be the default on the motherboards coming out with SB (which would be sweet!)? Think I saw a video by some Swedish site previewing UEFI, but I don't know if it was a SB-related thing or not. Anyone?

Most early/first-generation UEFI boards are not going to be light-years ahead of their BIOS counterparts; just underlying source change, and GPT support I'm thinking. Maybe the second wave will give those promised GUI-based OCing tools. It's all up to how much effort the manufacturer's are willing to put into their BIOS development.

Businesses will really love EFI-based BIOS, so they can fully leverage all of Intel's management technology. It's a really goddamned dumb idea to steal a PC from work when it can be literally bricked (not even a BIOS flash will save it).

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

japtor posted:

Is this a theoretical concern or does this happen with the current HT implementation?
Apparently that was the case with the older HT implementations. It doesn't matter during normal usage (web browsing and that sort of poo poo).

madprocess
Sep 23, 2004

by Ozmaugh

Combat Pretzel posted:

The problem I see is that game performance might get a little negative effect by using Hyperthreading. The Windows 7 thread scheduler is HT-aware, but if for some reason it keeps dispatching secondary threads to an already loaded core, it may affect performance.

Pretty sure that was only a problem on single core Pentium 4s that had hyperthreading as well.

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010

movax posted:

Businesses will really love EFI-based BIOS, so they can fully leverage all of Intel's management technology. It's a really goddamned dumb idea to steal a PC from work when it can be literally bricked (not even a BIOS flash will save it).

Dells server UEFI implementation is amazing. One click update of ALL the drivers outside of windows, easy OS install staging area, manage iDRAC, RAID, network iSCSI boot.

Not going to lie that poo poo is slow as all hell, but impressive.

dud root
Mar 30, 2008

incoherent posted:

One click update of ALL the drivers outside of windows.
That sounds cool, but I wonder what kind of rollback features there are should something go wrong.

spasticColon
Sep 22, 2004

In loving memory of Donald Pleasance
I have a question regarding Sandy Bridge VS Lynnfield. Will a i5-2500 be that much faster than say an i5-760? The i5-760 is slower in clockspeed but it has 2MB more in L3 cache than a i5-2500. And I can easily overclock a 760 to the speed of a i5-2500. I'm looking at this from the perspective of gaming and getting the best bang for the buck. Or would I be shooting myself in the foot for not waiting and paying extra for the latest greatest?

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
3-4 weeks and pricing is no worse. The 2500K will OC better and run cooler, with better IPC and higher stock clocks. No contest unless you absolutely have to build it for Christmas. (Guy at work is doing this. Going to laugh when we compare benchmarks in January during a store gaming session.)

spasticColon
Sep 22, 2004

In loving memory of Donald Pleasance
So 3-4 weeks after Sandy Bridge launches the prices will come down to the same price as Lynnfield including the motherboards? I find that hard to believe. I know the 2500K will be $216 unless e-retailers price gouge but the motherboards will be more expensive even the mid-range ones. I would like to keep my upgrade under $500 and yet drop a Hyper 212P Cooler and 8GB RAM(2x4GB)into it so I have twice the amount that's in my current system. The first gaming system I built I skimped on the RAM and it bit me in the rear end and I don't want that happening to me again so I tend to go overkill on the RAM. I already know the Heatsink, CPU and RAM prices but I need to know the mid-range motherboard prices. I need to know how much it's going to cost altogether because I'm on a fixed budget.:f5:

Srebrenica Surprise
Aug 23, 2008

"L-O-V-E's just another word I never learned to pronounce."
http://semiaccurate.com/2010/12/10/p67-and-h67-boards-get-priced/

Article is pretty poorly written, but it looks like unless you're willing to go with the absolute cheapest H67 boards you'll be paying a premium.

I wouldn't be worrying about choosing an i5 750 at this point for gaming. It's going to be a while before anything seriously requires anything more than a stock Lynnfield: if precedent holds, it'll probably be another 'tick', at least, and people are still hanging in there with overclocked 65nm Core 2s, so it's not as if CPU requirements are at breakneck speeds. You're also going to be at the mercy of all the firmware, compatibility, and individual board issues that usually come with a launch.

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

Hyperthreading isn't going to hinder performance, it just jams additional instructions in to holes in the execution pipeline when it finds them. Either one of two things will happen: Your game is single-threaded (or dual, triple threaded) and you have a core or more free to run background processes and the windows resource scheduler runs them on those because it sees cycles available there and hyperthreading doesn't really enter in to it, or you're doing something that consumes all your CPU cycles and your background processes are going to be in contention with your game/application and splitting resources according to the process priority while hyperthreading jams instructions in to those pipeline holes and gets more work done per clock than would have happened otherwise.

Lum
Aug 13, 2003

Out of interest, are there any games or killer apps due out that actually need this?

Right now the only compelling reason to upgrade from my C2Q is to get EFI and faster boot times, but from the discussion in this thread, the early implementations of that are going to be a bit slow and crappy due to legacy support.

I'd probably be better off spending the money to upgrade my ageing ATI 4870 but even with that the new 68x0 cards aren't that much faster for the price and I'm starting to wonder if we're nearing peak performance?

Basically, give me a reason not to sit out this generation as well as the current one.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
It's 10% faster with 10% lower power usage. If you have a new enough system that that still isn't compelling for you, then there's no reason to upgrade. The new Radeon HD 6900-series drops tonight at Midnight Eastern/9PM Pacific, so check that out if you have a fast CPU already.

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

Lum posted:

Out of interest, are there any games or killer apps due out that actually need this?

Right now the only compelling reason to upgrade from my C2Q is to get EFI and faster boot times, but from the discussion in this thread, the early implementations of that are going to be a bit slow and crappy due to legacy support.

I'd probably be better off spending the money to upgrade my ageing ATI 4870 but even with that the new 68x0 cards aren't that much faster for the price and I'm starting to wonder if we're nearing peak performance?

Basically, give me a reason not to sit out this generation as well as the current one.

There's a solid 40-50% performance jump between similarly clocked first-gen C2 and i7 processors. I'll agree that system requirements are hitting a plateau (and I think this is more to do with aging console hardware more than anything), but until you start seeing more software that needs the hardware I don't see terribly compelling reason to upgrade.

Lum
Aug 13, 2003

I haven't even begun overclocking my C2Q. 3GHz seems to be plenty and an SSD was the most effective upgrade I've had.

My main interest in EFI is to improve boot time.

I must be getting old.

I guess when the xBox 720 comes out, we'll all need to upgrade to play the latest games.

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

Lum posted:

My main interest in EFI is to improve boot time.

Sleep mode makes that pretty low on my consideration list these days. As for legacy stuff bogging it down, this will mostly depend on how it is implemented. If it is like what Dell did on their servers, the core will be EFI with BIOS emulation layers for legacy components but those can be turned off if not needed. Who knows how other manufacturers will handle it, though I suspect a lot will do a bad job initially.

Lum
Aug 13, 2003

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

Sleep mode makes that pretty low on my consideration list these days. As for legacy stuff bogging it down, this will mostly depend on how it is implemented. If it is like what Dell did on their servers, the core will be EFI with BIOS emulation layers for legacy components but those can be turned off if not needed. Who knows how other manufacturers will handle it, though I suspect a lot will do a bad job initially.

Am I right in thinking that you need EFI drivers for add-in cards to avoid the BIOS emulation layer, and therefore I'll need to hold off on a graphics card update until they start supporting EFI too?

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

Lum posted:

Am I right in thinking that you need EFI drivers for add-in cards to avoid the BIOS emulation layer, and therefore I'll need to hold off on a graphics card update until they start supporting EFI too?

No, it just uses some standard VGA 640x480 driver. Things like add-in disk controllers or network cards with PXE support are going to be the problem and forced through a legacy layer.

Marinmo
Jan 23, 2005

Prisoner #95H522 Augustus Hill
And even if the first EFI implementations are just as bad as BIOS, isn't EFI upgradable in a much more feasible way than BIOS, so that when the actual good implementations arrive, everyone (more or less) can reap the benefits?

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

Odds are that yes, even a terrible EFI implementation will not be any worse than a standard BIOS one (unless they did a horrific job and there are stability/conflict issues). One of the things I really enjoy about EFI is that because there is so much more desktop area and storage to work with, not to mention mouse support, so you can get detailed feature descriptions on settings without having to dig out the manual or whatnot. Plus the potential for an embedded firmware flash utility that can use ftp to pull down the updated bin files, since there is a TCP/IP stack.

Lum
Aug 13, 2003

Marinmo posted:

And even if the first EFI implementations are just as bad as BIOS, isn't EFI upgradable in a much more feasible way than BIOS, so that when the actual good implementations arrive, everyone (more or less) can reap the benefits?

Only if it can be upgraded without the motherboard manufacturer being required to produce the upgrade, otherwise all but the most current boards will be left to rot as they are currently.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Lum posted:

I haven't even begun overclocking my C2Q. 3GHz seems to be plenty and an SSD was the most effective upgrade I've had.

My main interest in EFI is to improve boot time.

I must be getting old.

I guess when the xBox 720 comes out, we'll all need to upgrade to play the latest games.

I'm upgrading because my E6600 is finally beginning to bottleneck some games (even OC'd at 3.2). Black Ops was really the first one to do that, being a terribly optimized mess. :(

Though at the rate I've been spending money lately, I'll probably be buying Sandy Bridge a month or so after launch methinks. New mobo, CPU, RAM (and whatever adapters I need to make my Ultra 120 mount to said mobo) will be pricey.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
I still love SupCom and it chokes to death on my Q8200@2.33Ghz. 2500K@4.0-5.0Ghz sounds much better to me.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

ilkhan posted:

2500K@4.0-5.0Ghz sounds much better to me.

Yeah, I'm excited for another round of overclocking. It's so boring when you've had years to achieve a stable overclock that you can't exceed without going back to water-cooling or something. Hopefully my Ultra 120 is up to the job, I hate heatsink shopping. These are going to run cooler than their Conroe predecessors anyways, correct?

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

movax posted:

These are going to run cooler than their Conroe predecessors anyways, correct?

No, not at all. In fact, if you're moving from an E6600 to an i5-2500, you'll be moving up from the 65W TDP bracket to the 95W TDP bracket (since you're adding two cores).

CPUs are TDP limited these days, so even across architectures their TDP targets are the same.

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

Idle quad-core i5 systems draw less power than the older Core2 systems that are replacing them in our office. They might draw more when under heavy load, but it is really going to depend on how you are using them and with what software.

Wedesdo
Jun 15, 2001
I FUCKING WASTED 10 HOURS AND $40 TODAY. FUCK YOU FATE AND/OR FORTUNE AND/OR PROBABILITY AND/OR HEISENBURG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.

Man... I want a Sandy Bridge system so bad, but there's no way I can justify it.

I have a C2Q 9400 running at 3.6 GHz with 8 GB of DDR2 at 900MHz. All the games I play are GPU limited (4870).

If I do upgrade, the CPU, mobo, and 8GB of RAM will all have to be replaced, and chances are I'll be getting... what? Maybe 4.5 GHz out of the 2500K? Sigh. Even with the IPC improvements it's still not really worthwhile. I miss the days when upgrading got you 500% extra performance instead of 50% extra.


Edit: it also bothers me that the latency on DDR3 RAM is still pretty much the same (in terms of nanoseconds) as the DDR2 RAM I've been using for years. #$%@#$

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

Idle quad-core i5 systems draw less power than the older Core2 systems that are replacing them in our office. They might draw more when under heavy load, but it is really going to depend on how you are using them and with what software.

That's true, but if you're overclocking, the concern is going to be the power output running at full load. In that sense, it draws significantly more power, even if the draw at idle is lower.

spasticColon
Sep 22, 2004

In loving memory of Donald Pleasance

Alereon posted:

It's 10% faster with 10% lower power usage.

This is my biggest gripe with Sandy Bridge itself. Only 10 percent faster clock-for-clock? Even Lynnfield was 30-40 percent faster clock-for-clock over Core 2 Duo/Quad. Yes I know the K edition chips will overclock to obscene levels but the motherboards are going to be more expensive. I'll go ahead and wait for the launch so I can see benchmarks and prices but if I can't upgrade for under $500 then I'll be upgrading to a Lynnfield platform. And can any games even the ones that benefit from quad-core actually max out a Lynnfield quad-core?

dud root
Mar 30, 2008
I thought Lynnfield was only ~10% greater than C2D clock for clock?

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

At the very least, upgrade to SNB over Lynnfield so that you can get non-lovely SATA 6 Gbps ports and PCIe gen 2 ports on the PCH if you ever decide to get a USB3 add-in card.

The Ibexpeak PCH is kind of dated looking right now, so just keep that in mind if you decide to go with the previous generation.

WhyteRyce fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Dec 15, 2010

PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

dud root posted:

I thought Lynnfield was only ~10% greater than C2D clock for clock?
Core i3/5/7's are around 20% faster per clock than C2D. Sometimes its faster sometimes its about the same, depends on what you do. So SB should be around 30% faster per clock than C2D, which combined with its high potential clocks is a pretty big deal. Most Core chips seem to get around 3.7-4Ghz on air when you OC them right now FWIW.

I wouldn't say that SATA3 and PCIe 2.0 slots are worth upgrading to SB for though, well unless you've got lots of money to spend, in which case go for it. For those who are strapped for cash right now even with "lovely" PCIe 1.0/1 a USB3 add in card will still be much faster than USB2. While there are SSD's that will max out SATA2 available now you're still talking about real world data transfer rates over or around 260MB/s, which is pretty drat good.

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

PC LOAD LETTER posted:

I wouldn't say that SATA3 and PCIe 2.0 slots are worth upgrading to SB for though, well unless you've got lots of money to spend, in which case go for it. For those who are strapped for cash right now even with "lovely" PCIe 1.0/1 a USB3 add in card will still be much faster than USB2. While there are SSD's that will max out SATA2 available now you're still talking about real world data transfer rates over or around 260MB/s, which is pretty drat good.

It may not be worth upgrading for. But if you're upgrading anyway just wait the extra couple of weeks. If cost is such a big issue that good enough is acceptable then you should be looking at AMD anyway. Lynnfields aren't exactly dirt cheap right now and if you're paying comparable money I don't see the point in handicapping yourself.

WhyteRyce fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Dec 15, 2010

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PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!
Sure if your upgrading anyways then its different, absolutely worth the wait. I read your post as "this is stuff is worth it alone", sorry.

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