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Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

DaNzA posted:

Guessing that they might not have the chip nailed down yet and don't want to repeat the Pentium III 1.13Ghz thing again.

There's little risk of ever having that happen again. Chips are now limited by TDP, and can easily exceed the rated speeds using more power (thus why they easily overclock so far). They may be binning the chips lower because not enough of them can meet the target TDP at 4GHz.

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flick3r
Apr 22, 2011

dexter posted:

People buy processors from Best Buy? I didn't even know they sold them.

Yeah you probably have to talk to the Geek Squad guys... or something.

Justaddwater
Jul 4, 2006

flick3r posted:

Yeah you probably have to talk to the Geek Squad guys... or something.

Don't forget to buy their $149 Geek Squad in store processor tune up service.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Here's Anandtech's review of the Intel Z68 chipset and Smart Response SSD Caching technology.

Cuntpunch
Oct 3, 2003

A monkey in a long line of kings
Good lord the difference:

Just ditched my stock 2600k heatsink in favor of a Corsair H60. What a difference. Pulling the old one off did show a certain poor dispersion of thermal paste which probably didn't help, but wow.

Chip idles around 30C, then and now. But when running Prime95 I see a ridiculously stark difference. Stock heatsink let the chip, within a minute or two, rise to 70+C before I killed Prime and it took another minute or two to cool back down to idle. This Corsair waterblock holds steady at ~50C and drops back to idle within 15-30s.

Now I can see how well this thing overclocks - stock draws a flat 1.2v under max load - I seem to recall seeing someone saying 1.25 is considered 'normal'?

Cuntpunch fucked around with this message at 03:22 on May 13, 2011

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
It varies from chip to chip, but 1.25V seems to be the median of full-stock-frequency voltages for 2500/2600Ks.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Anandtech has an article up about the Silvermont architecture, which is the replacement for the Atom. It will be launched in 2013 on the 22nm process, and is a more complex out-of-order design, like modern ARM CPUs and the AMD Bobcat (Atom was a simple in-order design, like older ARM CPUs and the original Pentium). This has the potential to be the first Atom with desktop-class performance, especially if it's paired with a decent integrated GPU (like maybe something derived from Ivy Bridge?)

Alereon fucked around with this message at 22:48 on May 18, 2011

DaNzA
Sep 11, 2001

:D
Grimey Drawer
Time have marched on and they better meant dual or quad core sandy bridge level performance when they say 'desktop-level' performance :colbert: not some weak and outdated core2duo.

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

WhyteRyce posted:

No one here cares about the 3D transistors in the upcoming Ivy Bridge?
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/04/intel-will-mass-produce-22nm-3d-transistors-for-all-future-cpus/

Old news but adding to what I've learned over the past couple of days about it.

Basically all the manufactures had a choice on which road to take, finFETs (the industry name for Intel's 3D transistor) or going fully depleted Silicon on Insulator which is what almost everyone else has planned. Both are major improvements to processors and currently give similar results in power and performance at this die size. The issue is that Fully depleted SOI is a whole lot more expensive to produce than building a finFET based processor currently. SOI has always been more expensive thus why Intel has never used SOI in their processors.

Around a year ago Intel did give a indication that they would go to SOI around 22nm, but obviously they chose to do finFET instead. I'd figure they'll finally do it on a die shrink or two after 22nm. It's widely expected that everyone else will eventually go with finFETs at some point as well. Don't get it wrong, Intel still should be commended for mas producing finFETs, but I don't personally see it as a bold step, just Intel trying to hold off on increasing costs for as long as possible.

Trickyrive
Mar 7, 2001

Ryokurin posted:

Old news but adding to what I've learned over the past couple of days about it.

Basically all the manufactures had a choice on which road to take, finFETs (the industry name for Intel's 3D transistor) or going fully depleted Silicon on Insulator which is what almost everyone else has planned. Both are major improvements to processors and currently give similar results in power and performance at this die size. The issue is that Fully depleted SOI is a whole lot more expensive to produce than building a finFET based processor currently. SOI has always been more expensive thus why Intel has never used SOI in their processors.

Around a year ago Intel did give a indication that they would go to SOI around 22nm, but obviously they chose to do finFET instead. I'd figure they'll finally do it on a die shrink or two after 22nm. It's widely expected that everyone else will eventually go with finFETs at some point as well. Don't get it wrong, Intel still should be commended for mas producing finFETs, but I don't personally see it as a bold step, just Intel trying to hold off on increasing costs for as long as possible.

Well, to be fair, SOI is more of a material change vs finFETs which are a structure change, so later on they should be able to do finFETs on SOI. Either way this is all because industry wants to stick to "Moore's Law" which really is more of a prediction and not a law. Nobody says they HAVE to double the transistors on a chip every two years, its more of a goal, a goal that will probably end due to limitations on the size of the molecule.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

Trickyrive posted:

Well, to be fair, SOI is more of a material change vs finFETs which are a structure change, so later on they should be able to do finFETs on SOI. Either way this is all because industry wants to stick to "Moore's Law" which really is more of a prediction and not a law. Nobody says they HAVE to double the transistors on a chip every two years, its more of a goal, a goal that will probably end due to limitations on the size of the molecule.

Yep this is true, Intel actually is predicting the end of transistor scaling between 2013 and 2018 due to quantum tunneling on such small transistors. But I think the future is definetly going to be these more efficient designs along with stacked processors. Time to build up!

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I shudder to think of what that will do to heatsink design down the line, assuming that gets to ridiculous levels like cube processors. They'll come packaged in little spiny balls of copper heatpipes and gold contacts.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

Factory Factory posted:

I shudder to think of what that will do to heatsink design down the line, assuming that gets to ridiculous levels like cube processors. They'll come packaged in little spiny balls of copper heatpipes and gold contacts.

This is gonna be the biggest obstacle to overcome. But there is a lot of promise in microchannel cooling, which is basically pumping coolant in really tiny microchannels throughout the chip allowing local "hotspots" to be cooled much more efficiently than heatsinks. Heatsinks are old technology and if we are going to start building multi-level processors we are going to have to start looking into other cooling technology.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer
Also if anyone is curious about Intel's Tri-gate fin transistors here is a cool look at them, my professor sent our class this semester.

http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/22nm/pdfs/22nm-Details_Presentation.pdf

It also highlights the reduction of current leakage, which is a pretty big issue for power consumption for today's processors.

Popete fucked around with this message at 22:46 on May 13, 2011

Small White Dragon
Nov 23, 2007

No relation.

Popete posted:

Yep this is true, Intel actually is predicting the end of transistor scaling between 2013 and 2018 due to quantum tunneling on such small transistors. But I think the future is definetly going to be these more efficient designs along with stacked processors. Time to build up!
Have they stated how small they think they actually get? I've heard 16nm and 11nm processors are already in planning.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

Small White Dragon posted:

Have they stated how small they think they actually get? I've heard 16nm and 11nm processors are already in planning.

I think Intel is saying 16nm, anything smaller than that and quantum tunneling (which is a bit over my head) becomes a bigger issue. I believe it is when particles can breakthrough the transistors dielectric barrier, basically making it unreliable, someone else might be able to correct me on this. But ya I believe the fundamental limit of transistors is about 10nm in size, thought I'm not totally sure on this either.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Popete posted:

I think Intel is saying 16nm, anything smaller than that and quantum tunneling (which is a bit over my head) becomes a bigger issue. I believe it is when particles can breakthrough the transistors dielectric barrier, basically making it unreliable, someone else might be able to correct me on this. But ya I believe the fundamental limit of transistors is about 10nm in size, thought I'm not totally sure on this either.

You're basically right. :science: incoming.

Quantum tunneling in a nutshell: there is an inherent uncertainty in the position of a particle, such as an electron that's part of an electrical signal, and this uncertainty is part of reality and cannot be circumvented even in principle. If you limit the places a particle can be, such as putting it in a very tiny box or limiting it to a very tiny transistor, the size of the place the particle is constrained to is smaller than the natural uncertainty its position must have. That means that the next time the particle's position is checked, there is a chance it will be outside of its box, because you can't be certain it was in an area as small as the box. Being in the box with certainty would violate the physically-necessary amount of uncertainty in where the particle is. That's tunneling.

There are more general and informative ways to say this; it's the nutshell version.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Anandtech has posted a summary of the Intel 2011 Investor Meeting. They're pushing REALLY hard to get their 32nm Atom SoC (Medfield) into smartphones, but this is an uphill battle as nobody would make a phone based on their 45nm Atom SoC (Moorestown). It's also been revealed that Intel expects to release a 14nm Atom codenamed "Airmont" in 2014 at around the same time as their desktop processors, but we know even less about this than we do about the 22nm "Silvermont" Atom coming in 2013.

The most interesting bit of news is that Intel intends to create a new line of processors in the 10-20W TDP range. These are intended to be significantly more powerful than the <10W Atom CPUs, but presumably more efficient than the severely-underclocked >17W CULV Core CPUs. We don't know anything about the architecture yet, but it will likely either be an enhanced Atom (of the Silvermont generation) or a cut-down derivative of Haswell (Intel's new architecture on 22nm, successor to Ivy Bridge).

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010

Alereon posted:

Anandtech has posted a summary of the Intel 2011 Investor Meeting. They're pushing REALLY hard to get their 32nm Atom SoC (Medfield) into smartphones, but this is an uphill battle as nobody would make a phone based on their 45nm Atom SoC (Moorestown).

Nobody is going to touch a x86 platform without the operating system to go with it. It will be interesting to see how intel (going at it alone) is at porting honeycomb to x86. It should be noted the references to this port are larger tablets that could clock faster, not smartphones.

Short of giving away the hardware or sweetheart bundling intels going to be out of this race for a generation or two.

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

Alereon posted:

The most interesting bit of news is that Intel intends to create a new line of processors in the 10-20W TDP range. These are intended to be significantly more powerful than the <10W Atom CPUs, but presumably more efficient than the severely-underclocked >17W CULV Core CPUs. We don't know anything about the architecture yet, but it will likely either be an enhanced Atom (of the Silvermont generation) or a cut-down derivative of Haswell (Intel's new architecture on 22nm, successor to Ivy Bridge).

Just something good enough to compete with AMD and the C-50s and E-350s as far as processing speed goes. I don't think they are anywhere close to competing video wise, so all they can do is improve CPU performance to make up the difference.

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
Seeing how Intel CPUs are x86 on the outside only these days, while having an apparently stable microcode format, they should just call it quits. Add a separate lighter RISC instruction set, to which the operating system can switch to on a per thread/process basis, easing the migration, and at some point just remove the x86 decoder. Apparently it is that piece which eats a lot of power.

Raptop
Sep 3, 2004
not queer for western digital

Combat Pretzel posted:

and at some point just remove the x86 decoder. Apparently it is that piece which eats a lot of power.

Yeah, no. Decode is literally the smallest cluster in any of our core designs. I'm loving tired of hearing this canard, even from people internally who should know better.

Raptop fucked around with this message at 14:41 on May 19, 2011

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?
Wasn't Transmeta meant to operate in a similar way? And remember how dog slow it was most of the time?

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Combat Pretzel posted:

Seeing how Intel CPUs are x86 on the outside only these days, while having an apparently stable microcode format, they should just call it quits. Add a separate lighter RISC instruction set, to which the operating system can switch to on a per thread/process basis, easing the migration, and at some point just remove the x86 decoder. Apparently it is that piece which eats a lot of power.

That was only true, like, 13 years ago.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.
I am indeed looking forward to Ivy Bridge.
My i5-2500K@4.6Ghz doesn't get used much, and my i5-540M needs to get faster/cooler/quad-core-er.
(Also SATA3 for this fancy new Agility3 SSD.)

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Ivy Bridge has been delayed for another quarter, until Q2 2012. This gives AMD a lot of time to lock in the mainstream and low-end markets with their Llano and Brazos CPUs, thanks to their overwhelming graphics performance. To cross-post from the Bulldozer thread, AMD is in serious trouble, with reports that the planned Bulldozer launch has been canceled due to inability to meet clock speed targets, and that instead AMD will launch a series of less aggressively-clocked Bulldozer CPUs based on a new stepping in September. Anandtech got confirmation at Computex that the launch would be delayed so that AMD could spin a new Bulldozer stepping due to poor performance, but their estimates were a launch in July, with no mention of having to cancel the previously planned models.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

So my plans for moving my Solaris box to a Sandy Bridge based platform have fallen through, and I have 8GB of DDR3 and an i5-2500K without a hope. Thinking of setting up a new box for my parents, looking at the Asus H67 boards.

Quick question on those specific boards: has Asus setup their video options / FDI links so you can run two displays off IGP? Got my parents doing the multi-monitor thing now (:smug:), and would like to ditch the extra heat of a graphics card.

Displays would both be DVI, hopefully straps are setup such that HDMI/DVI or HDMI/DP aren't the same output. Looking at the P8H67 EVO or PRO.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

movax posted:

So my plans for moving my Solaris box to a Sandy Bridge based platform have fallen through, and I have 8GB of DDR3 and an i5-2500K without a hope. Thinking of setting up a new box for my parents, looking at the Asus H67 boards.

Quick question on those specific boards: has Asus setup their video options / FDI links so you can run two displays off IGP? Got my parents doing the multi-monitor thing now (:smug:), and would like to ditch the extra heat of a graphics card.

Displays would both be DVI, hopefully straps are setup such that HDMI/DVI or HDMI/DP aren't the same output. Looking at the P8H67 EVO or PRO.

Pretty sure they are dual output so you can use 2 of the 3 ports.. Sounds like you need a HDMI to DVI cable or converter adapter.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
More selected Computex Intel news:

Ivy Bridge CPUs will have configurable dynamic TDPs, making Turbo Boost dramatically more effective. Rather than allowing some slight headroom over the rated TDP, Turbo Boost will now enable the CPU to more than double it for short periods, dramatically improving both responsiveness and power efficiency (the higher TDP a processor is allowed, the more energy efficient it is). The CPU will clock back down to normal when the load goes away or the temperature rises outside of the optimal range. The "configurable" part of the TDP is that the processor can change its TDP based on the situation, the example was docking a laptop in a docking station with power and improved cooling, allowing the processor to raise its TDP target. Ivy Bridge is a "tick" in Intel's tick-tock product cadence, where ticks are die shrinks with minimal architectural changes, and tocks are new architectures on the same process. Because Ivy Bridge has much more substantial changes than are typical of just a die shrink, Intel has taken to calling it a "Tick+". Not a new architecture (that's Haswell), but not just a die-shrink either. Also, Ivy Bridge will have USB3.0 and Thunderbolt integrated into the chipset.

Intel has announced their new Ultrabook platform, which is intended to be a new form factor for ultra-thin, ultra-light, high-performance notebooks with long battery life, a <$1000 price, and with a suite of specific Intel technologies. The term "Ultrabook" has been trademarked by Intel, you'll only see a laptop called an Ultrabook if it meets Intel's trademark licensing requirements. SSDs (or at least SSD caching) are mandatory, with the required Intel Rapid Start Technology using the flash memory for Hibernation, to allow the system to hibernate and wake back up quickly. Intel is using this rapid sleep/resume functionality for Intel Smart Connect Technology, which periodically wakes the system for short periods (a few seconds) to sync things like your IM, e-mail, and social networking feeds. The idea is that even while your machine is off, it maintains the appearance of being always on and always connected. Intel intends for the Ultrabooks to use processors with a TDP between 10-20W, right now that's the CULV Core i5/i7 CPUs with a 17W TDP, but starting with Haswell they intend to launch processors targeted directly at that TDP range.

Edit: Turns out the Thunderbolt news was wrong, it's still a separate controller chip and not required or anything. I was a little surprised by that news initially, as the Thunderbolt controller is a HUGE chip.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jun 1, 2011

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

I'm swapping my CPU out and want to replace my old Arctic Freezer Pro while I'm at it. Anyone have a good heatsink recommendation? I want something that doesn't require me to install a different bracket on the backside of the motherboard, isn't too loud, and isn't too tall (Sythetec Ninja barely fits in this case). These requirements seems to rule out most of what I'm looking at.

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


Alereon posted:

Ivy Bridge has been delayed for another quarter, until Q2 2012.

Wow, that is incredibly annoying. I'd love a new laptop (R61i Currently) but the HD 3000 just doesn't cut it for me. If I buy a $1k laptop, the best I can get out of Starcraft II is only low details, the hell?

The gaming laptops aren't that bad, Sager comes close but I'd rather just have a Thinkpad.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Tab8715 posted:

Wow, that is incredibly annoying. I'd love a new laptop (R61i Currently) but the HD 3000 just doesn't cut it for me. If I buy a $1k laptop, the best I can get out of Starcraft II is only low details, the hell?

The gaming laptops aren't that bad, Sager comes close but I'd rather just have a Thinkpad.
You're pretty much the exact target audience for AMD's Fusion A-series-based laptops that are on the way out this/next month. They're using CPU cores derived from the Phenom II (though die-shrunk and tweaked for power-efficiency), combined with an on-die Radeon HD 6550 GPU. Anandtech has had a lot of news about the upcoming Fusion processors this week since they're at Computex, the ones you're interested in are codenamed Llano.

Bonus Edit: Also, Lenovo does have the IdeaPad Y560p for $849, which has a quad-core Sandy Bridge i7 and a Radeon HD 6570M[/url]. Certainly no gaming powerhouse, but it's a step up from integrated graphics.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jun 3, 2011

Kachunkachunk
Jun 6, 2011
External graphics adapter support is a very slow market still, but you could look towards this: http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/ati-xgp/Pages/ati-xgp.aspx.

Otherwise I currently use an ExpressCard 2.0 3/4 slot to PCI-E adapter which works decently. If you are a DIY person, you can also make your own, if your laptop has an exposed bus (for docks).

ExpressCard bus limits will prohibit you from using most mainstream desktop cards to their ability, so you're not going to be able to expect a ton of performance.

With that said, a grand will get you a decent gaming laptop that'll do Starcraft II in high detail, if you keep an eye out and spot a decent deal.
Also don't shy away from refurbished laptops. They are, if anything, more incentive to purchase because they've been tested and QA'ed more (and likely with even more critical testing) than the standard product. Let alone the price being lower. Perhaps the packaging could be less fancy, but you're just going to throw it away anyway.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
I was speccing out a low-power, SFF machine and came across a nice model Intel quietly launched: the Core i5 2405S 65W for $215.99. The 2405 has Intel HD Graphics 3000 like the 2500K, but a lower TDP for power-constrained applications. It seems like a pretty nice way to make a small box more capable without a dedicated videocard.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Intel CPU chat was in danger of disappearing into oblivion :ohdear:

How have the past six months gone for you, fellow Sandy Bridge owners? Looks like 4.8GHz is the sweet-spot for my 2600K. No chipset bugs to worry about, now just eagerly awaiting Battlefield 3, MW3 and Diablo 3 to throw the 2600K at.

I'm also fairly confident that Asus will keep us supported with BIOS updates to support Ivy Bridge CPUs when they land at some point next year, if anyone's planning on keeping the same mobo, but jumping CPUs. Or are some people looking at X79 and jumping to hexa-core LGA2011 CPUs? :stare::fh:

real_scud
Sep 5, 2002

One of these days these elbows are gonna walk all over you

movax posted:

Intel CPU chat was in danger of disappearing into oblivion :ohdear:

How have the past six months gone for you, fellow Sandy Bridge owners? Looks like 4.8GHz is the sweet-spot for my 2600K. No chipset bugs to worry about, now just eagerly awaiting Battlefield 3, MW3 and Diablo 3 to throw the 2600K at.
Mine's going better now that I reformatted and have stopped having Windows completely hang anything that was going on in a specific monitor.

Haven't been able to get my chipset past 4.1 or so with my new P8P67 Pro board after upgrading from the LE, but that's ok because it's been more than enough for everything and after having played some stuff this week I'm not too worried about BF3.

SRQ
Nov 9, 2009

Wait, I saw someone mention something about "Not wanting to repeat the Pentium III 1.13 GHz", Would anyone mind clarifying?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

SRQ posted:

Wait, I saw someone mention something about "Not wanting to repeat the Pentium III 1.13 GHz", Would anyone mind clarifying?

It couldn't hit its rated speed without major voltage increases, and even then it wasn't very stable.

Shmoogy
Mar 21, 2007

movax posted:

How have the past six months gone for you, fellow Sandy Bridge owners? Looks like 4.8GHz is the sweet-spot for my 2600K. No chipset bugs to worry about, now just eagerly awaiting Battlefield 3, MW3 and Diablo 3 to throw the 2600K at.

Not well, my sata ports died and ASUS is giving me the run around with my RMA. It's been like three weeks that their shipping depot has been "out of stock" on my replacement P8P67. I've been managing just fine without my desktop though, which was pleasantly surprising to me.

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movax
Aug 30, 2008

Shmoogy posted:

Not well, my sata ports died and ASUS is giving me the run around with my RMA. It's been like three weeks that their shipping depot has been "out of stock" on my replacement P8P67. I've been managing just fine without my desktop though, which was pleasantly surprising to me.

poo poo, really? Did you go for the advance RMA option? My process was pretty smooth, what are they telling you?

As for managing fine without desktop, I've done that a few times, and it always scares me. "How can I survive without the desktop I've sunk so much money into! :ohdear:" Hell, when I moved into my new place I left my desktop off in a corner for two weeks because I didn't run ethernet to my room, and survived just fine on my MacBook Pro. I'll still keep a desktop around until the end of time though, it's still my gaming machine + rock-solid workstation.

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