Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 - Quad Core!

[TechZ]

Today Intel is officially launching a new Quad-Core processor, formerly known by the company's internal code name, 'Kentsfield'. Kentsfield is the direct result of Intel's immense manufacturing and process technology prowess. Based on the company's 65nm manufacturing process, one of the very few fabs of its kind in high volume production at this time, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is an integration of two Core 2 Duo dual-core processors on a single substrate for a total of 4 CPU cores in a single LGA 775 socket.

The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 runs at 2.66GHz on a 1066MHz front-side bus, so its clock speed matches that of the second fastest Core 2 Duo, the E6700. (The Core 2 Extreme X6800 is the fastest at 2.93GHz.) Targeted at serious PC Enthusiasts and Workstation Power Users, this new quad-core CPU is poised to set new land-speed records in benchmark test suites. The first reviews can be found on AnandTech, HardCoreWare, Bit-Tech, Hexus.net, HotHardware, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, TechReport, TechSpot, THG, TweakTown and X-bit labs.

Like any solution with four CPU cores, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700's effectiveness depends on what you feed it. Give it a nicely parallelizable task with four or more threads, and it will utterly embarrass former top dogs like the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Athlon 64 FX-62. For applications like video encoding, 3D rendering, image processing, and scientific computing, the QX6700 trumps all other desktop processors-and, I suspect, a great many dual-socket Opteron workstations. 3DMark06's multithreaded CPU test gives us a glimpse of how multithreaded gaming might look, and the QX6700 performs very well there, too.

Feed it a simple app with only one or two threads, though, and this quad-core monster begins to look an awful lot like a Core 2 Duo E6700 with higher power consumption and a much steeper price tag. Of course, even that isn't a horrible place to be. In single- and dual-threaded applications, the QX6700 still wallops the Athlon 64 FX-62 nearly across the board, with similar power requirements and heat output. That fact simply underscores how good the Core 2 lineup truly is.

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Honestly, I don't care, I want one or 4.

[Lilleput]

But.. $1000

[Shadowness]

They have been on the cards for a while now, I was gonna wait for them for my PC upgrade, but the prices will be stupid. Plus an overclocked core 2 will compete with them anyway.
Also, there arent many applications or games that make use of two cores let alone 4!

[Buba]

The really good news about that is, that I can stick a quad core something or other onto my P965 board to replace the Core 2 Duo... In some due time... I only have a 6300 and its enough for everything...

[Silverstar]

Just built a X6800 system

When I was reading about it on Tom's Hardware yesterday, I was a flipping dolphin seeing that the quad cores are out. I remember getting my first big system (FX-51 based) and I remember reading about quad cores are the "future" in MaximumPC. Insane that it's here already

[Adunaphel]

Originally Posted by Shadowness

They have been on the cards for a while now, I was gonna wait for them for my PC upgrade, but the prices will be stupid. Plus an overclocked core 2 will compete with them anyway.
Also, there arent many applications or games that make use of two cores let alone 4!

Most current games and system-intensive programs heavily rely on multithreading... There's very very few new games that don't support multithreading.

The real question here is, how efficient is windows XP's scheduler with 4 cores to distribute the load amongst compared to 2....

[jeffy777]

Makes my A64 3500+ seem archaic.....

[Buba]

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

Most current games and system-intensive programs heavily rely on multithreading... There's very very few new games that don't support multithreading.

The real question here is, how efficient is windows XP's scheduler with 4 cores to distribute the load amongst compared to 2....

Saw a video from a 4x4 AMD machine, and windows used the 4 cores on it just fine... No problem there!!!
I doubt that games really benefit from it, though... When I leave the task manager running, the last couple of things I gamed (various demos, and no shooters) used only 1 core...

More cores really don't make sense in "normal" consumer PCs, atm, since you won't be doing more than 2 things at the same time anyway... Even if you watch a video, extract some HUGE file and encode some shit, 2 cores are up to the job...

Heavy Phtoshopping or video editing is another matter, off course...

[der_jackal]

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

Most current games and system-intensive programs heavily rely on multithreading... There's very very few new games that don't support multithreading.

The real question here is, how efficient is windows XP's scheduler with 4 cores to distribute the load amongst compared to 2....

OH THANK YOU!!!

Somebody gets it, finally.

Actually the thread scheduler is very effective at scaling across hardware threads. They've been making improvements on it since it first came out in Windows NT.

[hokiethang]

Right, but the windows multithreaded scheduler makes some dumb decisions most of the time. If they added some decent design to it, and actually started running threads intelligently, i'd consider windows more when considering a multi core machine. I have linux on a couple Pentium 930Ds at work (not the best of chips but still illustrates my point), one runs Gentoo, the other runs Windows XP, and the Windows XP machine has a major affinity by default to CPU0, where Gentoo pretty much loads the two equally.

Vista may change all of that, I dunno, we shall see.

[Dark_Templer_102]

Lets see if they can dual core those video cards! (sooner or later...)

[Adunaphel]

Originally Posted by Dark_Templer_102

Lets see if they can dual core those video cards! (sooner or later...)

They can it's called..... SLI and Crossfire, it's just not on the same card..... yet... (and 7950GX2 is 2 cards)

Originally Posted by Buba

More cores really don't make sense in "normal" consumer PCs, atm, since you won't be doing more than 2 things at the same time anyway... Even if you watch a video, extract some HUGE file and encode some shit, 2 cores are up to the job...

Heavy Phtoshopping or video editing is another matter, off course...

You do some reading up about threaded applications.... that means 1 application using multiple cores at the same time, by making use of threads which can be spread along the core(s) of the processor(s). Like i said in my earlier post, all current processor-intensive programs use threading.

[TechZ]

They have cards with 2 GPU's on them, make that SLI and you'll have a total of 4 GPU's

[Buba]

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

You do some reading up about threaded applications.... that means 1 application using multiple cores at the same time, by making use of threads which can be spread along the core(s) of the processor(s). Like i said in my earlier post, all current processor-intensive programs use threading.

I know all that, but also I was talking about "normal" Pcs and "normal" users... You do the things above a bit or a lot quicker (depending on software) with 4 instead of 2 cores, but most users just won't care, because the system still runs smooth and 2 cores can already do that...

[Adunaphel]

the processor isn't intended for normal users....

[der_jackal]

Originally Posted by hokiethang

Right, but the windows multithreaded scheduler makes some dumb decisions most of the time.

Such as? Is it in the queue management or the quantum timing or something else you have problems with?

Originally Posted by hokiethang

If they added some decent design to it, and actually started running threads intelligently, i'd consider windows more when considering a multi core machine. I have linux on a couple Pentium 930Ds at work (not the best of chips but still illustrates my point), one runs Gentoo, the other runs Windows XP, and the Windows XP machine has a major affinity by default to CPU0, where Gentoo pretty much loads the two equally.

Sounds more like an application issue than anything. Yes CPU0 will carry more load in Windows at times, but it's not because the thread scheduler is loading it that way. Most apps written for Windows stall, lock and place threads in wait states rather than let then them run so the thread queue is unloaded accodingly. 3d rendering engines are the best test across both OSes.

Now it's been a while since I used Linux, but even back then, the vast majority of apps had much better SMP / Multi-core support than your typical Windows app which is another reason you'll see better load balancing between the hardware threads on Linux.