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Intel Core 2 Quad reviews hit the net

bit-tech.net — Reviews of Intel's new quad-core processor are rolling out across the net tonight, and this is probably the best one. Some interesting analysis and a good spread of benchmarks. Kentsfield turns out to be super for hardcore multi-tasking and has some gaming potential, as well as massive overclocking headroom.

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  • luvmebackkk, on 10/12/2007, -13/+9http://virtualmagic.blogspot.com/2006/08/pentium.html
    • Stonedonkey, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6Ah, the days when the Simpsons was really funny.
  • Stonedonkey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+31It's too bad that we have almost no support yet for four processors in our software and games. There was a press demo from Alan Wake that looked absolutely gorgeous floating around a few weeks ago...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DetnKgOxrSI

    And that's on quad-core. Astonishing!
    • boyter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7You are probably going to run more then 4 processes at the same time though. While a single application like a game probably wont be using this for a while, it will make desktop performance more rock solid. And you could have realtime virus protection and scanning with no slowdown while you play that game.

      I cant wait. I run virtual machines all day (for one reason or another) and I can really get some benefit from this. Not to mention im sure servers will love it. I know one of my works servers is a dual core and is maxed out from time to time. This sort of thing would really help it.
    • TA_Superman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The anti-virus app accessing the hard drive frequently would still cause your performance to degrade while playing games though.
    • boyter, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Sure would, but any antivirus thats scanning the whole HDD all the time is pretty crap. I ment more checking memory and anything new comming in.
    • bobcrotch, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Hi.

      Linux, Unix (and Mac OS) will simply love this, a lot.

      I'm sure that once more than 2 procs will be common place for desktops Vista will support it. But the real question is after upgrading from 2 cores to 4 will that take one of your license transfers on Vista? =)
  • Nydas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9And i JUST bought a core 2 duo. Bought it 3 days ago and its already out dated. DAMN IT TECHNOLOGY, thou shall be the end of me. Or should i say my wallet.
    • aniruddha23, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12dont worry. your core 2 duo will probably serve you well for the nest 2 years. unless mainstream software is built to support use of all 4 cores this ones gonna be mainly for people working in media or servers.
    • Nydas, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Ya i know. But this will be the most advanced computer Ive ever had, and would have been nice to have had a state-of-the-art laptop for longer then a couple of days.
    • ogre2112, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8at 130W, I doubt they'll be using the Q6600 for a laptop right away.

      The mobile P4 was 76-88 watts, the pentium M more like 25, same as the duo. at 130W you're going to need some serious cooling.
    • Dangerman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Considering that it is impossible to run one of these in a laptop I would say that you still have a state of the art laptop.
      (okay so technically it is possible, but not in any way practical)
    • n0yd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Meh, I have an FX-60 laptop I bought about 7 months ago, 2GB ram, and a 7800GTK Go. Runs hotter than hell, right around the same TDP as one of these. Battery life is horrible also, especially cause it has 2x100GB 7200 SATA drives and a 17 inch widescreen.

      I should've waited for a Core 2 Duo laptop...
    • TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"And i JUST bought a core 2 duo. Bought it 3 days ago and its already out dated. DAMN IT TECHNOLOGY, thou shall be the end of me. Or should i say my wallet."

      I know how you feel, I'm on the same wagon as you, bought a new core 2 duo machine and I already feel like somehow I've been once again let down by technology. I have to say though I learned my lesson about technology, always try to get the new piece of technology earlier on rather than later. I was pretty much disappointed when I bought my powerpcg5 dual processors only for the 2 dual core g5's to come out later that month. Suffice i to say my G5 still gets the job done and is still a decent beast in its own right but for some reason, every time something new comes out I feel like I'm being left behind. Wore thing about the G5 debacle was that a couple of months later the Intel Macs were announced and that was the icing on the bummer cake.
    • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Take comfort in the benchmarks. Quad core isn't useful in most cases yet.

      You probably made the right decision.
  • aniruddha23, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14the words quad and a processor in a single sentence makes me drool.
    • Nydas, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26I'm sure the price will make you suck that drool right back into your mouth.
    • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -16/+2You are a huge nerd.
    • TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10"You are a huge nerd."

      Hold on we can judge how big of a nerd he is by rolling my 100 sided die.
  • teknotant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20yeah, but the name quadfather sounds better.
    • ih8regs, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3I"m amazed there's people that agree with you; "quadfather" is utterly retarded.
  • 10poundbrown, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2el oh el at the "quadfather"

    Yeah, my processor is 2 years old and I was waiting for this in order to upgrade. I got wood.
  • v413, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6For the desktop, quad core is suitable if you:
    1. video encode
    2. do 3d rendering
    3. do lots of compilation
    All these are primarily workstation related tasks.

    It is redundant (even detrimental to performance) if you:
    1. game
    2. office/internet usage

    And of course if you want to do lots of multitasking with concurrent heavy loads (typical for servers) quad core will save the day.

    Overall quad core is overkill for the desktop PC right now ... but the principe "the more the better" will not stop many to buy it ... so there we go.
  • kaddy69, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Is it just me or did the E6800 stomp it in every benchmark?
    • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Only the single threaded ones.

      That is because you have a core at 2.93 versus only 2.67 for the Quad.
  • matthewsr2000, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2i would've been a bit more impressed had they benched this against a few dual socket boards, especially an AMD dual socket board to kind of even the playing field. sure, most of will never own a dual socket MB, but most of us won't own a quad core processor for a while either. and i almost think it would be cheaper in some instances to have multiple sockets then to have multiple cores, at least while this processor is top dog.

    • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Multiple sockets is never cheaper in the current environment. Simply because single socket motherboards are cheaper to make and outsell multiple socket motherboards 100:1.

      So you can (if you're careful) get a well-working single-socket mobo for $90, while multiple socket mobos hover in the $300 and up range.

      Single-socket is the way.
  • neocitron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9realizing that Intel is wasting AMD on performance, power consumption, availability, heat generation, and price?

    Priceless.

    There are some people who see things objectively, for everyone else, there's Digg.
    • Nistavar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6I thought these stupid Mastercard jokes died along time ago... guess not. *Proceeds to chop of Neocitron's head.*
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The multitasking benchmarks are troubling. Only the "Large File Compression & Audio Encoding" test showed a significant improvement going to the quad core, and the improvement was 60%. I would expect around 80% for true scaling from 2 to 4 cores(2 core processors is at 2.93GHz, 4 core is at 2.67 GHz). The reviewers didn't touch upon this much at all.

    I am guessing their "multithreading" benchmarks didn't use more that two threads except for the "Large File Compression & Audio Encoding" benchmark. Maybe Dvorak advised them on multithreading.

    In any case, I'm looking to purchase a bunch of servers that will have a bunch of threads, and it seems like out of the blue Intel came along and now they are the top dog, which is quite a change. Reading about the Core 2, it's mighty impressive. I'd like to know more about the Core 2's weakenesses and strong points vs Opterons, and i don't see many good benchmarks out there.

    Oh and of course a quad core won't perform well while playing quake - quad cores scream "run a server on me!" If you have one person fragging away, it's very hard to get creative to distribute load across processors from the game programmer's perspective. With a server you deal with thousands of truly concurrent users hitting your system. And the client machines that drive the system should have multiple CPUs too. These quad core reviews that use games are kinda pointless - put RAID on your system and nail that CPU please.
  • digitallysick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I want the quad core chip, overclocked of course =) i wonder how well it runs vmware workstation? i want to be in my virtural machines, running fluidly as if they were my main os.
  • shamer99, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2HMMM Seems kinda biased, the used a 32bit OS to test 64 bit AMD processors. They used an antiquated XP sp 2 , rather than an optimized Linux system.

    I windows bashing reserved only for /.
  • emorphien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I really really hope to go quad core this winter.
    • boyter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4130W .... you wont need that heater at least
    • emorphien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah... i'm hoping that goes down... although if I get one I'll probably wait for the slower chip. At the same time, I wonder how much heat AMD will be generating. If the head is bad enough I may stick with dual core, I'm not that interested in heating my room with my computer.
  • bobcrotch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Cant....wait....to...compile....gentoo......
  • sandfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I got me an engineering sample Kentsfield from my Intel buddy the other day =)
  • grooves, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1More quad-core reviews here: http://computershopper.com/roundups/intel_core_2_extreme_qx6700_quadcore_four_cores_to_the_floor
  • HzR3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They already announced an 8-core processor by the end of next year, so for everybody who is planning on buying the quad core, don't come crying in a couple of months.....
  • kingygk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can't wait to blow my tax refund on this chip :)
  • crossers, on 07/23/2008, -0/+0oh it will be grate for me. can't wait.
    http://www.shpe-sac.org
    http://www.ocflex.com/
    http://www.trgovinca.org
    http://www.chasr.org/
  •  

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