More on Sandy Bridge

Subject: Processors | September 20, 2010 - 04:53 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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There certainly has been a lot of coverage of Intel's new CPU architecture but as enthusiasts it is hard not to be enthused.  ExtremeTech has assembled what they learned about the new CPUs architecture and performance and put together their interpretation of what we know so far.  The release is close, but not imminent so kill some time reading more about the CPU to be.

Intel selling scratch-off software CPU upgrades

Subject: Processors | September 20, 2010 - 11:18 AM | Ryan Shrout
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We know that companies in the technology industry are always looking for ways to increase profits and improve margins.  One way they do that is by offering higher speeds for faster components - a dual-core CPU costs less than a quad-core and a GTS 450 costs less than a GTX 480.  Everything is fair in love and computers, right?

Well what about this: Intel is now selling plastic scratch off upgrade cards in Best Buy stores (and likely others) that allows buyers of systems with Pentium G6951 processors to download software to unlock additional performance.

IDF 2010: Sandy Bridge offers video transcoding acceleration

Subject: Processors | September 12, 2010 - 12:00 PM | Ryan Shrout
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It seems that all anyone wants to talk about recently is Sandy Bridge, Intel's next-generation microarchitecture set to be unveiled tomorrow at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.  We've fielded calls from AMD, NVIDIA, motherboard partners and other third parties all wanting to give us their thoughts or ask us for ours on the subject.  It is really becoming a compelling story.

One big CPU roundup for Fall 2010

Subject: Processors | September 7, 2010 - 12:47 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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If you are in the mood for some really big performance charts drop by InsideHW for comparisons of just about every x86/64 processor on the market currently.  Covering Athlon II and Phenom II, Celerons, i3, 5 and 7 as well as some Pentium chips you can see how they all match up.  To sum up the article InsideHW breaks up the results they saw by a number of common uses for PCs, from gaming to surfing and Facebook and they offer a top contender in each category.

ARM's Cortex A9 dual core taped out on 28nm with GlobalFoundries

Subject: Processors | September 1, 2010 - 01:53 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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ARM has finally taped out their 28nm process dual core Cortex A9 HKMG processor at Global Foundries; the processor will run between 2-2.5GHz and offer improved performance over their past generation which was 40nm and ran about 500MHz slower. 

Breaking: AMD shows die of Orochi, a 32nm 8-core Bulldozer-based CPU

Subject: Processors | September 1, 2010 - 01:04 PM | Ryan Shrout
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We don't know much about it, but at the first annual Global Technology Conference hosted by GLOBALFOUNDRIES, AMD's Chekib Akrout showed the first images of the upcoming Orochi core processor:

Sandy Bridge performance preview leaked out early

Subject: Processors | August 27, 2010 - 03:27 PM | Ryan Shrout
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It was bound to happen, really.  Anandtech has posted a very in-depth preview of the upcoming Intel Sandy Bridge architecture that includes benchmarks of an engineering sample they "located" somewhere without Intel's blessing.  But who cares, right?  Let's see what the numbers are telling us!

Can the new CULV Celeron SU2300 revive the ION GF9400?

Subject: Processors | August 26, 2010 - 05:30 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The ION platform has been languishing, partly because the low powered Atom processor is only good for certain tasks as its abilities are limited.  Of course its power draw and heat output are also very low and it could handle streaming video at a high enough quality to attract some users.  Now Zotac is pairing the ION chipset with an Intel CULV processor, which provides more power at the cost of heat and energy costs.  AnandTech examines the

Four hexa-core Xeons are expensive, but often worth it

Subject: Processors | August 17, 2010 - 03:57 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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32 cores and 64 threads equals an incredible amount of processing power but it comes at a high cost.  A basic Dell server using X5670's will run you about $9000 and a higher end model using X7550's can be as much as $32,000.  These servers are not intended for home use and really are not optimized to give great gaming by dropping in a high end GPU or four; in the data centre they do represent the current pinnacle of power.  Part of AnandTech's review deals with the challenge of designing a way to actually test these beasts and max out there computational potential, using scenari

Examining AMD's 2010 lineup

Subject: Processors | August 6, 2010 - 01:50 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The biggest difference between the various lines of processors that AMD has offered us over the past year lies in the cache and the number of processors.  Only the Phenoms have L3 cache and the L2 cache for almost all CPUs is 512KB regardless of the number of cores, only the Athlon II X2 has a model featuring 1024KB of L2 cache.  X-bit Labs wanted to examine the differences in performance, specifically the difference between a dual core with 1024KB of L2 cache and a triple core with 512KB. 

Meet the 6 core Xeon 5600

Subject: Processors | July 27, 2010 - 12:52 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The Westmere-EP is a 32nm process and it's current representative is the Xeon 5680, a 6 core 3.33GHz CPU though it will hit 3.6GHz via Intel's TurboBoost technology.  If you want a dual CPU PC then the Xeon family is currently the way to go, though you might not choose to use the board that The Tech Report did.  The focus of TR's review was not the ultimate in high end machines, instead they chose to test it using low power components as it would have in a server role, though they did go all out and use an SDD for storage. 

Playing with the fourth core on an X3

Subject: Processors | July 8, 2010 - 05:10 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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With one of the best overclocking tricks since the one with the pencil, many unassuming Athlon II X3's hide an unused but perfectly functional 4th core under that shiny heatspreader.  The flick of a BIOS setting will tell you if you can try to pull this trick off, though stability testing is very important as some of the cores on these CPUs are disabled for a good reason.  Legit Reviews did exactly that with an AMD Athlon II X3 445 and it turned out that they were unlucky enough to receive one with a faulty fourth core. 

Plenty of AMD processors for under a hundred

Subject: Processors | July 2, 2010 - 12:17 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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As Josh rightly pointed out in this weeks Tech Dirt, AMD been digging around in people's pockets for every available penny they can get any time they so much as looked at purchasing a GPU from them.  nVIDIA seems poised to change that, so we will see if the Radeons can get back down to at least their MRSP.  The same cannot be said on the CPU side, as they continue to offer a range of fairly inexpensive processors at several levels of performance.  Two examples are the Regor based

Leaked Sandy Bridge Numbers and Armchair Analysis

Subject: Processors | June 11, 2010 - 11:50 AM | Josh Walrath
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Over at Coolaler some enterprising young soul was able to lay hands on a Sandy Bridge sample from Intel.  For those not in the know, Sandy Bridge is the codename for the new Tick/Tock architecture from Intel.  This is the next, big step forward from the previous Nehalem architecture, and promises to again increase per clock performance as well as add in on-die graphics capabilities.  Much is not known about this processor, but a few things were unveiled with this post.

Talking with Intel about their 48 core monster

Subject: Processors | June 8, 2010 - 05:31 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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X-bit Labs had a chance to speak with Sebastian Steibl, the director of Intel Labs Braunschweig, who is working with the team designing Intel's 48 core CPU, aka the Single Chip Cloud Computer.  They touch on what architecture these cores use and just how those cores have been designed to be used.  It may be a little technical for anyone not interested in L2 cache coherency and the benefits and drawbacks of having heterogeneous core frequencies but for those who are interested this proves to be a good read.  As a bonus they asked a few questions of Jon Peddie about the future of

Computex: AMD demos low power Fusion APU, announces Fusion Fund

Subject: Processors | June 1, 2010 - 10:43 PM | Ryan Shrout
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At Computex 2010 in Taipei this morning AMD held the first public demonstration of a Fusion-based APU (accelerated processing unit): the combination of a traditional CPU and GPU architecture on a single monolithic die.  The pairing of high performance serial processing units and parallel graphics processing cores provides the potential for a dramatic shift in the computing and system marketplace. 

Computex: GLOBALFOUNDRIES adds capacity for 40nm/28nm, focus on mobile

Subject: Processors | May 31, 2010 - 10:30 PM | Ryan Shrout
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Who would have thought that just a couple short years ago one of the most interesting news stories we would hear about at Computex is about the expansion of manufacturing capabilities at a foundry company?  But that is definitely the case and not just because of the details of the press conference itself but because of the implications the information presented indicates for the future of our industry.

Intel Unveils New Product Plans for High-Performance Computing

Subject: Processors | May 31, 2010 - 11:45 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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SANTA CLARA, Calif.