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Sandy Bridge-E Prices Leaked In Company Bulletin

Subject: Processors | November 12, 2011 - 06:50 PM |
Tagged: Sandy Bridge E, microcenter, Intel, ddr3, core i7, asus

Sandy Bridge-E is almost upon us, and enthusiasts are no doubt salivating over the shiny new motherboards, quad channel memory, and PCI-E bandwidth that these chips offer. Naturally, there are bound to be price and information leaks as the launch date gets closer whether it is due to a PR move by Intel or a leak by a person or company on down the line. One such leak came to our attention recently via a leaked company bulletin. Microcenter, a US based computer electronics store has leaked the prices of some of the upcoming Sandy Bride-E processors.

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While Sandy Bridge-E will not officially launch until the 14 of this month,Microcenter is already busy preparing for the launch by setting prices and organizing promotions. One such promotion has come to our attention recently, and involves two SB-E CPUs and a slew of supporting motherboards. The two processors in question are the Intel Core i7 3930K and the Core i7 3960X. The i7 3930K will be sold at $649.99 USD while the Extreme edition i7 3960X part will go for 1,149.99 USD. These prices are limited to one per customer and are in-store deals only. While the prices are a bit higher than expected, the retailer is trying to sweeten the deal by bundling a "free" Corsair H80 sealed loop water cooler with the purchase of any one of the Sandy Bridge-E CPUs. While the free H80's price is likely built into the processor's mark-up, it's at least a decent cooler (HardOCP has a review of the water cooler here). Whether it will be beneficial will depend on the user's existing cooler and whether it will be compatible/upgradeable to socket 2011.

The company will also have a "limited stock" of X79 motherboards available at launch, with more stock to become available in the coming weeks after launch. Throughout all Microcenter stores, the following motherboards will be available at the following prices.

  • ASUS P9X79 PRO 2011 ATX $339.99
  • ASUS Sabertooth PX79 2011 ATX $349.99
  • ASUS P9X79 Deluxe 2011 ATX $389.99

Asus must be a crowd favorite over at Microcenter!

A bulletin containing the Microcenter leak ended with a positive note in stating "this launch should provide a tremendous opportunity for some very high end BYO builds for the most extreme enthusiast customer who is wanting the absolute latest and greatest from Intel!" Will you be hitting up a Microcenter at launch to get your Sandy Bridge-E on?

Source: PC Perspective

See what happens when you harness three GPUs to a Bulldozer and try to get them to pull it along

Subject: Processors | November 9, 2011 - 04:05 PM |
Tagged: amd, bulldozer, sli, FX 8150, GTX580

In a good mood?  If so, do not read this [H]ard|OCP article on Bulldozer's gaming performance when coupled with two and three GTX580s.  By using an SLI setup you can see just how powerful a CPU is as it tries to keep up with the GPUs and as you might expect the Bulldozer is not up to the task.  In most tests [H] saw a 70% performance difference between the FX 8150 and the Core-i5 2500K, with both processors clocked at 4.8GHz.  In a very few tests the results were a little closer but this is bad news for AMD, especially when you consider it is the more expensive of the two chips.

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"We are taking the new AMD FX-8150 and giving it the power of Dual and Triple-SLI GeForce GTX 580 video cards. We are going to take the new CPU up to large NV Surround resolutions and see how performance stacks up when it comes to high-end gaming scenarios."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

 

Source: [H]ard|OCP

Just Delivered: MAINGEAR Epic 180 CPU Cooler

Subject: Cases and Cooling, Processors | November 8, 2011 - 08:44 AM |
Tagged: maingear, epic 180, cooler

Just Delivered is a new section of PC Perspective where we share some of the goodies that pass through our labs that may or may not see a review, but are pretty cool none the less.

We got a box in from MAINGEAR over the weekend.  It did NOT include a PC.  Instead, we are getting our first experience with the Epic 180 CPU cooler.  

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What you are looking at is a high end self-contained water cooler that exceeds the size of anything we have previously seen in the PC Perspective labs.  As the name implies, the Epic 180 is based on a 180mm radiator and fan and this likely means the number of chassis that will support it are limited. 

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In this image, the Epic 180 (left) is compared to the original Corsair H50 cooler (right) with a 120mm fan on the radiator. Wow...

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We will have a lot more details in upcoming stories but you should expect the Epic 180 to support LGA1155/1156, LGA1366 and of coure, the upcoming LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E sockets.

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MAINGEAR claims that the Epic 180 will offer 20% better performance than other similar coolers with fan speeds at around 1000 RPM, keeping your rig both cool and quiet.  More details very soon!!

Source: PC Perspective

Just Delivered: 64GB of Corsair DDR3 - Ready for Sandy Bridge-E!!

Subject: Processors, Chipsets, Memory | November 7, 2011 - 03:07 PM |
Tagged: corsair, vengeance, sandy bridge-e, just delivered

Just Delivered is a new section of PC Perspective where we share some of the goodies that pass through our labs that may or may not see a review, but are pretty cool none the less.

Sometimes we receive interesting packages in the mail and when we get things from Corsair, we tend to pay attention.  Oddly, I had not seen a box quite this size before.  What comes from Corsair in the shape of a cube?

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As it turns out, it was four 16GB DDR3 memory kits, preparing our team for the upcoming Sandy Bridge-E platform reviews!

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Each kit includes 4 modules, getting us ready for the quad-channel memory controller on the upcoming Intel CPU.  Corsair included both Vengeance and Vengeance LP kits for us, offering an option is lower profile for potentially larger heatsinks.

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For motherboards that will ship with 8 DIMM slots, this allows us to test configurations as high as 32GB!!  We are going to be covering all of these bases for you in the coming weeks before launch but don't worry - we are going test the standard 4 x 2GB configurations as well.  :)

Source: PC Perspective

AMD lays off 10-12% of workforce, new CEO cleans house

Subject: General Tech, Processors | November 3, 2011 - 08:22 PM |
Tagged: layoffs, amd

We have been discussing AMD’s condition and future outlook over most of recent memory. Since the lawsuit versus Intel and the subsequent trying by the Big Blue Giant: AMD’s apparent jab-haymaker combo of lawsuit-Sempron to push heavily in the consumer market seems to have been mostly dodged and countered by Intel. While this last quarter has been positive there is little time for positive press; AMD has, today, removed 1400 employees from their company.

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There was a time that AMD said they could beat anything Intel could throw at them.

That means that what AMD is releasing now is as-good or better than where they thought CPUs would be.

Food for thought.

It is not very uncommon to see layoffs during restructuring in the 10% range when a new CEO enters a company. The sad part of restructuring is that there is often little consideration about which employees comprise that 10%; rather, their job descriptions. These layoffs in isolation do not say much about AMD’s health in the upcoming time but should tint in one way or another how to perceive their upcoming actions. Where the future is positive or negative depends on how this ties into that.

Source: BSN

Really Ryan? 8.429 GHz? … *Scoff* - New World Record!

Subject: General Tech, Processors | November 2, 2011 - 05:55 PM |
Tagged: overclock, bulldozer, amd

Remember back in September when Ryan was all excited about seeing AMD exceed Intel with their Liquid Helium-cooled overclock? 8.429 GHz bulldozed past the 8.309 GHz record set upon Intel’s Celeron and all rejoiced at AMD’s 130 MHz triumph. Well out with the old and in with the new: there is a new overclocking king and it goes by the name of -- well it is also the AMD FX-8150. That is irrelevant, however, as the new record (if validated before someone beats it too) has become 8.461 GHz.

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Someone’s the new king in town… the current king.

The new world record was set by Andre Yang, an overclocked from Taiwan, with an ASUS Crosshair V Formula motherboard. Benchmarks were not possible as when you get overclocking to this level: successfully running CPU-Z just to query the specifications of a CPU is generally considered sufficiently stable to be qualified as an overclock. Do not be surprised if SuperPi blows a hole through your chassis. It was not stated which method of cooling was used to allow the processor to reach those specifications.

Source: X-Bit labs

Better thread scheduling could really help Bulldozer

Subject: Processors | November 1, 2011 - 02:48 PM |
Tagged: bulldozer, a8-3850, thread scheduling, amd

Windows and to an extent other OSes are now familiar with Intel's HyperThreading and tend to be able to schedule threads in an optimized manner, but what about the eight 'cores' in the AMD A8-3850?  The Tech Report found a way to test this and the results are conclusive; Windows 7 is not optimized properly for Bulldozer.  The Bulldozer has two cores on each module, easy to see in the picture below.  By playing with the core affinity via the command line you can run benchmarks using specific cores, to test the impact clustering together 4 threads in two modules versus spreading out the threads to one per module.  As it turns out, there is a noticeable difference when you do set the processor to run with one thread in each cluster.

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"Is an awareness of the shared nature of AMD's Bulldozer architecture the key to unlocking its performance? We investigate."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

 

Source: The Tech Report

Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Core i3-2105 on Battlefield 3

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | October 31, 2011 - 02:22 PM |
Tagged: video, sandy bridge, Intel, bf3, battlefield 3, APU, amd

Everyone is playing Battlefield 3 these days; we even had a virtual LAN party this weekend where forum members and PC Perspective team members played from about 10am until well after 1am ET. We have done more than our fair share of Battlefield 3 articles as well including hardware performance on high end graphics cards, multi-GPU scaling and more.  

We had some requests and questions about what was the lowest priced hardware you could play the game on and while we had run some tests on the GeForce 9800 GT, I decided to take a stab at running BF3 at its lowest settings with integrated graphics on Intel's Sandy Bridge processor and AMD's A-series APU.  Here were our test settings:

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We ran at a fairly low resolution of 1366x768 (both indicative of mobile resolutions as well as low-end hardware restrictions) and the Low in-game preset.  As it turns out this was the level at which the A8-3850 Llano APU was able to maintain an average around 30 FPS while the Intel Core i3-2105 (both priced around $140) was able to reach only a third of that. 

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With both systems coming in at the ~$450 mark, this could qualify as the lowest priced PC that is capable of getting you into the BF3 action!

You can see our full comparison right here in this short video!

Source: PC Perspective

Benchmarking Bulldozer and taking the GPU out of the picture

Subject: Processors | October 17, 2011 - 05:06 PM |
Tagged: bulldozer, fx-8150, crossfire, gaming

One of the questions we have been asking about Bulldozer is how much it effects game play performance.  We know that for non-multithreaded applications th FX-8150 falls behind the top SandyBridge processors and barely breaks even on heavily multithreaded apps.  That doesn't necessarily mean that it will lag behind SandyBridge in gaming as many games do not utilize the CPU enough to make a huge difference, though that premise needs to be proved.  Enter Tweaktown who have taken the top Bulldozer and SandyBridge CPUs along with three Sapphire HD 6970 video cards, and placed them in a Maximus IV Extreme-Z and  Crosshair V Formula motherboard respectively.  With that much graphical power, it is possible to see the performance difference that the CPU and the motherboard chipset have on performance.  Read on to see how Bulldozer fared.

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"We've already provided a fair bit of coverage on the new FX-8150 CPU from AMD and it hasn't all been favorable for the team over at AMD. If you haven't looked yet, I highly recommend you check out our other pieces that cover the VGA testing side of things and my editorial Shi**y Marketing Killed the Bulldozer Star which has really gained traction over the last few days.

Today we test the video card side of things a bit more and see what goes on when we start to make use of CrossFireX on the 990FX platform. The 990FX chipset shows some good potential and it's going to be interesting to see what happens when we start to make use of all those PCIe lanes that are on offer."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

Processors

 

Source: Tweaktown

The early bird gets the Bulldozer

Subject: Processors | October 12, 2011 - 12:44 AM |
Tagged: fx-8150, FX, cpu, bulldozer, amd, 990fx

You've been waiting through years of rumour and innuendo but the day has finally arrive, AMD's brand new Bulldozer architecture is here.  It is like nothing we've seen before in any chip based off of the venerable Athlon line, which has served dutifully for over a decade.  Bulldozer takes AMD's vision of a dual core processor not as two cores sewn together, but more as Siamese twins which share vital resources and are so closely conjoined that you cannot truly say where one ends and the other begins.  The Bulldozer core is exactly that, while only four Bulldozer cores exist they can handle eight integer execution units, and four shared 2 x 128 bit floating point/SIMD which is interpreted by your OS as 8 cores.

Implementing a new technology is not without its drawbacks.  The Athlon/Phenom architecture has been perfected by AMD thanks to its long life, while the Bulldozer is brand new and they've already started polishing it into Piledriver which will we see in the not too distant future (especially compared to the wait for Bulldozer).  That immaturity is shown in Ryan's review where he compares it clock for clock to a Phenom II.  It gets worse when compared against SandyBridge as the Bulldozer can at most occaisonally equal the performance of an i7-2600K.  The only saving grace is price when you look at heavily multi-threaded applications and there are not many out there. 

 However one benchmark cannot tell the whole story, which is why [H]ard|OCP released two reviews on Bulldozer which focus on different aspects of the chips performance.  Start off with their look at the performance which will give you an idea of how the chip performs under normal circumstances with its power saving features enabled and overclocked with those features disabled.  Then they head onto what most people are interested in, the gaming benchmarks.  Theoretical and productivity software benchmarks are one thing but we've all got to have fun sometimes and for those moments the new FX chips don't look too bad at all ... unless you are a Civ V fan.  

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"Computer hardware enthusiasts have literally waited for years for AMD's Bulldozer architecture to come to market and we finally see this today in its desktop form, code named Zambezi, brand named AMD FX. In this article we share with you our analysis of Bulldozer's performance in synthetic benchmarks and desktop applications."

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

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Source: [H]ard|OCP

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