Hmm, no 3.33GHz for Penryn...yet?

[XJ.]

TechConnect Magazine - Prices of Intel 45nm desktop CPUs revealed


I thought for sure that Intel would be able to hit 3.33Ghz by Jan08. Sandbagging it or problems - what do you think?

[CrowdAds]

[k0NG0]

Wait-and-see move if you ask me. If Phenom turns out to be available in a measurable quantity at 3GHz or so, they'll release one.

They're in a fairly comfy seat right now. They can use the highest bin for lower-power Xeons instead of an unnecessarily fast (compared to the competition) Core 2 Duo/Quad/XE.

[XJ.]

Make sense. Apple must be bummed out - they need a performance upgrade for the MacPro's to keep people on the upgrade wagon (especially with a somewhat piggish 10.6 coming out soon).

[k0NG0]

They have the larger cache and lower power to push, though. The MacPro uses Xeons, right?

Apple will love Nehalem.

[XJ.]

Yes, Xeons - so the cache will help some. And on the MacPro side of the biz, I would think Nehalem would rock most MacPro user's world

Hell, I'd like one now, with two quad 3GHz cores, but the price is >5x what my typical build cost is - it would be a folding monster though

[k0NG0]

Yeah. But I have a feeling that getting a bunch of cheap Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX boards with inbuilt graphics, a single stick of memory and a 35W Athlon X2 3600+ or something would be cheaper and produce a pretty nice amount of points. Run it off USB-sticks. If you had 5 you could probably rig it up to run from a single high-efficiency PSU such as the Corsair HX520 (there are small DC-DC PSUs one could feed from the one PSU, too). Ten cores, around 500W of power. A nice folding cluster. I still think you'd come in below a MacPro in terms of money for the same point output.

I feel more and more that I'll own a Mac sooner rather than later. For the software. XP isn't horrible but it ain't good. Vista is even less attractive. Linux is nice but, well, nice. OS X seems pretty nice. Also, the computers don't look like a bag of poo.

[XJ.]

Only problem is ATM the Core2 outperforms X2s by ~50% at the same clock speed (SMP-GROMACS). If I were really looking to spend some $$$s on folding, a couple of good overclocked G0 Q6600s would give the most bang/buck and pretty staggering output (probably ~8k pts/day).

I'm with you on Macs, probably the next computer I buy will be a MacBook, though I may upgrade my Windows system one more time b/4 that (mainly for folding and games).

[k0NG0]

Or one buys a bunch of PS3s that have busted BD drives or whatever and run those off a DC backplane with a high-quality AC/DC converter feeding that. Hacky, but would work. (From IDF I remember slides that said if data-centers used a 400V DC backplane they'd have >50% better efficiency than if they did DC conversion at the end-points. Hence me yammering on about it.)

[XJ.]

Yeah, makes sense - heck, I'm jealous of you Euro w/240v nominal outlet voltage - that alone boost efficiency by at least 5% on high efficiency PSUs.

When I worked in networking - we used large DC backplanes because our larger (14 blade) systems would suck too much power otherwise. I remember when someone put standard gauge cables on the dual PSUs and smoked us out of the room (and man does burning rubber stink!).

[Sandog]

I read Intel will come out with the 3.33 shortly after. I'm sure they could come out with one sooner but they probably want to save some releases between now and when Nehalem comes.

[XJ.]

Originally Posted by Sandog

I read Intel will come out with the 3.33 shortly after. I'm sure they could come out with one sooner but they probably want to save some releases between now and when Nehalem comes.

Yeah, and as kONGO pointed out - Intel's under no pressure (e.g. from AMD) to push out anything faster right now

I hope AMD has some good success in getting it's B3 stepping out sooner than expected - otherwise we will be stuck with the whims of Intel for some time to come.

Barcelona should fold as SMP_Gromacs about as fast as Penryn clock for clock (guessing, based on descriptions of improvements too the SSE implementation), so it'd be nice to have another option.

[XJ.]

Oh, according the The INQUIRER - microprocessors, servers, memory, PCs, graphics, networking, storage, Apple is the one likely sucking up all of Intel's higher binned Penryn's at the moment to go into their high end MacPro workstations.

[k0NG0]

Originally Posted by XJ.

Oh, according the The INQUIRER - microprocessors, servers, memory, PCs, graphics, networking, storage, Apple is the one likely sucking up all of Intel's higher binned Penryn's at the moment to go into their high end MacPro workstations.

By golly, we're soothsayers, us two. (As in "we mentioned Macs early in this conversation!")