Intel D975XBX (Bad Axe)

[bingo13]

Originally Posted by Sandog

Great news bingo13, you seem to know it all about this board. Could you please tell us when the NDA will be lifted so you can tell us everything? .

Sometime this month......

[Belisarius]

Originally Posted by Intel_User

I talked about Woodcrest, the Xeon variant of Conroe performance at some other site.

On second thought, Conroe may happen to be overhyped than it is. Considering how Yonah is slightly disappointing in performance, if the trend continues, Conroe will be slightly disappointing too. Don't wait for future CPU that will come in a year so, because if it turns out to be disappointing, its gonna be pretty bad.

The trend with semiconductor industries, especially computers is that nothing revolutionary really happens. I bet next year is gonna be as boring and slow as this year is. It would very much surprise me if Conroe indeed beats AMD in performance like AMD does over Intel. I sort of doubt it.

what the hell is wrong with Yonah's performance? It keeps up with a an AMD X2 clocked at the same speed pretty much in benchmarks and has disadvantages like no memory controller on board, and a slower FSB, all at 40W less power consumption, what more do you want? Although improvements can probably be made, it is not a direct competitor to the X2 CPU's, and once those power restraints are lifted for desktop plus the other Merom core enhancements, I am damn sure Intel will definitely be on top once more, no doubt in my eyes. AMD has nothing for a long time, only "tweaks" for it's current CPU's over the coming year or more.

[Belisarius]

Sandog can you get a hold of your Intel friend and confirm anything? all these innuendoes are driving me insane.

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by Belisarius

Sandog can you get a hold of your Intel friend and confirm anything? all these innuendoes are driving me insane.

Hey bro, don't sweat it. Take a DEEEEP breath, now blow out. I wouldn't even think about Conroe if I were you because it is a long way off. If you are looking to upgrade I would be excited about Presler. From the news so far it is looking to be a fine dual core chip and I want one myself. As far as processors go the current 800 series rocks except for the heat. The 900 series will be quite a bit faster especially when OC and as long as you can run the 900's on air without a leaf blower fan you will be totally happy. If all you want is the fastest processor then good luck. Any processor you buy will get beat in 6mos. no matter what. The good news about Conroe is that it should perform well on the desktop and that its TDP(thermal design power) is much lower than Prescott. Besides the CPU news which is quite good for Intel these days, I believe the mobo is much more fun to play with and talk than the CPU. The D975XBX is going to be a blast. It looks great, will have more tweaking options, runs everything, and has Crossfire. I am seriously thinking about utilizing Crossfire if I can find the right cards.

As far as my Intel contact goes he is not for CPU's but mobo's. Plus I haven't heard from him in a while. It just so happens I emailed him again tonight simply because I want to get a feeling if I will be buying my next board or not which might be real soon. If I don't get a reply I will blow him off as he seems to have done me. My original contact was a great guy who I feel lucky to have known. I refuse to contact him though with questions since he has transferred to another job within Intel, at least not about mobo's.

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by bingo13

Sometime this month......

Nice, we won't even have to go search the news then on the big day. You'll have it all right here

[TQ]

Originally Posted by Sandog

I am seriously thinking about utilizing Crossfire if I can find the right cards.

Don't leap too fast...initially, I was fascinated by SLI but in time I came to be suspicious of it.
Point: this month's Maximum PC is predicting that next year we will see dual-core GPU's.
Of course it could be argued that an SLI/Crossfire rig with dual-core GPU's would be a good thing, but I have a feeling the reason why nVidia brought out the 512MB 7800GTX, then canceled it after only a short time in production is that they have something up their sleeve.

[Sandog]

It's all for fun for me. It would be the first time I've ever ran two video cards. I did not get on the 3DFX SLI bandwagon at the time because I was deep into Matrox Millenium series. I have heard Crossfire runs perfect though on this new Intel board. The problem is the ATI X1600 XT is way too hot, and expensive. I will probably keep the 7800GTX until ATI comes out with their new cards Q1/06. I am just going to run Crossfire as an alternative to having one expensive and hot video card. I should get at least the same performance with two cheaper and cooler cards without the added power connectors.

Also my Intel contact said he will see if he can get me a D975XBX for review. It's not definite though.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by Sandog

Also my Intel contact said he will see if he can get me a D975XBX for review. It's not definite though.

Tease...

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by JimTram

I can see why you bought three ( I read a review). A bit more snazzy than my 1080AMG.


"However, my favorite full tower case right now for the money is the Gigabyte 3D Aurora. I have bought three of them to date. It is a personal choice but the case just works for what I need done."

I was thinking about my case a couple of weeks ago and its future. It is pretty hard to find a replacement for a $500 LianLi with built-in Koolance Exos2 that is comparable in quality and performance. Since the $500 spent is water under the bridge the only other fault would be size and it's not even that big (tall). It has very low noise and cools excellent. Also it is nice to be able to look in the right side window directly at the CPU area and see all the board components. The water block is not even an inch high and the 80mm Aerocool fan hovers in mid-air. Besides having 5 quiet 120mm fans (including the PS) I have built in LED switches up front, custom stainless power button with blue LED, custom super size reset button, custom BIOS jumper toggle switch in the back, and an internal blue Sunbeam HyperLight. What I am getting at is I am going to keep this wonderful case for a long time probably, even when I go to Conroe.

This list is what I am leaning toward getting next.
Intel D975XBXLKR mobo
Intel D955EE Presler CPU
2 future ATI video cards in Crossfire (may require the newer SeaSonic PS with dual
VGA power connectors).
2x1GB DDR2 Ultra LL from Corsair of OCZ
Going back to 2 Raptors in RAID (need guarantee I get rev. 4 drives).
Logitech G5 gaming mouse (I have already purchased this and will see if I keep it or the Logitech MX1000)

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by TQ

Tease...

If he does it will be after the new year. He gets the retail box from the same place all the retail boxes come from so it is not much quicker. His supplies are used for marketing. For example, supplying boards as prizes in Intel sponsored game tournaments. He does not get engineering or pre-release boards the likes of which get sent to people for hardware analysis. He’s a very busy guy but he's still responsive to my emails. I told him I'm going to put the board to good use in a review.

[JimTram]

My two motly sub $100 cases are still doing the job and serving me well. Can't see a reason to upgrade them yet, especially when the trend in CPU's is coolness! Your plans are looking good - except for ATI. I read the same article in MaxPC that TQ read. I would wait till I see what Nvidia comes out with. Dual GPU's sound interesting. I'll bet the farm SLI will work with the 975. Too big a market out there for it not to.

Originally Posted by Sandog

I was thinking about my case a couple of weeks ago and its future. It is pretty hard to find a replacement for a $500 LianLi with built-in Koolance Exos2 that is comparable in quality and performance. Since the $500 spent is water under the bridge the only other fault would be size and it's not even that big (tall). It has very low noise and cools excellent. Also it is nice to be able to look in the right side window directly at the CPU area and see all the board components. The water block is not even an inch high and the 80mm Aerocool fan hovers in mid-air. Besides having 5 quiet 120mm fans (including the PS) I have built in LED switches up front, custom stainless power button with blue LED, custom super size reset button, custom BIOS jumper toggle switch in the back, and an internal blue Sunbeam HyperLight. What I am getting at is I am going to keep this wonderful case for a long time probably, even when I go to Conroe.

This list is what I am leaning toward getting next.
Intel D975XBXLKR mobo
Intel D955EE Presler CPU
2 future ATI video cards in Crossfire (may require the newer SeaSonic PS with dual
VGA power connectors).
2x1GB DDR2 Ultra LL from Corsair of OCZ
Going back to 2 Raptors in RAID (need guarantee I get rev. 4 drives).
Logitech G5 gaming mouse (I have already purchased this and will see if I keep it or the Logitech MX1000)

[Sandog]

I would go with NVidia if it were an option. Right now the word is the ATI Crossfire works like it should. In a couple of weeks we should be reading all about it (D975XBX is officially released).

[Intel_User]

Sandog can you get a hold of your Intel friend and confirm anything? all these innuendoes are driving me insane.

Innuendo?? ***!!?? Did I insult you personally?? I remember I haven't.

Yonah was said to be "gaming" optimized by Intel at their presentations. Current benchmarks indicate its not faster at all. Looking at couple benchmarks doesn't tell anything, since for demanding benchmarks, its basically dual core Dothan. Despite the fact that there is SSE3 support and SSE/SSE2 is supposed to be better, there is no improvement in those areas over Pentium M except because its dual core.

In fact for performance, its only slightly more competitive than Dothan did when there were single cores only.


Having no memory controller is not a disadvantage Yonah has. Its a design trade-off/decision the microprocessor design team makes. In fact, it doesn't, and there won't be A-N-Y CPUs from Intel until AT LEAST 2008 that integrates memory controller. Did you know they are server CPUs?? The argument is really senseless.

The low FSB argument also has no truth here. It doesn't seem to benefit much from more bandwidth as seen so far.

Look at it other way: What happens when 90nm dual core Turions are out with higher bandwith and slightly lower power DDR2?? Current indications are that it won't consume much power than single core. And then if they go to 65nm process?? Dual core added 15% to their desktop CPUs at the same clock. Though I doubt adding another core for Turion only increases 15% since mobile version only has one way to go in terms of power consumption, and that being up, reports indicate there will be 25W and 35W versions, same as current Turions. Perhaps it can be clocked lower.

To tell the truth, I am more losing faith in Intel to deliver processors that can be competitive. Only thing that gives me hope is that the Pentium M team had executed brillantly so far.

Mobile: They always had a lead, and I am sure they will this time, its like Intel's fortress here .
Desktops: Ups and Downs, 3 year down now, the thing is will it keep going down, or can they put it up??
Servers: Opterons are showing impressive scaling thanks to their hypertransport interconnect, and Intel's CSI is reported to be scaled down so the performance won't be fantastic anymore(better, but now adequate not fantastic), and that's in 2008, when second version of HTT will be out.

I am eagerly waiting for Part 2 of Anandtech article, until then...

[TQ]

Originally Posted by Intel_User

Innuendo?? ***!!?? Did I insult you personally?? I remember I haven't.

I believe he meant "innuendo" as synonymous with "rumor". I'm not at all certain how you could derive a thinning of the skin from that.

[Intel_User]

Hmm, my assumptions are looking at his initial response to what I have said, I think my post is justified. No??