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Intel Nehalem Preview @ AnandTech
DailyTech's roundup of hardware reviews from around the web for Thursday

Processors
Intel Nehalem Preview @ AnandTech
Intel Core 2 Duo 45nm Wolfdale vs. 65nm Conroe @ TechSpot

Motherboards
Gigabyte MA-790FX-DS5 @ motherboards.org

Memory
Kingston HyperX KHX9200D2K2/2G 2GB DDR2 RAM Kit @ Trusted Reviews

Video
BFG Tech GeForce 9600GT OC2 @ TweakTown
BFG 8800 GT OCX w/ ThermoIntelligence Video Card @ I4U
PNY Verto GeForce 9600 GT Video Card @ Legit Reviews

Displays
Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24" Widescreen LCD @ HotHardware.com
Samsung SyncMaster 2253LW @ bit-tech

Cases
Sigma Unicorn Mid-Tower Case @ OCIA.net

Cooling
Thermaltake Bigwater 760i Liquid Cooling System @ ThinkComputers.org
Noctua NH-C12P @ Legion Hardware

Power Supplies
Tuniq Miniplant 950W @ OCC

Storage
Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB SATA-II SSD @ Legit Reviews
LG BE06 External Blu-ray Burner @ gadget zone

Networking
QNAP NVR-1012 Wireless Network Surveillance Kit @ BmR

Peripherals
Razer Mako 2.1 Speaker System @ TheTechLounge
KEF KHT2005.3 5.1 Speaker System @ Trusted Reviews

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Nehalem
By therealnickdanger on 6/5/2008 2:51:31 PM , Rating: 5
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was blown away by the review. I was going to build a Peryn system... but not now. I didn't expect the clock-for-clock results to be this impressive - especially with a faulty board! Anand's statement says it all:

quote:
First keep in mind that these performance numbers are early, and they were run on a partly crippled, very early platform. With that preface, the fact that Nehalem is still able to post these 20 - 50% performance gains says only one thing about Intel's tick-tock cadence: they did it.

I'll be waiting here patiently.




RE: Nehalem
By Rugar on 6/5/2008 5:03:21 PM , Rating: 2
It's probably going to hurt the chances of future sneak peaks when we all say this, but I am with you. I was planning my major update from my trusty Opty system for this summer and was looking at a Q9450 as the processor to base it around. So much for that plan.

I'll wait for the Nehalem goodness now.


RE: Nehalem
By walk2k on 6/5/2008 5:12:58 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know if it will hurt, we've known about this for a while. I was considering an upgrade last Dec/Jan but decided even back then to wait until Nehalalala(whatever.). Last time I upgraded to AMD 939 about 2 months before that was discontinued so didn't want to be in that boat again...


RE: Nehalem
By Performance Fanboi on 6/5/2008 5:45:37 PM , Rating: 2
Don't expect to be able to buy a retail 'non-extreme' Nehalem until well into 2009 - probaly Q2/Q3. I will be upgrading my Conroe to a Wolfdale this summer and will upgrade to Nehalem/DDR3 probably a year from now when mainstream models are available (and DDR3 latencies/pricing have improved).


RE: Nehalem
By walk2k on 6/5/08, Rating: 0
RE: Nehalem
By Performance Fanboi on 6/5/2008 7:53:43 PM , Rating: 2
Q4-08 means October at the earliest (Q4 is Oct - Dec). Expect the first releases to be server and extreme processors (at a huge premium). I'm hoping for the mainstream retail units to be widely available by Q2-09.


RE: Nehalem
By walk2k on 6/5/2008 11:36:24 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, and Dec is 6 months away, and Q2 is 9 months away (it's June already..) Anyway I think they will come sooner, I've seen nothing to indicate they will change their policy of releasing the "Xtreme" versions first, and then the mainstreams 2-3 months later like they have been.


RE: Nehalem
By freaqie on 6/6/2008 3:10:14 AM , Rating: 2
also note that peryn/conroe quads are cheap now.
and that the nehalem chips are bigger.
new and thus more exensive. so i'm not waiting to find out that at that time I can't afford it
and if it turns out to be affordable i'll get myself a new mainboard and cpu (ram) in a few years.
for rendering purposes, its not that much faster anyways

i am waitng for the new supply of videocards (hd4870x2 GTX280) and building a pc with a cheap quadcore in it.


RE: Nehalem
By PeteRoy on 6/8/2008 4:10:09 AM , Rating: 2
I will wait for the tock Nehalem if I can :P


RE: Nehalem
By eye smite on 6/9/2008 3:21:46 PM , Rating: 2
We'll just have to see if they hit any snags along the way.


RE: Nehalem
By jbizzler on 6/5/2008 8:00:36 PM , Rating: 3
Agreed. DDR2 memory and motherboards are cheap, and the current Penryn chips are plenty powerful. My E6300 (Conroe, not Penryn) OCed to 2.8GHz has never felt slow, and I can't imagine why any regular computer-user would need more for a while. Getting a machine built around a Penryn processor today is a fantastic price/performance deal. Plus, it is the leading architectuire right now, and you have an unbelievable plethora of choices. You can get an nForce or Intel motherboard. You can use DDR2 or DDR3. But most of all, there are just hundreds of great DDR2 options.

Sure, Nehalem looks powerful, but we won't see anything short of the Extreme Editions for a while, and you also have to factor in the price of the new motherboards and DDR3 memory, even if Nehalem chips are at okay prices. And the first motherboards won't even look good.

If you're a power user and want the best, wait for Nehalem. I prefer to build computers when new graphics series come out because they require less commitment to other parts, and affect me a little more.

I built my last computer when GeForce 8 cards came out. I'm going to build a new one when these supposid GeForce 200 cards come.


RE: Nehalem
By walk2k on 6/5/2008 11:33:19 PM , Rating: 2
I already need a new motherboard and RAM, as I said I'm on AMD 939 with DDR2. If I was still buying new computers every 1.5-2 yrs I probably would already have a Penryn, but I'm not, so I don't, and I personally don't feel like buying into another dead platform with its sucessor just around the corner (by my definition anyway, again if you need something NOW, sure a Penryn is great).

Just my personal thinking, I'm not expecting everyone in the world to be in the same boat


RE: Nehalem
By walk2k on 6/5/2008 11:37:44 PM , Rating: 2
actually it's DDR(1) so I'd new ram for Penryn too


RE: Nehalem
By Silver2k7 on 6/6/2008 6:54:20 AM , Rating: 2
Actually most of my upgrades have been new cpu+mobo+memory, sometimes you can re-use the memory.

Right now ive got a 3.0Ghz core2duo, so well there are an upgrade path to a quadcore avalible.. but was planning to wait for a 3.0Ghz or faster quad.. might go for Nehalem instead..


RE: Nehalem
By System48 on 6/6/2008 9:31:57 AM , Rating: 2
From what I've read over the past few months the release should be a lot like Penryn was. They'll have server chips and a high-end desktop by Christmas and intro two more desktop models, about $500 and $300, in Jan. Availability on the other hand should be better than Penryn as 45nm production will have ramped up by then but I don't know how many 45nm fabs will be producing Nehalem/Bloomfield.


RE: Nehalem
By Major HooHaa on 6/8/2008 6:58:29 AM , Rating: 2
I agree that the mainstream versions of the Nehalem processors, won't be out for a while. In 2007 I read that the 'Yorkfield' chips will be out at the end of the year, so I thought I would wait and replace my single core Athlon 64 with the 2.66Ghz Q9450 processor.

But only the 3Ghz Yorkfield was eventually released and I had to wait another 3 months for the mainstream versions of the chip to reach the market.


RE: Nehalem
By Adonlude on 6/5/2008 8:16:46 PM , Rating: 3
AMWho?


RE: Nehalem
By jordanclock on 6/5/2008 5:45:40 PM , Rating: 2
Not sure if this would affect their ability to get previews in the future. It all comes down to the wording of their NDA, I would guess.


RE: Nehalem
By winterspan on 6/5/2008 9:25:21 PM , Rating: 2
Intel says Nehalem will have 10-25% faster single-threaded performance and 20% to 100% faster multithreaded performance.

Also, I found this quote "Compared to a 3.0 GHz Core-based "Clovertown" microprocessor, the Nehalem-EP "Gainestown" processor will have 1.6x the SPECint_rate2006 integer performance and 2.4x the SPECfp_rate_2006 floating-point performance"


RE: Nehalem
By Visual on 6/6/2008 5:19:30 AM , Rating: 2
Waiting might be for too long though - even assuming availability by the end of 08, it would be in the form of some "extreme" product thats unreasonably expensive. Then add to that the requirement of expensive DDR3 ram...
It might be just fine to go with a DDR2 Penryn now and get Nehalem sometime in 09, when it has grounded itself a little more...


RE: Nehalem
By Polynikes on 6/6/2008 12:10:21 PM , Rating: 2
Me, too. I was gonna grab a Q6600 or Penryn to hold me over a while, but now I'll just wait for a huge boost in performance. :)


Fast... Only with 8 threads
By Von Matrices on 6/5/2008 6:45:26 PM , Rating: 2
I am highly skeptical of the preview and the "huge" performance improvement because so few of us are likely to see it. All the tests shown and that large percentage increase in performance were with heavily multithreaded processes that can take advantage of 8 threads. I seriously doubt that today's single and dual core games will get any noticeable performance improvement with Nehalem over Wolfdale or Yorkfield. Nehalem is planning for a heavily multithreaded future which is great, but for the games I play 2 extra threads (over a dual core processor) are useless let alone 6, and I doubt that any games will use 8 threads at Nehalem's introduction.




RE: Fast... Only with 8 threads
By deeznuts on 6/5/2008 7:37:24 PM , Rating: 1
So what exactly in the preview are you skeptical of? There is nothing misleading here.

If you don't use programs to take advantage of good hardware well duh don't buy it.

Gaming isn't the only computer function and hey guess what, they didn't even preview gaming performance.


RE: Fast... Only with 8 threads
By winterspan on 6/5/2008 11:25:46 PM , Rating: 2
Besides the hyperthreading, there are many fundamental improvements to the cache, look-aside buffers, etc, not to mention the integrated memory controller and QuickPath.

Intel is claiming 10-30% performance improvement in single threaded applications.


RE: Fast... Only with 8 threads
By Ringold on 6/6/2008 12:53:50 AM , Rating: 2
From the article:

quote:
Cinebench shows us only a 2% increase in core-to-core performance from Penryn to Nehalem at the same clock speed. For applications that don't go out to main memory much and can stay confined to a single core, Nehalem behaves very much like Penryn.


That throws, for the moment, a bucket of cold water on my expectations temporarily. That apparently fits nicely within its cache and thus doesn't reveal the IMC benefit, or thats how the article made it sound, but still. Might have to wait until a formal review to be certain.

Even if clock for clock single-core performance doesn't go up much, I'll just have to console myself that it'll probably kick ass at Folding@Home's SMP client.


By IntelUser2000 on 6/6/2008 4:25:12 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
That throws, for the moment, a bucket of cold water on my expectations temporarily. That apparently fits nicely within its cache and thus doesn't reveal the IMC benefit, or thats how the article made it sound, but still. Might have to wait until a formal review to be certain.


Well, considering that the current tested one is only working at single channel and the memory latency and bandwidth is worse than Core 2, the estimation by Intel for 10-25% single threaded improvement makes sense. But its not showing that now. And the multi-threaded results will go up even further...


By comc49 on 6/6/2008 12:36:05 AM , Rating: 2
omg only about 10 days until new gpu launch but still no benches!!!




ew
By MamiyaOtaru on 6/7/2008 5:31:01 PM , Rating: 2
Super OT: somehow the TIM in that photo looks really gross.




By benx009 on 6/8/2008 6:40:14 PM , Rating: 2
Arg, after looking at that Nehalem review, I'm really frightened that AMD won't have much to counterattack with... I mean, from the path they're heading down now, things are definitely not looking very good.... So please let have AMD have the trump card in the end!!!




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