Nehalem Just Around the Corner!

[Cheesus]

Originally Posted by TomsHardware

Intel's 'Nehalem' To Launch Sooner

Originally scheduled to launch in November or December this year, Intel’s Nehalem-based Bloomfield processors will now launch in September along with X58 chipsets, sources at motherboard makers revealed. However, the sources pointed out that CPUs and motherboards will not officially appear in the channel until early October.

We took an early look at Nehalem in a quad-core configuration running at 2.93 GHz. In our very early tests, our Nehalem part performed quite impressively. It beat out the competition by fairly significant margins, proving that Intel’s architectural changes is definitely on the positive side. Our part was able to outperform equally configured systems with current processors from both AMD’s camp and Intel’s own by margins between 20 to 30 percent.

Keep in mind that Nehalem no longer uses a traditional front-side bus (FSB), and instead uses an external multiplier to control the link between CPU core, memory controller, and north-bridge.

According to several of our sources, Intel is well on its way with silicon yield, and early samples confirm this. With our own sample in house, we were able to overclock our samples by nearly 1 GHz. What are the performance figures for a quad-core Nehalem system running at nearly 4 GHz? We’ll come back with more as soon as we develop a viable suite of benchmarks to show some real-world gaming and productivity performance.
Stay tuned!

Better start racking up those pennies

[runawayprisoner]

And prices until January... are going to be on crack! ;p

And this is to note: "we were able to overclock our early samples by nearly 4GHz"
Clocks go for as high as 2.93GHz. Not even 3.00GHz. And a "near" 1GHz overclock would yield? Mmm... not even 4GHz. Now... how that transforms to real world performance... I think I'll leave the spotlight to those guys this time. But let's say... it's PCSX2 certified, one way or another. ;p And if you have the cash to spend...

[Cheesus]

TBH, I couldn't care less how much they cost. If I can get me a chip for less then $600-700, then I'm getting one first week. I've got the cash just sitting there ready to get blown on Nehalem.

Let's just hope motherboard prices aren't ridiculous... Because in that case, I'm going to be needing more cash

[skoreanime]

Meh, I'm skipping Nehalem. I realize I don't game too much anymore...or even spend that much time on the computer. And seeing as how this is my final year in college...I'll need money and focus to pass the year

Oh, and the initial views of Nehalem didn't give me the umph like Conroe did when they first showcased it.

[PCXL-Fan]

@RAP the lower end models should overlock further from there default clocks than the higherend models. Like people with e6700 were getting smaller increases than people with e6300. So the lower end eg 2.2ghz models may do a 1.2 - 1.3ghz oc.

Originally Posted by skoreanime

Meh, I'm skipping Nehalem. I realize I don't game too much anymore...or even spend that much time on the computer. And seeing as how this is my final year in college...I'll need money and focus to pass the year

your growing up kimosabe and its beautiful

[Phil]

lol nehalem is going to tank. expect mobo prices to be stratopheric

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by PCXL-Fan

@RAP the lower end models should overlock further from there default clocks than the higherend models. Like people with e6700 were getting smaller increases than people with e6300. So the lower end eg 2.2ghz models may do a 1.2 - 1.3ghz oc.

Mmm... now how do you know they weren't referring to the 2.5GHz model? It's iffy with these reviews. And I think I believe what my partner said...

Either way, this thing plus a motherboard plus some RAM combo probably can go for as high as $800 for a standard set. And I mean... standard. Not even high-end.

[makotech222]

yeah i cant upgrade either. just got this machine here, and im heading for my first year of college starting august 20th.i saw some reviews for nehalem and they didnt look that impressive to me.

[TBx]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Mmm... now how do you know they weren't referring to the 2.5GHz model? It's iffy with these reviews. And I think I believe what my partner said...

Either way, this thing plus a motherboard plus some RAM combo probably can go for as high as $800 for a standard set. And I mean... standard. Not even high-end.

Indeed I was going to say, people are forgetting that you'll need DDR3 too, which unless they drop prices big time on those, will drop a nuclear bomb in your wallet along with a new cpu and mobo. Only upgrade I'm considering currently is a 4870x2.

[PCXL-Fan]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Mmm... now how do you know they weren't referring to the 2.5GHz model? It's iffy with these reviews. And I think I believe what my partner said...

Either way, this thing plus a motherboard plus some RAM combo probably can go for as high as $800 for a standard set. And I mean... standard. Not even high-end.

I wasn't referring to any specific model, simply lower end models in general have more overclock headroom, just like the AMD 5000+ vs AMD 6000+.

[Phil]

.....ok....you're going to need serious cooling, as nehalem has much larger die then socket T

[cottonvibes]

you're going to need a new:
+CPU
+Mobo
+DDR3 Ram
if you're switching to Nehalem.

its definitely not worth just a 20% gain at the same clockrates since the other quad-core chips seem clock higher.
i think hardcore OCing both a high-end C2Q and a nehalem chip would end up making the Nehalem only about 0%~5% faster.

but considering it would cost alot more, its not worth it.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by PCXL-Fan

I wasn't referring to any specific model, simply lower end models in general have more overclock headroom, just like the AMD 5000+ vs AMD 6000+.

Same rule does not necessarily apply to Intel... since with their Core 2 processors, they have proved that regardless of clock speed, overclocking headroom is still the same. That said, a 1GHz or even 1.8GHz overclock on Intel processors are quite... normal, that it's really ridiculous. If you have a cherry E8400 or E8500, you can stay stable at 4.5GHz for years... for instance. Cherry E7200 or E7300 can also hit 4.2GHz quite easily from as low as 2.5GHz... but when they go up that high, they usually run into a voltage wall.

And I'm only considering stable clocks. Not suicide clocks. For suicide clocks, obviously the higher-end models will have an upper hand.

[StergioS]

It is possible that they didn't reach the maximum overclock....
And anyway i think a 4ghz nehalem will be sufficient

[Cid Highwind]

Well a friend of mine has a sample, and is under an NDA, but well, he told me he was rather impressed, and that it blew his old stuff out of the water on CPU Marks. And he was running an engineering sample of Intel's previous highend quadcore extreme. I don't remember the numbers though, and otherwise I wouldn't mention them

To me it's definitely not worth it, I'm simply not enough of a power user to put such CPUs to good work. The most intense stuff I do is gaming, and some encoding every once in a while. My e4400 will do, even though it can bottleneck my 4870. Nothing a mild OC can't help though.

[Cheesus]

I'm itching for an upgrade. Nehalem is my excuse for an upgrade.

And I'm pretty sure Intel knows that only people in my situation (and people with nothing better to spend their money on) will buy Nehalem so soon. But, hey, you never know, maybe motherboard manufacturers managed to squeeze out more clock speeds.

[gamefreak94]

There is gonna be one advantage of Nehalem though, even for someone who isn't considering an upgrade. With its release, prices for the Conroe processors are bound to fall dramatically, along with the prices of old mobos and DDR2 RAM (well thats already going down cuz DDR3 is slowly becoming more popular

[Lord Zedeck]

DDR2 prices are already ridiculously low. You can actually expect them to start going back up, not down, once DDR3 starts becoming more mainstream and DDR2 starts getting phased out.

[Phil]

True. DDR 400 ram costs 95 bucks in some cases........

[gamefreak94]

how about the current Conroe chips like the Q6600 and Extreme series, they're gonna get cheap as well aren't they?

cuz I'm planning to nuy one at some point