What do you think of the new Intel platform?

[Truephoenix]

It has its positives and it has its negatives, it has a slew of cool new features, but it also incorporates some nasty ones, like an anti-overclocking mechanism.

I think intel are being pretty brave with this platform, seeing as it doesn't have much backwards compatability, and it will either make or break intel.

Linkage

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/index.html

[Lurgen]

We're long overdue for a complete overhaul of the platform - there has been continuous efforts to keep using the old gear, to the point where it just gets silly.

A long time ago we went through a similar revolution - the AT platform was replaced by the ATX platform. A bad thing? Well, we all had to turf out cases and power supplies. None of our existing motherboards worked in the new cases, and the new boards wouldn't fit into our old cases. AGP crushed VLB, DDR pushed SDRAM out of the picture, USB made our serial devices obsolete overnight, and all were "Good Things".

A huge dent to the upgrade path for us all. Was it worth it? I'd say so. We got a lot of value out of that brief period of pain...


As for the lack of overclocking, I'm hard pressed to care. When I want a faster processor, I buy one. Yeah, it costs some money. But that's the way it works. Car manufacturers don't usually give us a simple toggle switch to disable the rev-limiter on our vehicles, I can't trick my clock-radio into picking up police band radio, and my mobile phone is only tri-band, not quad yet this is normal. Who can seriously say they're surprised Intel is making it harder to overclock? That said, there are a lot of brilliant techs out there who will make it their life's work figuring out how to beat these constraints. And they'll win, of this I have no doubt. For now Asus and Gigabyte will be the overclockers choice (since they have already beaten the lock).

If this round of changes results in better CPU cooling (which certainly looks possible), quieter machines, smaller cases with support for plenty of peripherals, and faster components you can count me in. PCI Express is a huge step in the right direction, with the sudden exciting reality of a single socket type for all cards! No single AGP slot to contend with for multiple monitor setups, and lightening fast expansion cards (such as SATA RAID controllers that aren't crippled by a 33MHz PCI bus). Combine this new chipset with the new case and power supply standards that will hopefully arrive this year and we're in for some fun upgrades come Christmas.

Stay tuned for AMD's response, which is no doubt on the way.

[Spingo]

My opinion is that I'm greeting Intel's stuff with open arms.

Having played with the gear for the last two week, I'm happy with it so far.

The lack of overclockability is a storm in a tea cup. The vast majority of people aren't going to be drastically overclocking their CPUs anyway, and those that do probably won't encounter the safeguards put in place anyway. Not to mention that it makes enforcing warranties much easier to do, which should lower the price of CPUs anyway.

About the only thing that I can pick fault with is that Intel's own reference design doesn't meet BTX form factor standard. Sure, they've gone and given us DDR2, PCI Express, SATA2, Onboard command queuing support, Azaelia, onboard wifi, but where the radical new cooling designs.. Nah, we'll leave that to the motherboard and case vendors to implement, thank you very much.

In regards to AMD's response, they've already come out with it - Socket 939. And if anyone dares jump on the AMD bandwagon saying that Intel have adopted too many new technologies at once, just go out and buy your socket 939 motherboard and chip. Just don't whinge to me when you can't use DDR2 when it becomes feasable (In other words WTF did AMD release a socket design that's already severely limiting the potential for upgrades in the future???)

[Truephoenix]

I think that intel's new platform will split the market in half, AMD are planning to continue refining their current platform.

Also if you look at the benchmarks, AMD's platform is clearly faster.

As for PCIX being faster, our graphics cards are in no way limited by AGP bandwidth and won't be for some time.

I think intel are moving towards consumer friendly products where they actually make sales rather than trying to win back the gaming market.

And also intels new platform will put quite a big dent in your wallet......

Ultimately, i think intel should of made a slow change to the new platform, rather than introducing it all in one big go, i would have preferred an upgraded PCI socket, much like 8 bit and 16 bit ISA.

[BSS]

Well, I was dissapointed.

In all the benchies I've seen so far:
Prescott isn't faster than Northwood (we've known this for ages though)
PCI-Express 16x doesn't make stuff faster than AGP8x (which wasn't a bottleneck in the first place)
DDR2 doesn't appear to be faster than DDR
And the 925 itself doesn't appear to be faster than an 875

I know this would be difficult to benchmark, but what I want to see though, is some sort of shootout between PCI-Express 1x and old school PCI.
I look at my system the way it is now, and I cry for my poor, poor 33Mhz PCI bus because of all the crap I shove into it. Various HDDs, CD players, USB stuff, firewire stuff, network cards, a sound card, a video card and a TV tuner. And I actually expect all of this stuff to work at the same time? Do you think it is saturated?
So PCI-Express 1x is my last hope for something good to come out of all this. And it's also the thing that nobody seems to be talking about.

[BSS]

Originally posted by Lurgen
PCI Express is a huge step in the right direction, with the sudden exciting reality of a single socket type for all cards! No single AGP slot to contend with for multiple monitor setups...

I hate to break this to you, but it is still a separate slot for video cards Vs everything else. And it looks like there will only ever be one 16x slot on a motherboard.

[Lurgen]

That's a bugger about still being stuck with just one slot suitable for video.

There was one other thing I wanted to say that slipped my mind before submitting the last comment...

Most of us work in IT. Those that don't are still a part of the technology community. People who don't work in this industry are often stereotyped as resisting change. Geeks, on the other hand, should be more open minded regarding change, especially when it relates to new toys.

These changes are generally a positive thing despite bringing with them a few doubts. We should embrace them.

AMD vs. Intel is a whole different argument and I wouldn't be too surprised to see them both continue to head in different directions. AMD differentiates themselves at least partly by playing up to the gaming community - they make excellent gear (I own three AMD based machines, one Intel), but focus on different areas than Intel. This new release from Intel shouldn't be seen as ammunition in this particular argument.

[thingy]

Originally posted by BSS
Well, I was dissapointed.

In all the benchies I've seen so far:
Prescott isn't faster than Northwood (we've known this for ages though)
PCI-Express 16x doesn't make stuff faster than AGP8x (which wasn't a bottleneck in the first place)
DDR2 doesn't appear to be faster than DDR
And the 925 itself doesn't appear to be faster than an 875

Isn't it like that for all new technology thought? When ever a new standard comes out or new technology is being pushed by the large corporates, it's the same speed if not slower than current technology. It's bottlenecks for the future they hope to resolve - sticking with the same architechture they can see everything coming to a grinding halt, but with this new architechture they can keep on developing and speeding things up.

[Truephoenix]

I think the intel is trying to split themselves from using pretty much the same platform than AMD and try to head off into a different direction.

DDR-2 will not make a massive difference in performance until our hard drives go through a radical overhaul (which has been long overdue)

I think it would be wise to wait it out and see how things develop over the coming year, rather than rush out to buy computers with the new platform.

[sperm]

Originally posted by BSS
I know this would be difficult to benchmark, but what I want to see though, is some sort of shootout between PCI-Express 1x and old school PCI.


Read an interesting article recently on a similiar idea:
Measuring the Benefits of AGP: Is PCI-Express Necessary? (http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=554)

For the gamer, however, PCI-Express is going to be a non-issue. Given that most games today barely stress the AGP 2x bus, moving to double AGP 8x isn’t going to do anything. It’s the equivalent of widening a highway no one drives on. Had AGP developed in the direction it was intended to things might be different, but it didn’t. Now, to some extent, it’s a solution to a problem no one has.

[BSS]

But you see what I mean? In that whole article they talk about PCI-Express only in terms of graphics, then go on to compare it to AGP. Graphics aren't the only thing PCI-Express is here for.

Originally posted by thingy
Isn't it like that for all new technology thought? When ever a new standard comes out or new technology is being pushed by the large corporates, it's the same speed if not slower than current technology. It's bottlenecks for the future they hope to resolve - sticking with the same architechture they can see everything coming to a grinding halt, but with this new architechture they can keep on developing and speeding things up.

I remember seeing Willamette vs Northwood things and seeing improvements, then 845 vs 875 and again seeing a reason to buy it.

The Prescott is a dead end for Intel however. They can't keep up what they're doing now. They're going in a completely different direction after this (or the one after this, I don't remember off hand). And rightly so. They have a real winner in the Banias and Dothan (the Pentium-M line), and it looks like they might be trying to bring similar CPUs to the desktop.

I know what you mean though. DDR2 could, and probably will prove to be better in the future. Similarly for PCI-Express (in graphics), although it's a couple of years early in my opinion. But, the advantages of all this new stuff isn't here yet, so I don't see a reason to buy it over the old and therefore can't confidently recommend it to other people either.

[Spingo]

Originally posted by BSS
Well, I was dissapointed.

In all the benchies I've seen so far:
Prescott isn't faster than Northwood (we've known this for ages though)
PCI-Express 16x doesn't make stuff faster than AGP8x (which wasn't a bottleneck in the first place)
DDR2 doesn't appear to be faster than DDR
And the 925 itself doesn't appear to be faster than an 875


I just want to make a few comments in regards to this post.

Prescott was never meant to be faster than Northwood. It does however have SSE3 (otherwise known as PNI - Prescoot New Instructions) that will offer more of a performance boost (especially in regards to HyperThreading) whan software is written to take advantage of those instructions. Not only this, but Prescott has been designed to handle the non-execute bit, a feature that AMD is now starting to push with their A64 processors. The difference is features, not short-term performance.

PCIe x16 cards don't perform significantly better than AGP 8x cards, but again, it's not about raw bandwidth that is available to the video card. Bandwidth is becoming less and less of an issue due to the fact that the GPU is doing more of the graphics processing than the CPU, and the graphics cards can store just about everything on-board - it doesn't need to shove stuff in memory. What PCIe does offer in the graphics card realm is greater flexibility. Especially in the notebook space, PCIe allows cards to run with significantly lower power requirements. You may also find that in the coming future, a number of CPU functions will probably be shipped to GPU's requiring extra bandwidth in the other direction to what we are used to - PCIe has dedicated bi-directional bandwidth, AGP predominantly has the badwidth in one direction - to the system bus. Now, consider the impact of PCIe when GPU's such as nVidias 5700 already handle some video encoding tasks, relieveing the CPU of some duty...

Again, DDR2 is not meant to be fastre than DDR1. It's supposed to be more efficient. Doubling the data prefetch from two bits per cycle to four bits means that internal memory frequency can be halved. This in turn reduces core memory voltage, and lowers heat dissipation. DDR1 is quickly getting to it's limits - DDR1-667 runs very hot, and manufacturers are going to find it difficult to get this type of memory running at low latencies. On the other hand, DDR2 modules running at the same external clock rate have half of the internal clock rate. These modules will be significantly cooler and won't use anywhere near as much power.

Intel's new platform isn't about performance. It's about efficiency, and is especially what the punters will ask for as we move away from sheer MHz pwaarrrr to systems that run stable, cool and fast. It also fits in perfectly with their new strategy to bring in more Pentium M style features on the desktop platform...

[BSS]

Thanks for clearing that up a bit. It's good to know there's a reason for some of the technology shift, rather than for the sake of it.

Incidentally, if DDR2 runs at four bits per cycle rather than two(does that sound right? Shouldn't it be four cycles per clock?), then why don't they call it QDR, or DDDR?

...I may have just answered my own question.

Time to read stuff. :confused:

P.S. I still wanna see a shootout between PCI and PCI-Express in terms of not graphics. Spingo: You seem to know stuff. TELL ME NOW!!!

[BSS]

Something...
http://download.micron.com/pdf/flyers/ddr_to_ddr2.pdf

I get it now, but I'm still not happy.

[BSS]

Originally posted by BSS
...And it looks like there will only ever be one 16x slot on a motherboard.

I'm reading now that apparently some Xeon motherboards will have more than one 16x slot... and that its x16 and not 16x :)

woo! (http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1728/)

[That Bloke]

Originally posted by Lurgen



As for the lack of overclocking, I'm hard pressed to care. When I want a faster processor, I buy one.

You literally can't get an "off the shelf" processor running as fast as some of the overclocked processors out there, Ghz aren't everything though, in Ghz AMDs are usually slower than Intels but in practice the AMDs are faster because of their better floating point arithmatic.