Monday, July 7th 2008

2.93 GHz Nehalem Derivative Presented

One of the newest toys at Tom's Hardware is a Nehalem derivative Intel Bloomfield processor clocked at 2.93 GHz. This processor brings with it, a host of changes. To begin with, say goodbye to FSB. The processor communicates with the system using a technology called QuickPath interconnect. This is a high-speed, low-latency point to point link. It's comparable to the HyperTransport technology, which AMD has been using for close to five years now. Initially, Bloomfield will use a 20-bit wide 25.6 GB/sec. QuickPath link. The CPU incorporates the memory controller, which implies that your choice of memory will depend on the processor. As already noted in regard to the AMD processors, this approach of integrating a memory controller greatly reduces system-level latency. The CPU supports 3-channel DDR3 1333 MHz memory. That's 32 GB/s of bandwidth, with support for up to 24 GB of system memory. Of the six DDR3 slots, the first slot is required to be populated.

Unfortunately, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) don't allow them to disclose performance evaluations at this point though - ironically - their Taiwanese team ran preliminary tests on a Radeon HD4850 and a Foxconn X58 motherboard we covered here.

Read the whole article here.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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34 Comments on 2.93 GHz Nehalem Derivative Presented

#26
farlex85
DarkrealmsThanks!
Other than the RAM which this "new" chipset removes the bottle neck of, isn't the N/S Bridges and Video run through the FSB? So it still could be considered a bottle neck it just has one less thing running through it. I understand that for pure computation this is a massive improvement but on the other hand many of us are looking at graphics/game performance impacts.
No, the rest of the system moves through the quick path interconnect, which works differently than the fsb, although I couldn't tell you exactly how. The memory is handled through a ddr3 controller. Here's fsb, here's nehalem(a little more detailed on the ladder obviously, but should illustrate it). QPI is replacing FSB, and it should if all goes according to plan, positively affect all aspects of the comp's performance.
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#27
spy2520
WarEagleAUTha Good at the bottom isnt from their conroe line up. So I highly doubt its better than similar AMD chips at that price.
the celerons are conroe chips, and i believe the pentium dual-cores are just dual core celerons. I'm actually running a conroe-L celeron (single core) on this machine, and it runs superpi 15s faster with stock voltage and 750Mhz less than my pentium-D. definitely not the same.
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#28
farlex85
spy2520the celerons are conroe chips, and i believe the pentium dual-cores are just dual core celerons. I'm actually running a conroe-L celeron (single core) on this machine, and it runs superpi 15s faster with stock voltage and 750Mhz less than my pentium-D. definitely not the same.
The dual-cores are the allendales (2xxx,4xxx), and celerons are in there too. Most conroes were in the better category, before being replaced by the wolfies.
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#29
spy2520
single core celerons are conroe-Ls. I see it looks like all the dual-cores (pentium and celeron) are allendales though.
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#30
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
technically AMD chips dont use an FSB anymore either, once you integrate the memory controller you just dont need it.

That said, they do have a clockgenerator filling in the purpose for deciding speed... everyone just calls it an FSB out of habit.
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#31
Darkrealms
farlex85No, the rest of the system moves through the quick path interconnect, which works differently than the fsb, although I couldn't tell you exactly how. The memory is handled through a ddr3 controller. Here's fsb, here's nehalem(a little more detailed on the ladder obviously, but should illustrate it). QPI is replacing FSB, and it should if all goes according to plan, positively affect all aspects of the comp's performance.
Thanks again for the clarification. Sorry couldn't open the picture of the nehalem. So that was what I was curious about. The nehalems basically remove the FSB as a useful piece. The originial artical was talking about the RAM portion but not the rest of the components. And in my mind that left a bottle neck for everything else still.
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#32
farlex85
DarkrealmsThanks again for the clarification. Sorry couldn't open the picture of the nehalem. So that was what I was curious about. The nehalems basically remove the FSB as a useful piece. The originial artical was talking about the RAM portion but not the rest of the components. And in my mind that left a bottle neck for everything else still.
Here try this. If the link for some reason doesn't work just look up nehalem on wiki, the picture is in there as well as a much more thorough explanation.
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#33
Darkrealms
farlex85Here try this. If the link for some reason doesn't work just look up nehalem on wiki, the picture is in there as well as a much more thorough explanation.
Thanks its just the picture extension that my system didn't recognize. The links were fine.
Here's one to the QuickPath Interconnect itself. I'll have to keep checking on it. I was hoping for more details on how it pathed everything.
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#34
Morgoth
Fueled by Sapphire
old news allready know this for 4 months..
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