Monday, October 13th 2008
Core i7 940 Review Shows SMT and Tri-Channel Memory Let-down
As the computer enthusiast community gears up for Nehalem November, with reports suggesting a series of product launches for both Intel's Core i7 processors and compatible motherboards, Industry observer PC Online.cn have already published an in-depth review of the Core i7 940 2.93 GHz processor. The processor is based on the Bloomfield core, and essentially the Nehalem architecture that has been making news for over an year now. PC Online went right to the heart of the matter, evaluating the 192-bit wide (tri-channel) memory interface, and the advantage of HyperThreading on four physical cores. In the tests, the 2.93 GHz Bloomfield chip was pitted against a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 operating at both its reference speed of 3.20 GHz, and underclocked to 2.93 GHz, so a clock to clock comparison could be brought about.
The evaluation found that the performance increments tri-channel offers over dual-channel memory, in real world applications and games, are just about insignificant. Super Pi Mod 1.4 shows only a fractional lead for tri-channel over dual-channel, and the trend continued with Everest Memory Benchmark. On the brighter side, the integrated memory controller does offer improvements over the previous generation setup, with the northbridge handling memory. Even in games such as Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, tri-channel memory did not shine.As for the other architectural change, simultaneous multi-threading, that makes its comeback on the desktop scene with the Bloomfield processors offering as many as eight available logical processors for the operating system to talk to, it appears to be a mixed bag, in terms of performance. The architecture did provide massive boosts in WinRAR and Cinebench tests Across tests, enabling SMT brought in performance increments of roughly 10~20% with general benchmarks that included Cinebench, WinRAR, TMPGEnc, and Fritz Chess. With 3DMark Vantage, SMT provided a very significant boost to the scores, with about 25% increments. It didn't do the same, to current generation games such as Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict and Company of Heroes. What's more, the games didn't seem to benefit from Bloomfield in the first place. The QX9770 underclocked at 2.93 GHz, outperformed i7 940, both with and without SMT, in some games.
Source:
PC Online
The evaluation found that the performance increments tri-channel offers over dual-channel memory, in real world applications and games, are just about insignificant. Super Pi Mod 1.4 shows only a fractional lead for tri-channel over dual-channel, and the trend continued with Everest Memory Benchmark. On the brighter side, the integrated memory controller does offer improvements over the previous generation setup, with the northbridge handling memory. Even in games such as Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, tri-channel memory did not shine.As for the other architectural change, simultaneous multi-threading, that makes its comeback on the desktop scene with the Bloomfield processors offering as many as eight available logical processors for the operating system to talk to, it appears to be a mixed bag, in terms of performance. The architecture did provide massive boosts in WinRAR and Cinebench tests Across tests, enabling SMT brought in performance increments of roughly 10~20% with general benchmarks that included Cinebench, WinRAR, TMPGEnc, and Fritz Chess. With 3DMark Vantage, SMT provided a very significant boost to the scores, with about 25% increments. It didn't do the same, to current generation games such as Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict and Company of Heroes. What's more, the games didn't seem to benefit from Bloomfield in the first place. The QX9770 underclocked at 2.93 GHz, outperformed i7 940, both with and without SMT, in some games.
91 Comments on Core i7 940 Review Shows SMT and Tri-Channel Memory Let-down
But yea what they where saying, its like the old days of dual channel. You dont need a special kit because its all the same. I never ran matching ram and it ran in dual channel.
Buddy take a hike or show some evidence outside of marketing hype.
i'm not talking abouth the package
i pre-ordered the msi x58 epclipse board and the webshop allready sended it to me ;)
what memmory modules did you used?
Please just wait till Morgoth gets his stuff and then we will find out. Thank you.
Patience is a virtue.
You sir, are a liar and hypocrite.
I don't need to please you.
forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?p=2185937
forum.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=191847
Yup, diff RAMs mix-up.
www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/INTEL_I7_EXTREME965_X58/30.JPG
p.s. He is using G.Skill RAM, and they haven't made Tri-Chanel kits yet!
A better pic of his RAM. Two black sticks and one silver stick.
www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/ECS_9800GTX+SLI/12.JPG
I don't know of any game that will really leverage the design here. SupCom is probably the most aggressively parallelized game engine and it can't peg more than about 3 cores. This chip may be ahead of its time...
So take a look at the results from certified ones later.
link - www.techpowerup.com/73397/A-DATA_and_ASUS_Demonstrate_Intel_Nehalem_s_DDR3_Performance.html
pic - www.techpowerup.com/img/08-10-09/a-data-x58-ddr3-bench.jpg At 2000Mhz
And this is same test done by the guy from the link you provided earlier. He is using G-Skill RAM.
www.coolaler.com.tw/toppc/I7920/20087.JPG At 1867Mhz
As you see, the read and write speeds of both RAM kits is almost the same. Thus proves the point that you just got OWNED!
While I doubt you will need a tri-channel kit for it to work, I do believe that tri-channel will show its benefits down line with proper application.
It's not surprise to me anyway: Memory performance has increased a lot in recent years, while CPU doesn't. We have gone from memory bottleneck situations before 2004 to diminishing returns with more than DDR2 667 in 2008.
A CPU that is 33%-50% faster than Core2 will never be able to use a lot more than 33-50% more memory bandwidth than Core2, but due to proper usage of DDR3 and the IMC, the available memory bandwidth is much much more. Also thanks to the IMC it CAN couple with more REAL bandwidth that that 33-50% increase, but it still has a limit.
Adding a third channel increases the theoretical bandwidth but because the CPU can't work with such high bandwidth we see no gains. Keep in mind DDR3 1333 has a theoretical peak bandwidth of 10800 MB/s per channel (21600 MB/s in dual, 32400 in triple channel) so at 15000 MB/s in DC is way below that mark. On the other hand in the charts we can see the single channel one is sitting at 10300 MB/s, pretty close to it's peak bandwidth, one more detail that makes me think I'm right about this.
It's maybe not worth it for games, but for everything else is faster enough to justify the expenses for many people (not me TBH), just as any other new CPU. Don't forget it's suposed to be aimed at the server market. Off course an upgrade from a C2Q is not worth it either, but if you were to build a completely new PC and you care about more than gaming, Nehalem is worth a look or two.
But yeah... maybe there is a bug in it. When AMD shifted to IMC, they got a huge memory performance boost. Intel appears to be taking a hit instead. CIS is a more complex scheme but you'd think that would show throw in more than just gaming benchmarks.
I just wonder how what Nehalem runs with FB-DIMMs.