Thursday, November 17th 2011
SB-E: Enthusiast Full 8 Core Dual Socket Monsters On The Way Early 2012
The latest Sandy Bridge-E 6 core processors have just been released, to excellent reviews. However, the architecture is designed for 8 cores, so these current i7-3960X & i7-3930K processors actually contain those 8 cores, but with two turned off in order to enable them to fit within a manageable 130 W power envelope. Hence there's quite a bit more potential to be released and soon. Therefore, anyone looking to invest in the premium-priced SB-E platform right now, should note that these processors are at the initial C1 stepping and have the VT-d hardware virtualization issue and PCI-E 3.0 compatibility uncertainty. The VT-d problem will be a real show stopper where hardware acceleration of a virtual machine is a must, so it shouldn't be ignored.
VR-ZONE brings us news that the fully unlocked SB-E 8 core chips will be released as the long awaited Xeon E5 family of processors, which will be built on the C2 stepping, solving the above issues. However, being 8 core, these will be very power hungry indeed, consuming around 150 W at just 3 GHz with all 8 cores active and 20 MB of L3 cache. At 2.5 GHz though, the new processors are expected to fit within the 95 W power envelope.
Being "Xeon" processors, they are primarily intended to be used in multi-socket configurations in servers and very high end desktops for businesses that need this kind of raw power. Of course, the other market that these E5 processors are aimed at, are the hardcore PC enthusiasts who have very deep pockets and want the ultimate power in their desktops at any price. It's rumoured that such people might be using these powerhouse systems for more than just playing Sudoku, doing a bit of word processing and browsing the internet, but these are unconfirmed at the time of publication.
Later on in 2012, Ivy Bridge-E is expected to be released, which will be an optical shrink of SB-E, while also using Intel's new 22 nm tri-gate transistors. This will bring significant performance improvements, including an increase to 10 cores and 25 MB L3 cache. TechPowerUp has more details on this generation, here. So, with these new high wattage processors eventually becoming more mainstream, could we see the return of the ill-fated BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) form factor case, introduced by Intel around seven years ago? Only time will tell.
For more detail on these SB-E & IB-E processors, hop on over to VR-ZONE.
VR-ZONE brings us news that the fully unlocked SB-E 8 core chips will be released as the long awaited Xeon E5 family of processors, which will be built on the C2 stepping, solving the above issues. However, being 8 core, these will be very power hungry indeed, consuming around 150 W at just 3 GHz with all 8 cores active and 20 MB of L3 cache. At 2.5 GHz though, the new processors are expected to fit within the 95 W power envelope.
Later on in 2012, Ivy Bridge-E is expected to be released, which will be an optical shrink of SB-E, while also using Intel's new 22 nm tri-gate transistors. This will bring significant performance improvements, including an increase to 10 cores and 25 MB L3 cache. TechPowerUp has more details on this generation, here. So, with these new high wattage processors eventually becoming more mainstream, could we see the return of the ill-fated BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) form factor case, introduced by Intel around seven years ago? Only time will tell.
For more detail on these SB-E & IB-E processors, hop on over to VR-ZONE.
51 Comments on SB-E: Enthusiast Full 8 Core Dual Socket Monsters On The Way Early 2012
But yeah, Xeons used to be a win. I'm curious about how well the 2.5 Xeon will go. You can't OC Sandy Xeons since their multi is locked.
I know someone who spent about $8000 on building essentially a 4P Opteron server just about 18 months ago, to use as a desktop/WS. Sadly for him, today's Sandy Bridge LGA1155 systems are faster.
An 8-core 32nm chip's success in the desktop market will definitely depend on turbo modes. It might only hit 2.5GHz with all cores active, but if it hits ~3.5GHz with 4 cores active and ~4GHz with 2 or fewer cores active, then it will be a great chip.
"Enthusiast" and the rest are meaningless titles as they only imply, and weakly do so. No feature, ability, etc, is a certainty. Qubit calling it an enthusiast platform and you calling it server/WS has not changed any facts about it.
Don't understand why you're sad for him, he built it 18 months ago and has had all that time to use it. Even with it's age I could find good use for a 4P Opteron today. My dual (Prestonia, now very old) Xeon boxes saw many years of use before their power usage outweighed operational usefulness.
Now was all on X58. They gimped Sandy Xeon's with locked multi, but you have to keep in mind these are the top-end. They're the Extreme of Xeon's. So there's a chance multi may have been unlocked. I'm hoping for it though. And I'd also keep turbo in mind. These chips ARE interesting in one way or another.
Intel apparently has no problem with releasing a Core i7 chip with VT-d broken because most Core i7 users will never use it anyway.
Missing features like VT-D are seldomly used by enthusiasts, and won't be missed so much for desktop SB-E processors, and Intel has mentioned that current desktop SB-E are fully PCI-E 3.0 capable, but there's simply no hardware to certify this feature at the moment, so this is a non issue.
Yes, current C1 SB-E processors are just Xeons with some features disabled, but C2 processors are not Intel's next enthusiast CPUs, IB-E processors to be released in Q4 2012 are going to be marketed by Intel to serve this particular bracket.
for a fact, their late offerings have been a joke in regards to quality and/or performance with decade old Copper ring-choke's. After having lost Shamino and rest of the crew, they haven't done anything at all. They're wiping the floors (as a small company as well) and nobody cares. Except for fanboys on their forum, whom I got banned for. Obviously suggesting people Twin-Frozr's and constantly bashing them wasn't a good idea. lol. But that's another story.
That said, the SR-3 can't OC on it's own. It needs unlocked multi's. Not a "single or dual-QPI?" situation like it was with X58. If it technically can OC, then a desktop board that supports the chip (like on X58) would OC as well.
except 90+% will be servers
kthxsbye
They are sold as "locked" but you can move the multiplier over the "limit".
Server proc. with VT-d broken?
Doesnt seem so visibly smart to me.
still powerful,but not stable enough for what they're aiming this proc. for.
As for the quality of EVGA's motherboards, I have never bought one of their boards, I still have an old GTX285 rocking in my HTPC, but I cannot vouch for the quality of their more recent graphic cards either, I didn't know their products were known because of their low quality... :ohwell:
EDIT:VT-d won't be broken on the C2 Stepping SB-EP Xeon server processors, I thought that was clear in this article :wtf: