Hexus.net benchmarks Nehalem

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
What concerns me is, using the AA and AF modes shows a huge drop off. And the claims that higher res doesnt effect cpus is bull. These new cards are made for those higher res'. No one plays with no AA and AF with these sorts of setups. Anyone like to take a poke as to why adding AA and AF has such a dramatic effect?
 


What are you talking about? Double its gaming performance over what? Again, you can't base anything on those numbers as the drivers aren't correctly installed.

FWIW I don't expect Nehalem to be a lot faster than Penryn in gaming, unless the game was heavily multithreaded such as FSX. I guess you could call that a 'weak point' but GPU limitation is unavoidable on a lot of games at high res + details, and a faster CPU is not going to help there.


AA/AF only increases the workload of the GPU. The workload on the CPU is the same whether it is 640 x 480 or 2560 x 1200.
 
So its a skewed test. OK, I hope it turns out different in the end. Already we are seeing cpus needing to be oceed in some games for optimal fps, and I was hoping Nehalem would elimanate this, but it doesnt look like it.
 
Look to many benchmarks in games, especially at higher res. Upping the cpu speed helps alot on certain games. Its a fact. Just like any other app, ocing helps, its just that you have min frame rates and other demands in gaming where the cpu does play a prominent role. Oceed, you get better performance.
 


What games would they be? FSX? Sup Com? WiC? In any CPU limited game Nehalem will probably be a bit faster, but I don't think its realistic to be expecting the same 20 - 40% gains in rendering and video encoding, where we see the advantage of SMT. Not many games can take advantage of 8 threads (FSX can, but thats an exception).
 
OK, dont believe me, maybe you will believe this guy "Until recently, the 280 and the 4870 X2 are showing CPU limitations even at high resolutions... up to 1920x1200, 2560x1600 the only exception." Thats a quote from JJ. Im not making it up, nor am I slamming Intel. Try Crysis, AoC to name a few, and theres others
 


You've got it the wrong way around. The benefits of a faster CPU taper off at higher resolutions because the GPU becomes the bottleneck.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/

As I said earlier, in gaming the workload for the CPU is the same regardless of resolution. Increasing resolution/AA/AF only taxes the GPU, not the CPU.
 
When the gpu asks more from the cpu than it can deliver, it causes problems in the gpu delivery. When the gpu is challenged, that allows for the cpu to catch up. It didnt used to be this way. Times have changed
 
Im hoping that it oces well, or comes in ata higher stock speed. Too many trends currently in gaming where a heavily oceed cpu is very helpful, and sometimes needed. The trend in faster gpus isnt changing, Im just hoping that Nehalem will keep pace
 
to be honest, i'm not actually that pleased with nehalem... sure I wasn't looking for stellar performance, but it really wasn't all that it was hyped to be... it was hyped to be the next core 2.... and its not.... its like... idk 3/4 of a step or something
 


Did you just ask this? I don't want any part of this argument because I see it as useless BUT at lower res the game does become CPU limited. Thats a known fact hence why most of these games would make sense if the drivers for the CPU are not installed correctly.

At res such as 1280x1024 and the equivalent widscreen res, the GPU starts to take over as the main limitor.

Now yes if the drivers were not installed correctly the games FPS would be affected since its probably not getting the speed required to the GPU. But lets wait until we have a final system and final drivers before making a judgement that we all know is not possible to make without everything being set.
 
Good you included main limitor, but, look at the 8800GTX, its 20 months old now. How does it compare to the 4870x2? Maybe 50%? And in another 18 months? Get where Im going? Nehalem needs to rock to keep up, no nickle and dime 5-12% increases seen over 6 months time
 
4 Months ago, I posted a thread on here about this. Everyone said, no, a cpu today is just fine. At that time, I said, cpus are losing to gpus in output, and was hoping Nehalem would stem this trend. I dont see it. Will Nehalem oc better? or come in at higher stock speeds? And dont go off on the multi thread bunk, as we just havnt seen it. Im not picking on you jimmysmitty, but you of all people know, theres several games out currently thatre cpu diminished unless theyre oceed. Im looking towards Nehalem to change this. Am I wrong to hope?
 
Well with the bandwidth that QPI is putting out on a UNFINISHED product I would think thats plenty of bandwidth to keep a GPU happy.

Of course we wtill have to wait till the final drivers/chip comes out for a full judgement call. But thus far it looks very decent for just adding a IMC and also a bit of improvement core wise. In fact if you calculate it the performance compared to the 3.2GHz chip on a clock per clock basis it still does better.

I expect the finalized product to increase single threaded persormance by about 9-10% but I still will withold judgement till I see a final product.
 
The general feeling Im getting is, unless these numbers are way off, and it doesnt come in with a faster clock, some people wont upgrade to it, or alot wont, just depends on how it finishes. Im hoping it kicks arse, but right now, this hexus "preview" to me isnt either doing it any favors, or is way off
 


A GPU doesn't have much to do with QuickPath/HyperTransport speed unless it is an IGP. In the case of an IGP, the QPI/HT link speed is important as it's the GPU's memory I/O link. There isn't a whole lot of bandwidth used between an IMC-containing CPU and the northbridge if there isn't an IGP sitting in that northbridge. Case in point: an X2 6400+ with a mere 2000 MT/sec on its HT link outperforms some Phenoms, despite the Phenoms having 3600-4000 MT/sec on their HT links. If the HT link speed were that important, then you'd expect to see a huge increase in GPU performance with the Phenoms.

I expect the finalized product to increase single threaded persormance by about 9-10% but I still will withold judgement till I see a final product.
Click to expand...

What do you base this on? The Core i7 has already gone through at least a few steppings already. Further steppings at this point are to correct bugs and increase yields and perhaps clock speed and power consumption, not to add new features. Getting a 9-10% increase in IPC between now and release would indicate there is some very significant problem with the implementation of the processor that is fixable with just a respin of the silicon. That's possible but unlikely as it would take a big problem like the L3 not working or the IMC having horrible latency and clock speed issues. The tests run thus far do not suggest anything like that, so I think that what you see for raw CPU performance now is what you'll get on launch day. A platform bug could hurt something badly, but it would be specific, such as a bad PCIe controller refusing to activate all links, choking the GPU's bandwidth or a badly-tuned VRM. Such a problem would manifest itself in only certain tests, such as high-resolution gaming benchmarks being crap or extremely high idle power draw. But it wouldn't affect CPU-based performance such as encoding one bit.

The other thing that could perhaps net the Core i7 that kind of performance later is a lack of specific Nehalem compiler optimization options in gcc, icc, or MSVCC today. But most software is compiled for a generic class of CPU (such as -march=i686, -mSSE on 32-bit OSes or generic -O optimizations on x86_64 OSes) and not specific models, so these kinds of optimizations would be basically only seen in "one-off" kinds of programs and not in general usage. Otherwise, any other CPU will either fail to execute the program (such as an older A64 single-core in a program with SSE3) or potentially run it with poor performance.
 
Reading now. And commentating.

As a summary, we know that the monolithic, 45nm-based Nehalem microarchitecture has an integrated memory controller - supporting tri-channel DDR3-1,600 RAM for the desktop - QuickPath Interconnect, simultaneous multithreading, and a three-level cache hierarchy with a large pool shared amongst all cores.
Click to expand...

As a AMD fan, well, this part made me giggle like a little girl.

nehalem%20p11.jpg


I loved were the Blue Block of "IGraphics" fits in this....picture.

Sorry two pages of power point presentations doesn't clear, nothing. Like Larrabee, until i see a Nehalem on the test bed (or somebodys home) my predictions stand. Nehalem might flop due to software. Getting a 4 cores with HT ( 8 logical cores) is nice. Most apps only take advantage of 2 cores. HT might help, but why the hell you want 8 logical cores if apps just don't use them ?

Lets see if im right or whatnot. The next graph made me crack a smile. Quoting hexus once more:

Pi.png


HEXUS' PiFast test calculates the constant Pi to 10m places, using a brute-strength approach. What's interesting is that the single-threaded test is almost as fast on the 2.93GHz Nehalem as on the 3.2GHz QX9770, suggesting that memory bandwidth is coming into serious play.

AMD's fastest consumer CPU, the 2.6GHz-clocked Phenom X4 9950 BE, is some significant way behind.
Click to expand...

This just made me pop a vein in my forehead. Why ? Newegg prices:

AMD Phenom 9950: 235$
Intel QX9770 : 1459$

Nice comparison !!! It is really...stupid actually. Like comparing a Peugeot 206 1.4 HDI to my Lancia. My Lancia does 240 in less than 40 secs. The Peugeot will get there when George Bush will self proclaim as a Gay man. Both things wont happen.
But, ill keep it cool, and ill keep reading.

Another silly quote:

Nehalem's performance is born from taking the Core 2 architecture as a base and adding sensible, performance-enhancing additions such as an integrated memory controller, QuickPath interconnect, tiered cache, and tri-channel memory. Last but not least, SMT (simultaneous multithreading) provides a healthy boost, too.
Click to expand...

Every other Multi-Core/Multi-thread is based or has SMT instructions on it. Simultaneous Multithreading was first researched by IBM in 1968. It is like Ford announcing his "new" F150 with a 4 cylinder engine and a turbo. None of the latter are cutting edge innovations. They were, very long time ago.

In all honestly, that review showed the expected. Multi-thread apps shine, some others just don't add up. Normal benchmarks at this scale. Multi-Core was the future is now the present. A Many-Core approach will probably fail, by the same reason SunSPARC CPUs aren't used mainstream.
What i did not like was the sensationalist tone the reviewer gave to it. And by the way, i like to game, doing Winrar is just a hobbie. Sorry about the sarcastic tone but this review was kinda biased. And was short of amazing really with all this hype i was expecting much more.

Sorry about the sarcasm, but the interpretations of the results from THAT review is what i call crap.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom