Intel's Core i7: Blazing Fast, But Crippled O/C

[jaragon13]

[citation][nom]jitpublisher[/nom]Good, good article. And to jaragon13, "Intel fanboy orgy".....I have been an AMD fan for years. More than 12 years to be exact. But in todays race, I am sorry but AMD is falling so far behind they cannot even brought into discussion with processors of this caliber. AMD does have a place in the market, but if you are bringing up AMD in this disussion it's like you are at an NHRA event bringing up Chrysler K-cars. "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt"[/citation]
Another lying fanboy douche bag,so predictable.

Gee,I guess Anand is really the place.Reflects the community,anyways.

 

[dzban]

[citation][nom]ivaroeines[/nom]I think the focus on overclocking by reviewers is missguided with these cpu's, todays cpus( Core i7 and core 2 quad in particular ) are so fast that overclocking them will not have any noticable performance gains for normal users. The only real effect overclocking will have is a negative enviormental impact. Whats the point of running a game at more than 60 fps, noone will notice the increase, of course there is a few people that can gain( realworld gain ) from overclocking, but these are very few and they usually dont use normal platforms.[/citation]

You are wrong with that games like Crysis needs lots of processing power to run smoothly on high setting even on low resolutions.
See this rewiev from polish tech site. There is i7 on 4Ghz overclocked.
http://www.egielda.com.pl/?str=art&id=4601-21

 

[Pei-chen]

LOL, Tom's is going to destroy Core i7 as Apple destroyed Vista, by false advertising.

Half the comments here are about overclock limit which, apparently, is a non-issue for other review sites. The 130watts thermo limit is also blown out of proportion as similar feature has been part of Intel CPU since P4. (Remember the video where Intel CPU throttled back and AMD chip cracked and burned?) In fact, according to Anand (or Tom’s), i7 can withstood 100*C before throttling which is better than C2D’s 95*C (don’t quote me).

Another thing for fanboys, remember the FX series Athlons? How much were they at release? $999 is for the EE version and $400 is for an X58 enthusiast board. Would you call it overpriced / monopolistic if I am to pair 920 ($284) with P55 board (~$150) three months from now that can run circles around a Q9770 (~$1400)?

I really hope most people’s memory last longer than 3 days.

 

[snoopykoo]

[citation][nom]FrancoisPiednoel[/nom]Let me add a little detail. In the BIOS, you have a setting call "CPU VR current override", and if you select this to ENABLE, your CPU will ignore the TDP limits, and the TDC limit. There is no "cripple Overclocking", we proactively putted this feature to make sure the Overclockers will have fun.Try it yourself, and have fun!Thanks!Francois PiednoelIntel Corp.[/citation]
So... according to every other overclocking review on the internet and this apparent Intel rep, there is no more gimping in the i7 than there is in the Core 2 (ie, a locked multiplier). I read this article 8 hours ago and 7 hours ago I realized that it was full of pretty blatant misinformation (hello? The title is wrong? Can anyone say 'alarmist for the sake of being alarmist'?). I came back at the end of my work day to see how you guys fixed the inaccuracies and I don't see any apologies at all... not even a silent fix... my faith in Toms is definitely slipping. I know it's hard to bring yourself to do (especially when you apparently have a flock of people willing to listen to you and only you), but admitting that you're wrong is part of being a professional.

 

[joelg88]

great Article and very informative. I would've really like to see the Benchmarks include Flight Sim X because FSX is really CPU intensive and that would've been a good Game to try with these new CPU's

 

[jj463rd]

I noticed that the Core i7 965 extreme was only 12.6 % faster than the Phenom X4 9950 BE in Supreme Commander which is one of the few quad core optimized games out there other than Flight Simulator X.
I too am interested in seeing benchmarks for Flight Simulator X for the Core i7 CPU's.
If these turn out to have a substantial improvement for FSX I will consider building such a system otherwise I will wait and see how AMD's AM2+ 3.0 Ghz Deneb does for FSX in benchmarks.To me the other benchmarks don't matter it's only FSX I care about.

 

[roofus]

[citation][nom]skalagon[/nom]I can see a lot of people getting pissed off with this overclocking barrier. Talk about a way to reinforce their big bad mega company screwing the little guy image. If AMD release something good I could see a lot of people switching even if only for this reason.[/citation]

I think the overclocking barrier isn't any more limiting than the barriers present in the Core2 architecture. The ceiling may not be as high as a dual core but it wasn't for the quads before the i7 numbers started trickling out. Locked multipliers and throttles are already here. It seems to serve as nothing but a minor inconvenience for someone overclocking. There are plenty of products that are "Black Edition" that completely fail to impress even with the unlocked multiplier. As far as price, cutting edge is always expensive. I never bite on it because I wont pay the premium to be a beta tester lol. I wont be on board for i7 or Deneb for at least a year. That should be plenty of time for price drops and product refinement.

 

[Guest]

I really enjoy your articles, but your benchmarks really need to be updated with World Of Warcraft. 11 Million gamers play this game now and with the introduction of patch 3.0 it has some steep system requirements to run at full. A huge number of your readers would get useful, "real gaming" benchmarks if you were to include the most played game on earth.

 

[heoaheoa]

Yea I agree with snoopykoo, whats the deal with this 130 watt limit? In the article the is a screen shot of the bios processor overrides section. At the bottom it lists "CPU VR Current Limit Override." That is was Francois Piednoel mentioned. Is he correct? If not, what does this function do?

Before making such a big statement saying the o/c is crippled you should actually post your "crippled" o/c results with the 920 and 940. Instead you put crippled o/c in the title, and have three sentences written in bold about how intel is trying to stop overclocking. No other sites are having any problems trying to o/c the 920 or 940. Did you actually test your claims about the 130 Watt limit? I love reading these outlandish claims with no testing to back them up. Isn't this supposed to be a site that does hardware testing?

 

[seatrotter]

For our overclocking experiments, we set the Overspeed Protection features to 300 amperes and 300 watts.

300 amperes!?

Screenshot please.

 

[jawshoeaw]

Self confessed AMD fanboy, just to get that out of the way.
I'm really impressed with intel's ability to create yet higher framerates in games that a small fraction of computer users will benefit from. For 99% of my computer needs, an Intel Pentium I, yes that's P-One still suffices (Windows 2000, office 2000, Fujitsu laptop). Plays songs on iTunes, runs Word, firefox, etc, etc, boots up in a minute and a half.

Of course it's no media center PC but my point is that Intel will need to continue to offer low wattage cheap CPUs if they want to completely kill AMD. I think you are crazy to spend more than $100 on a CPU - just my opinion.

I know Tom's is an enthusiast site and I enjoy reading the latest greatest, but I'd like to see some balance with articles about what you can do with a very low budget with an eye towards reliability under hard conditions instead of raw power. I work in a hospital with over a thousand PCs with pentium II - III. They work great and would never be "upgraded" but instead replaced. Low power and reliability, not very sexy I know.

 

[seatrotter]

For our overclocking experiments, we set the Overspeed Protection features to 300 amperes and 300 watts.

300 amperes?!

Screenshot please.

[my previous post seemed to automagically disappeared... I wonder why]

 

[seatrotter]

Ooopppsss... my bad. Sorry.

 

[rambo117]

just when we thought AMD couldnt sink any lower...

 

[scook9]

The 100 (300 was there setting to remove possible limitations) amperes is a max accepted limit before throttling kicks in, as I understand. The user cannot control the current sent to the chip via BIOS, the chip will draw what it needs, dynamically, just like any electrical piece of equipment you have ever used. Just about NO consumer electornics can or will run at 300 amps for very long.

Next point, 130 watt limit on cpu draw, BFD. In case you werent paying attention, the current QX9770 has a 130(?) watt TDP and still only draws 100 watts at 100% load at clock speed, so who gives a dam. Plenty of overhead for overclocking. That being said, what gives Tom's, you SHOULD have overclocked the 920 and 940 as far as possible to give readers an idea what to expect.

Intel is not the big bad boogy man, there extremes have always been $1000+ (even the Pentium Extreme), entry chips always $300-600 (remember the Q6600 when it first came out). And what sort of core steppings can we expect here, I mean I saw C0 I thought...we back to year old steppings now, when E0 is out and has proved itself?

I'm actually SHOCKED at how CHEAP the 920 will be. Of course, the X58 is still too much, I agree, P55 will be the sweet spot (or whatever they end up calling it). And you all need to remember, Intel is playing nice here, the QX9650 was the only 45nm quad for months before the Q9300 and Q9450 came out, here you got all 3 flavors from day one (at "decent" prices).

Another question, can we expect any microATX offerings for nehalem? These are much easier to do for HTPC that ATX unless you got 200+ to drop on a case alone.

Sure I have a few biases, I have always used intel myself, but come on people, you all are acting like 4 year olds here in the forums pointing fingers and crying.

Sam
Electrical Engineer

 

[roofus]

i dont see this product (though it looks like a good one) being the nails in the coffin for AMD. to really hurt them,Intel would need to saturate the budget CPU market. this is by no stretch a budget CPU.

 

[Lans]

Yeah, as an AMD fanboy I must say this looks pretty bad for AMD but on other hand it totally validates AMD's architecture. Sure Intel made improvements but isn't that expected with Intel's resource?

At $285 CPU + $305 Motherboard for entry level models, to me, Intel doesn't seem to be aiming at consumers. For gamers, there isn't much to be gained and for video transcoding... we'll there is stuff like Badaboom (for Nvidia cards, I just hope there is something for AMD/ATI soon) which a CPU upgrade just change match...

This does buy AMD some time to bring out their 45nm parts which in turn should force Intel to lower their prices...

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]I'm actually SHOCKED at how CHEAP the 920 will be.[/citation]
It's over $530 in Australia I hope these pre-launch prices come down though, our retailers usually like to make a 200% profit early on.

 

[crysis900]

Morons.
How does one explain this ...

"Let me add a little detail. In the BIOS, you have a setting call "CPU VR current override", and if you select this to ENABLE, your CPU will ignore the TDP limits, and the TDC limit. There is no "cripple Overclocking", we proactively putted this feature to make sure the Overclockers will have fun.
Try it yourself, and have fun!

Thanks!
Francois Piednoel
Intel Corp"

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=205779

 

[blackwater11]

I honestly hope Intel starts messing around with their loyal customer base by limiting the overclocking potential on the lower end models in order to get their customers to buy higher end models.

Sounds like Nvidia with their bull$#!t rebranding the 9 series like it was a brand new model with brand new architecture while trying to shove SLI into every unsuspecting customer they can.

May AMD rise again and share allegiance with their loyal customers on their way to replace Intel and Nvidia for the incessant name scheming, bait and switch garbage
At this point I'm boycotting Intel just out of principle. I hope AMD comes up big and gets the funding to be i7 competitive. As a consumer, I am really tired of being F#@&#D around with.

Amen

 

[ravenware]

Not impressed with the in game performance on the i7 chips.
The limited overclocking may play in AMD's favor with their next set of chips. If AMD can offer game performance near the same level as the i7 and have an unlocked multiplier then they will have the advantage in the gamers niche.

 

[adamk890]

[citation][nom]Cryogenic[/nom]Core i7 is a great CPU, the article is not. I can't believe after all this time you still stack overclocked CPUs with unoverclocked ones. It's great to find out the overclocking potential of Nehalem but, at least include some overclocked Penryns in there too, to see how overclocked Nehalem stacks agains OTHER overclocked CPUs, because it's fairly evident that and overclocked new gen CPU will stack well with older non overclocked ones.[/citation]

I dont belive that that was the point to show how much better. Those CPU's are functioning naturaly in turbo mode yeah there overclocked but that is probably how the average person will be using them

 

[androticus]

I have still not seen anyone discuss how the OS allocates triple-channel physical memory to virtual app memory. Maybe the OS doesn't even really properly deal with triple, since it is so weird. If it doesn't actually properly interleave assignment round-robin to the three channels, then you wouldn't see any benefit in the benchmarks, because you wouldn't actually be using the third channel's memory.

 

[Guest]

If it isn't obvious by now, Tom's Hardware people are not super expert overclockers. They never have been. They also lack common sense for some reason.

no overclocked Conroe and Wolfdale at the same exact speed to go in the test?

WHY EVEN BOTHER? LOL made me laugh. What a joke. Every other review site has it. This one doesn't.

Pretty funny.

 

[DFGum]

[citation][nom]AcaClone[/nom]Nero 8 Recode -129.0%Impressive!! So, the Nehalem must finish Nero already before it is even started. That is really impressive, but puts some doubts about the validity on all you bench markings!![/citation]
The other cpu is 129% slower.. how does this hafta do with nero starting and finishing before its launched? 129% means it can preform the task 1.29 times in the time it took the other cpu todo it once. Or maybe 2.29 i dont know im not thinking clearly atm.