Intel Hex-Core i9 processor

[Harm Millaard]

So if I understand you correctly, the Intel Xeon W3540 @ 2.93 GHz is the better choice than the Intel Xeon X5560 @ 2.8 GHz, because of the clock speed? I think you ought to explain that rationale to the marketing people at Intel, because they sure don't get it. BTW, neither do I.

[Imran Zaidi]

Again, you're best going through metrics over time on Tom's Hardware: Hardware News, Tests and Reviews where they do an excellent, much better job of explaining how it all works.

[Harm Millaard]

The page you linked to only gives a generic (Home) page, not to what you may have intended and sorry, I'm not going to search for it, especilly not on Tom's Hardware, since they have far too many flawed tests and incorrect statements.

[Pete Bauer]

There are a number of "what computer" and "which processor" threads, but this one seemed most directly about the impending Gulftown processor, so I'll mention here that it appears that the NDA's have expired about the 980X:

AnandTech: The Core i7 980X Review: Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme: Hello, Six-Core Computing : Introduction

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Pete Bauer

There are a number of "what computer" and "which processor" threads, but this one seemed most directly about the impending Gulftown processor, so I'll mention here that it appears that the NDA's have expired about the 980X:

AnandTech: The Core i7 980X Review: Intel's First 6-Core Desktop CPU
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme: Hello, Six-Core Computing : Introduction

Sigh. I had expected the "i9" designation for this hexacore CPU. But it will now instead keep the i7 branding. It will initially be sold only as a Core i7 Extreme. The lower-priced models in the series might follow either late this year or sometime next year.

And I had inaccurately speculated that current X58 motherboards might not be upgradeable to support the hexacore processors. It actually depends on the board revision and the installed BIOS version. (This means that some early X58 motherboards might not be able to support the hexacore processors at all due to their voltage regulator limitations.)

So, if I were to upgrade to a hexacore processor, using my current motherboard would be out of the question due to its limited number of DIMM slots. It effectively has only three memory slots, which means that 12GB is the maximum that I can effectively go with this motherboard (maximum for that mobo is theoretically 16GB, but filling up four slots would force the i7 memory controller to operate in a funky hybrid mode of triple- and single-channel, which would increase the overall memory controller latency and therefore reduce performance). I might just keep the quad-core 920 on that mobo and go with something like an Asus P6TD Deluxe for the hexacore. And I would only go hexacore if the price of such a processor falls below $400.

[Craig Coston]

Randall, that's why I and others recommended the ASUS P6T platform to you. There's a reason why most of us build on that motherboard.