Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Waffle on September 27, 2006, 09:57:35 PM

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Waffle on September 27, 2006, 09:57:35 PM

Anyone hear about these?

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Kev367th on September 27, 2006, 11:04:05 PM

Oooh your gonna start one here ;) .

Yes it is quad core (psuedo).
Similar to the original Intel dual core CPU (2 CPUs on one die) , they will be 2 dual core CPU's shoehorned onto the same die.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Krusty on September 28, 2006, 02:45:15 PM

shoehorned in? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? We talking "Pentium D" performance, that wasn't as good as hoped, or are we talking "Conroe squared" type of performance?

Will this fit into existing LGA775? If a mobo supports conroe will it support this "kentsfield"?

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Kev367th on September 28, 2006, 03:30:04 PM

All good questions.
The simple answer is, who the hell knows.

Only thing I am wary of is possible memory contension issues with 4 cores all trying to access a single memory controller.

Wait for it to arrive, then we'll see.

I still think the AMD Torrenza maybe better, 2 x Dual Cores, 2 memory controllers accessing two independent banks of memory.

Yet again have to wait till later on this year to see.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Skuzzy on September 28, 2006, 03:38:20 PM

Bus contention is an issue no matter how many controllers there are.  There is only one physical bus to the memory from the CPU.  The only difference between 4 memory controllers and one memory controller is what part of the CPU has to handle the contention issues.

Anywho, for true multi-threaded apps the preliminary benchies are pretty good.  For single-threaded apps, notthing to be gained.  Very few applications are multi-threaded.

They will be shipping in November.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Kev367th on September 28, 2006, 04:06:12 PM

Slightly diff tack Skuzzy -

As AH2 supports and uses dual cores, wouldn't quad core or two dual cores be a good solution?

i.e. 2 to run the OS, 2 for AH2.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Skuzzy on September 28, 2006, 04:07:51 PM

Kev, I really could not justify the cost/performance in that scenario.  It would be such a small increase in performance as to be virtually immeasurable.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Kev367th on September 28, 2006, 04:14:10 PM

Maybe the only option once Vista is forced, oops I mean released to unsuspecting Joe public.

Bet ya can't wait for the support calls to come flooding in ;) .

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Skuzzy on September 28, 2006, 04:18:00 PM

I am not looking forward to Vista.  I have a bad feeling the OEM's are going to short the RAM in the computer to keep the costs low and then I have to tell someone their new, shiny toy needs twice the RAM it came with to run anything, other than the OS.

Then, of course, the instability issues, the security issues, the random crashes.  It aint gonna be pretty.

Nope, not looking forward to that at all.

Busting my tushy building my retirement fund.  I do not think I will be able to make it before Vista ships though.  darn it.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Kev367th on September 28, 2006, 04:21:52 PM

Worst thing is, you just know -
Dell, Gateway etc etc are gonna jump on it right away :( .

Already told our boss, we're not having it.
Any new laptops/desktops that arrive with it will immediately be reformatted and Win 2000 installed.
More work for me short term, less long term.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Skuzzy on September 28, 2006, 04:23:28 PM

The OEM's have no choice.  When MS decides to ship Vista, the OEM's will have to use it instead of XP.  It's a licensing thing.

Corporate America has no choice either, if they want support from MS.


I wish Google's OS was ready.  Unfortunately, it is still a good 3 years away, maybe 4 years.  It can't be any worse.

Title: Intel Kentsfeild chip - Quad core?
Post by: Kev367th on September 28, 2006, 04:27:04 PM

Remeber Uncle Bills famous reply when asked way way back about 640kb memory?

"Why would anyone need more than 640kb of memory"?

Makes ya wonder lol.

OR

IBM president commenting on the first PC -

"I can see a market for maybe 2 or 3 of them".

How times have changed.