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
Couple of examples ( 2P capable) Westmere-EP's
Xeon X5677 (quad, nominal 26x multi)
and
Xeon X5690 (hex, nominal 26x multi)
Xeon X5687(quad, nominal 27x multi)
cheers!
the last extreme edition xeon i know of was the intel core 2 extreme qx9775 (socket-771) back in the days (good old asus z7s, don't miss you. ;))...
Unless Intel does something similar to Core 2 Extreme QX9775 (2P-ready Core chips for Skulltrail), SR3's future is bleak.
And the argument that Intel started off with unlocked chips on this platform is kinda moot, as they always release unlocked chips with a new enthusiast platform.
Sandy Bridge-EP will be the only chips you can run on SR3. The topic concerns SnB-EP, not SnB-E.That wasn't my point, either. My point was that Intel launched LGA2011 series with only >$500 unlocked chips, excluding the locked quad-core (i7-3820). That's because 3820 doesn't go too far with just its BClk, and it makes i7-2700K look like a better option for its price range.
You will still be able to buy i7-3820 in February, by then you'll know what a fail SnB-E is with BClk overclocking. It will respond to BClk overclocking, but nowhere near as effectively as "locked" Westmere Xeon/Core or Nehalem Xeon/Core processors did.
EDIT: And I'll pick up with this conversation with you tomorrow. Gnite all.
so that alone with limited bclk adjustments in +/- 10mhz range and adjusting multi downwards gives at least some overclocking potential.
lets say you have a max. availabe turbo-multi of 39 (assuming 3.9ghz max turbo freq. on high end xeons) AND you are able to change the bclk to max +10mhz AND your cpu is stable at a gear ratio of 1.66, then you come in at 176mhz bclk on the cpu alone, wich is a little over 6.8ghz.
further assuming your xeon is a 8-core variant, you are ending up with a 16-core 32-thread monster at 6.8 ghz AND 8 channels of ddr3 goodness... i mean WTF?
even if your xeons 'only' work at a gear ratio of 1.25, you come in at 5265mhz on the core assuming this +10mhz on the bclk.