8-Core Intel Xeon 'V8" Sneak Peek

[malware]

In respond to AMD's Quad FX, Intel announced in January at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, new platform dubbed "V8". The guys at HotHardware.com have managed to take a good look at it and run some benchmarks. The "V8" consists of Intel workstation-class S5000XVN dual-socket motherboard, coupled to a pair of Xeon X5365 processors, 4GB of Samsung DDR2-667 FBDIMMs, and a GeForce 8800 GTX. The motherboard is based on Intel's 5000X chipset and the processors are clocked at 3.0GHz a piece(1333MHz FSB). Click here, to see some preliminary testing on this rig.



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[tkpenalty]

I want one...

 

[Easy Rhino]

so...when are we gonna start seeing programs written for dual core...

 

[Mussels]

so...when are we gonna start seeing programs written for dual core...

company of heroes, supreme commander, stalker...

 

[Easy Rhino]

company of heroes, supreme commander, stalker...

i know there are some out there but my point is companies are just getting titles out now and most arent even bothering! 8 cores for your server will be nice, but useless for playing games right now.

 

[Mussels]

i know there are some out there but my point is companies are just getting titles out now and most arent even bothering! 8 cores for your server will be nice, but useless for playing games right now.

i take it you havent played supreme commander then... octa-core is almost needed for an 8 player skirmish...

 

[Easy Rhino]

i take it you havent played supreme commander then... octa-core is almost needed for an 8 player skirmish...

lol i have was supreme commander written for multicore or just dual core?

 

[Wile E]

SupCom is only written to take advantage of up to 4 cores.

 

[Mussels]

lol i have was supreme commander written for multicore or just dual core?

Multi - theres no such thing as dual core, its 1 or multi. Of course, some scale better with more cores, and sup coms massive amount of units/AI's can scale very well - think one AI per core and you're on the right track.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Multi - theres no such thing as dual core, its 1 or multi. Of course, some scale better with more cores, and sup coms massive amount of units/AI's can scale very well - think one AI per core and you're on the right track.

hrm im confused. i thought you could only write games to take advantage of a specific amount of cores. like wile e said, supreme commander was only written for 4.

 

[Mussels]

Basically the way it works, is certain things are designed to spread out over multiple cores. Sup com may have been designed around 4, but that doesnt mean others are useless, if something can be moved across, it will.

Oh and as for designed for four... well no ones got an octa yet to test that, so we'll wait and see

 

[Wile E]

Multi - theres no such thing as dual core, its 1 or multi. Of course, some scale better with more cores, and sup coms massive amount of units/AI's can scale very well - think one AI per core and you're on the right track.

That's not true, Mussels. Take a look at some of the numerous Quad core benchmarks floating around. Benchmarks from some multi-threaded apps show no gains on a quad, because they're not written to take advantage of more than 2 cores.

EDIT: Although multi tasking would improve greatly. Say playing SupCom while running a SupCom server.

 

[Easy Rhino]

That's not true, Mussels. Take a look at some of the numerous Quad core benchmarks floating around. Benchmarks from some multi-threaded apps show no gains on a quad, because they're not written to take advantage of more than 2 cores.

EDIT: Although multi tasking would improve greatly. Say playing SupCom while running a SupCom server.

see this is where the confusion comes in. why dont companies just write software to take advantage of a billion cores and just be done with it?

 

[Atech]

so...when are we gonna start seeing programs written for dual core...

Unix. Linux. *BSD. Solaris

7-zip. Virtualdub. WinRAR. FFmpeg (read: x264). DivX. Xvid. GIMP. Photoshop.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Unix. Linux. *BSD. Solaris

7-zip. Virtualdub. WinRAR. FFmpeg (read: x264). DivX. Xvid. GIMP. Photoshop.

as far as i know those programs arent natively written for multiple cores, but do benefit from it.

 

[Atech]

as far as i know those programs arent natively written for multiple cores, but do benefit from it.

They're all multithreaded. Therefore, they're "natively written for multiple cores". It's the same thing.

Unless you're thinking of a multiple threaded chip (such as SPARC). But the programming works the same way, anyway.

 

[Easy Rhino]

They're all multithreaded. Therefore, they're "natively written for multiple cores". It's the same thing.

Unless you're thinking of a multiple threaded chip (such as SPARC). But the programming works the same way, anyway.

ahh. ok.

 

[tkpenalty]

I would live to see the day that games that need physics use the secondary core for it and the primary for gameplay... seriously...

 

[Mussels]

Just to clarify - i made boo-boo earlier. Programs are either single or multithreaded. However, some games just decide to throw a second thread in because they can - the game wont gain much benefit from having sound, video, AI and user input on different cores - so why bother.
So they cap it down to a certain level.

While say, sup com, COULD benefit from 8 cores, its probably only a tiny amount over 4, so they may have capped it there.

Its kinda hard to learn on this, as most 'dual core' games are simply a single core engine with a hacked-on method for using another core (the same way CoH uses a second core, but its only for physics - which are purely graphical, and dont affect gameplay at all)

 

[Nothgrin]

I would live to see the day that games that need physics use the secondary core for it and the primary for gameplay... seriously...

some games are made with Ageia PhysX cards in mind so basically it is a 2nd core just for physics.

 

[WarEagleAU]

I would have hoped Intel would have made a single chip 8 core proc. I mean, I like the AMD Quad FX (Which will hopefull soon be replaced by single chip solutions). Nice to see, but I was hoping for a build upon what AMD done. Intel should have trumped their solution easily. Oh well.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Just to clarify - i made boo-boo earlier. Programs are either single or multithreaded. However, some games just decide to throw a second thread in because they can - the game wont gain much benefit from having sound, video, AI and user input on different cores - so why bother.
So they cap it down to a certain level.

While say, sup com, COULD benefit from 8 cores, its probably only a tiny amount over 4, so they may have capped it there.

Its kinda hard to learn on this, as most 'dual core' games are simply a single core engine with a hacked-on method for using another core (the same way CoH uses a second core, but its only for physics - which are purely graphical, and dont affect gameplay at all)

thanks that makes more sense to me now

 

[wickerman]

I find this V8 solution pretty half baked, where as AMD decided to make a "new" platform with quadfx (at least in terms of taking socket F processors to a dual socket ATX form factor board with features targeted to the enthusiast of the mainstream) and use of standard DDR2 (instead of registered dimms or FB-DIMMs) intel is basically just continuing to offer the server/workstation platform they introduced a while back. If they decided to offer a smaller footprint, better features, and a friendlier motherboard layout I would be more inclined to see this in better light.

Dont get me wrong, id love a dual quad core platform for my own uses, but for the kinda money this platform will cost, it should at least match the feature set of the $150 motherboards that we use with our core 2s...

AMDs quadfx aint perfect, but its got what people want (aside from the performance advantage over intel)

 

[ktr]

How can "V8" be a seek peak, when you can do octa core right now using the xeons?

 

[Wile E]

This is pretty much a re-branding of their server hardware.