Oh man, I am so freaking nostalgic about Nehalem

[Sasqui]

Not sure if this is for general hardware, but anyway
I remember when Nehalem came out and everyone began bashing AMD and Hector Ruiz

AFAIK, The patent(s) on direct memory access expired and Intel was more than glad to steal AMDs lunch and eat it too. It was what made AMD stand above Intel before that point. It changed the whole competitive landscape to this day.

 

[silkstone]

I bought a i7 970 for my HTPC about a year ago to do some multi-threaded workloads remotely. I'd always wanted one and boy, the chip still goes head-to-head with recent consumer chips. Now i got a 8600K and a Ryzen at work, it gets little use past web streaming

 

[Zyll Goliat]

I switch this summer on X58 platform with 6 core Xeon after I been using AMD FX 8 core for almost 2 years....and boy OC Xeon on 4Ghz is way better for gaming and it will crush FX in synthetic tests easily....when it reach speeds higher then 4,5Ghz it could become threat for Ryzen 1600....

 

[EarthDog]

Why the hell did I think it was a mainstream? I read Nehalem architecture had Tick (Nehalem) and Tock (Westmere) and therefore I assumed it was an architecture which had all the processor types: Mobile, desktop, enthusiast etc. Probably this mislead me. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-tock_model

tick tock has nothing to do with processor types really. And wiki...

Anyway... it wasnt a terribly huge jump for me either with a 4ghz+ q9450 either.

Tri channel ram didnt give me fits and wasnt a big benefit over dual in most cases.

As far as performance goes its a viable platform these days but will put a glass ceiling on performance. At times significant ones. I mean its well over 50% slower per clock and moddrn cpus clocm 25% higher so.... it had its time, buts it is definitely in the past.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

there are four X 58 boards still going strong in my house

1 x ASUS ROG ii Extreme
1 x ASUS P6T Deluxe
2 x DFI Lanparty

 

[dj-electric]

Ahhh.... DFI boards. Oh how i miss this company very much.

Now i'm sad.

If anything, we should start a DFI thread, a DFI admiring cult... hell...

 

[lexluthermiester]

How did you feel about this architecture back then?

Mine was an i7-940, but I'm right there with you. It was a great platform. I still have an X58 based system and am seriously considering a dual socket 1366 board as the X5600 series of Xeons are still relevant performers.

This is how I felt when we got our Intellivision. Incidentally has anyone seen what these things are selling for nowadays they're like $200 that's ridiculous

Spoiler: In case your too young:)

Ah for systems like that, the NES for me all the way. The Atari 2600 was my first, and there were some great experiences, but the NES and SNES were and still are the ones I keep going back to.

 

[64K]

I don't really recall Nehalem being a big leap over Core 2 but I never owned one so I can't really say. I went from a E8400 Core 2 Duo to an i5 Sandy Bridge and boy that was a leap in performance. The Sandy Bridges were so good that 7 years later they are still fine for most gaming and with the solder under the IHS you could overclock those puppies easily.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I don't really recall Nehalem being a big leap over Core 2 but I never owned one so I can't really say. I went from a E8400 Core 2 Duo to an i5 Sandy Bridge and boy that was a leap in performance. The Sandy Bridges were so good that 7 years later they are still fine for most gaming and with the solder under the IHS you could overclock those puppies easily.

From a C2D to an i5 quad?

 

[jboydgolfer]

i always smile when im working on an older PC, or trying to fix a friends Desktop, and when i fire it up, i see that Lanparty splash Screen finding this pic, made me smile too

 

[64K]

From a C2D to an i5 quad?

Yep. I only started building my own rigs around 11 years ago and the E8400 was my first. I didn't know a lot about tech back then or the direction that gaming was heading or I would have paid a little more for a Core 2 Quad.

 

[lexluthermiester]

That was a very nice board.

Yep. I only started building my own rigs around 11 years ago and the E8400 was my first. I didn't know a lot about tech back then or the direction that gaming was heading or I would have paid a little more for a Core 2 Quad.

That's cool. And yeah, that was a huge performance jump. The Nehalem was still a big bump in performance over C2Q.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Twins

 

[jboydgolfer]

those 6 RAM slots always made me smile.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Not Nehalem but the next step, the Gulftown on x58, I still have running for a virtual test lab.

 

[agent_x007]

Nehalem = Bloomfield, Lynnfield, and kinda Clarkdale.
Westmere = Gulftown.
^at least for desktop.

 

[THE_EGG]

I loved my 930 which I had on an Asus P6T back in the day. Upgraded from a C2D e8400 too. Then lightning struck my house and blew up a lot of electrical appliances including that PC and I moved to Sandy Bridge :|

 

[Fouquin]

Ahhh.... DFI boards. Oh how i miss this company very much.

Now i'm sad.

If anything, we should start a DFI thread, a DFI admiring cult... hell...

Good news, they still exist!

Bad news... They're an industrial OEM.

 

[Regeneration]

Westmere is also based on Nehalem architecture... codenamed Nehalem C.



And still kicking ass 7 years after launch.

Westmere-EX is even better (8c/16t or 10c/20t), but it was for MP servers and used a special socket (not 1366).

 

[Outback Bronze]

Yeah, pretty much my favourite setup from the past..

Still got it today and it aint getting sold in a hurry.

Haven't seen these Bad Boys for a while

The Original.

Merry Christmas

Edit: I used to run the memory at like 2500+ with loose timings and stuff. Pretty sure I got close to 2600Mhz. Unheard of in the day. Cant remember if it was 12 or 24GB that was running those speeds.

 

[dj-electric]

I had a 980X dying on me outta nowhere... that's the price of ES chips i guess :\
990X, juicy till this day. Very nice and capable parts.

 

[horik]

Just recently changed from I7 950 to x5650, remained on the same platform for now, it even works with dual channel memory.

 

[FunkyMonkeyDK]

What is your experience with faster ram. I have 8 go 1333 MHz in my x58 rig right now.. is there any benefits in upgrading to 2133 or above? For gaming
As of right now they are clocked at 15xx something

 

[Vario]

My father still runs an i7 930 and P6X58DE with 3x Samsung 30nm Greens. I haven't overclocked his ram much for 24/7. It has excellent performance at DDR3 1700 and, IIRC, 3.9Ghz. It is very stable. His system is rather heat limited, I believe that with a better cooler his CPU could achieve a lot more as it only uses something like ~1.2v for the 3.9. I overhauled his system two years ago because his Corsair ram was very unstable and poorly performing and the auto overclock Asus had given him was very unstable as well. It is now dead stable and hasn't blue screened ever. The performance is actually better now in benchmarks despite his CPU and Ram clocked lower than they were before.

 

[Regeneration]

What is your experience with faster ram. I have 8 go 1333 MHz in my x58 rig right now.. is there any benefits in upgrading to 2133 or above? For gaming
As of right now they are clocked at 15xx something

On X58 its better to run triple channel, if you have 8 GB, i assume its a dual channel.

If you have Bloomfield, stick with what you have, maybe try to overclock it and to tweak timings. Bloomfield requires extreme QPI/DRAM voltage for DDR 2000 and above.

On Gulftown, its possible to reach DDR 2000+ using Uncore 1.5x ratio.