Preview: Tom's Hardware benchmarks Intel's first quad-core "Kentsfield"

Hey guys heres the link, thanks to TGdaily.com

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/09/09/preview_kentsfield_processor/



*this probably should have been under press releases, apologies*

 

Amazing... they say that Intel decided to downgrade the technology. With even 4 cores, it is not faster than a Pentium 100!

 

O,O

*Drool*

*Wipes drool*

'Scuse me... o.o

 

Nice...I wonder how much the price will be....

Will any applications be programed to make use of all 4 cores...That would an application running very fast indeed...LOL

 

I remember reading in a PC magazine how some people took 2 Dual Core Opterons (forget the exact models) and slapped them on a dual processing motherboard. They did have to redo the BIOS so that it could detect the chips correctly. Also had SLI mode with 7800GTX. The overall performance was about the same as the X2 4200+ and the only significant improvement was when they were compressing or extracting large files.

Man, somewhere along the road someones gonna slap those quad cores on a dual processing motherboard and things will really start to get interesting.. \o.o/

 

What's going to be interesting is how Microsoft decides to shaft us on OS licensing. If you recall, licensing is done per CPU. There was a big hubbub on whether MS was going to charge for 2 copies of windows to run on a dual-core machine. They modified the license VERY slightly, and if you look at your Windows Key sticker, you'll see it says 1-2 CPUs (it used to say 1). Large server farms still generally have to pay for their OS's (MS or otherwise) on a per CPU basis, meaning they pay more to load whatever OS on their server with 16 CPUs.
I predict the same thing when the Quads come out. MS will try to figure out how to get you to pay more, and hopefully they'll eventually cave to market pressure and modify their license again.

 

I'm pretty sure Intel announced that their first quad-cores were essentially going to be two dual cores stuck together and later on they would develop a real quad core. I want to see some of AMD's quad cores..cause they obviously are being beaten in the dual core sector (hooray!, Intel fan xD)

 

wow, developers not even programing for dual cores and intel/amd is already pushing quad core

why would people seriously need to: burn cd, defragment, run virus scan, calculate pi to a billion digits, run 5 games, chat on msn, aol, yahoo, irc, and encode music all at the same time?

programming to take advantage of 4 cores would probably be hell

i wonder if intel or amd would start making octcore or something? now that would be ridiculous

 

When will the quad core be available in the market ?

BGeo

 

Intel plans on releasing a demo or exhibit or some or for quad core by the end of the year and should be available next year I think. Not sure about AMD.

 

Overall, especially compared to other software suppliers, MS is pretty fair about the whole thing. They count a single chip as a processor. Oracle, etc., they don't.

As to why: multiple CPU's have typically been the domain of high-end workstations and servers, so it makes sense to price it as high as possible for people that need that power But now that home users have dual-core and such, MS realizes that they need to still support home users and not charge them so much they go to Apple or Linux in droves

 

I do that and much more. I defragment my computer, run a virus scanner, go on IE, watch movies, sometimes burn DVD's all at the same time. MAN I love multi-cores!

 

I read somewhere a while back that Intel was planning on having processors with 32 cores by 2010. That may have been false, but that was pretty sick. 32 cores? Honestly. You'd have to be running about 80 different apps or one massive Photoshop program.

 

hahahaha

32 cores

wow, i'm wondering what your electric bill would be like.

that's like a freaking server 32 cores and if windows charges their OS per core to companies, then you'd be looking at $9500+ worth of OS

wow

also, i seriously DO NOT think any person will be capable to be SO BUSY that they'd have to multi task so much as to use the full capacity of an 16 core let alone 32

 

Yeah thats amazing. In 3-4 years when I buy a new notebook I can see getting one with something like 8 or 16 core's if they want to do 32 by 2010. But that would seriously be sick. Ha, if nvidia/ati follow suit, we could soon have dual-core GPU's, possibly quad-core DX10 cards by 2010. Hopefully battery technology increases at the same rate. I mean you would need a mini fusion reactor in your notebook to run 32 CPU cores for an acceptable amount of time. Actually in 30-40 years when fusion is mastered, I could seriously see something like that happening...imaging about the future is fun...but I need to write a paper for tomorrow and I havent even started it yet...bye bye.

 

Very cool, but I think its over kill. For most users dual core is over kill. For high end multitaskers this will be a god send. But I dont think Im going to buy into the multicore increase....just yet.

 

dual core is already kind of an overkill as of right now for you avg consumer. but geeks tend to like to have the latest and greatest. most people loving having hardware thats more than what they NEED, I'm guilty of that as well kentifield sounds very interesting, but not sure if I need quad core, will wait until the summer of next year to see whether or not the benefits justify the costs of new cpu, mobo and ram. for right now, i'll stick with my 4800+

 

Right now, you're right. I still get Windows to slow down a lot sometimes, running compiles and such, so a dual-core will be nice for me. What will be REALLY nice is when more software starts becoming multi-threaded. Then the multi-core machines will really start shining.

I should go work on making some... hehe

 

i think there will not be any more need for cpus with more then 4 cores unless programers in the future get super lazy and every program out there is a **** resource hogger

oh and sheff159, it will be IMPOSSIBLE in the next 30-40 years to make fusion reactors that small

a fusion plant is only planned on being complete in the next decade but it will be impossible for such advancements

i mean, even fusion power is still just generating heat and using the steam to turn turbines thus it will be impossible for fusion powered lappys. also though fusion release only a small amount of radioactive waste, you still won't want that small amount near your groin. In addition, current fusion technology uses insanely powerful magnetic fields to hold the plasma generated by fusion, thus the magnetic field would break your laptop. also, the magnets to generate that field also needs to be cooled down with liquid helium or nitrogen so i doubt it would ever fit into a notebook


the good thing is that progress is being made with lithium ion batteries and with in the next few years we can see triple the energy storage due to nanotechnology saving space in stacking the cells.