snb-e now coming mid to late nov. 2011

[wheeljack12]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/san...sor,13387.html

[ViN86]

http://vr-zone.com/articles/why-the-...ed-/13748.html

There was disappointment in some of the enthusiasts' circles that the initial round of desktop Socket 2011 Sandy Bridge E processors have one quarter of their cores and cache disabled. So, instead of 8 cores with 20 MB L3 cache, you get just 6 cores with 15 MB L3 enabled. The reasons mentioned, better to say speculated, along the way, were anything from the yields on this large die, or Intel's preference to sell full 8 core versions to the more lucrative workstation and server Xeon market, or even the fact that desktop apps or environments can still barely use even those 6 cores, not to mention a full set of eight.

Why the initial desktop Sandy Bridge-E chips has only six (of eight) cores enabled?

There's another reason, that may top them all though - TDP. Yes, these are really big dies, with many cores and lots of cache - not as many as the Xeon E7 - Westmere-EX - series in the same 32 nm process, but E7's 10 cores and 30 MB cache top out at 2.4 GHz only. Here, we have an expectation that the full 8 core chip should still work at just above 3 GHz right at the announcement - at least in the '3-D workstations only' 150 W version. See the number? Now, well, desktops don't really go with more than 130 W TDP per socket these days, yet the per core clock has to be higher, to justify the migration from older Core i7, and to keep the difference with the LGA1155 4-core SB chips, as well as AMD Bulldozer.

So, to get 3.3 GHz or higher core speed, and fit it all into 130W TDP, a 6 core limit sounds about right for the current C series steppings at least. A future D stepping could enable higher clocks at the same TDP, or maybe enabling all the cores too at a similar speed. Intel's tradition for both Nehalem and Westmere was that, a quarter or two after the initial stepping, the next one would bring substantial improvements in frequency, or power, or both - usually one or two speed bumps within the same envelope. That was enough then, there's no reason to doubt it will be the same this time.

Else, we'd have to wait for the Ivy Bridge-E generation, still a year away...

Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/why-the-...#ixzz1b8xaSkYx

SNB-E will still be a whopper. But I guess we will have to wait for 8 core goodness from Intel.

[ViN86]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Yeah the 8 Core Xeons will follow later on, probably with a lower clock.

But the bad news about SNB-E doesn't stop here. The latest Gigabyte slides show 40 PCIe 2.x lanes instead of the once planed PCIe 3.0 support. First the cut back on the dedicated PCIe 3.0 storage link and now this.

I'll skip this generation altogether and wait for Ivy Bridge E next year.

What are the real world advantages of PCIe 3.0 compared to PCIe 2.x? Will you notice a difference with current available hardware?

Honestly I think the best thing about SNB-E is the quad channel DDR3 and the 6 cores with HT for 12 threads. That alone should be more than enough to saturate any video card(s).

[ViN86]

Originally Posted by slaWter

PCIe 3.0 will double the bandwidth per lane compared to 2.x.

For this platform, it would have allowed for a lot of highend and flexible (from a manufacturers point of view) PCIe layouts but from a Multi-GPU setup perspective it's not that important because there are already so many lanes available.

PCIe 3.0 will be killer for the smaller platform next year though! Those CPUs will offer less lanes so the new bandwidth will come in very handy for Multi-GPU systems. There won't be a need for third party chips like on most highend P67/Z68 boards anymore. The CPU will provide enough bandwidth per GPU, even for Tri-SLI setups

Right now, the only two major features remaining are the Quad Channel memory interface and the huge cache. 6 Cores with HT is nothing new.

Ok gotcha. That will be nice to eliminate third party chips for PCIe. But I disagree, 6 cores with HT is new for the consumer market. Only EE and high end chips had this before, which are generally too expensive for the majority of people.

[Viral]

I've lost any desire to pay over $400 for a CPU, so I think I'll probably wait out Ivy.

[ViN86]

This i7 950 at 4GHz is plenty fast for me. The 920 I have is D0, too, so if I needed more speed I could probably get the 920 up to 4.2GHz+. This 950 takes too much voltage to go over 4GHz, though.

[Slytat]

Originally Posted by slaWter

I'll skip this generation altogether and wait for Ivy Bridge E next year.

I was stoked for this but as we get more and more info, I get less and less interested.

I don't think I'll be hopping on this either tbh, there isn't much to recommend it over the current EE chips and with Ivy Bridge and new Nvidia GPUs in the near(ish) future, I'll just wait and add some more SSD space instead

[Ninja Prime]

What are the real world advantages of PCIe 3.0 compared to PCIe 2.x?

The actual answer to that question is: None. There are no "real world" advantages, hardware/spec fanboys just want it for e-peen bragging rights on big numbers. Nothing uses the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, maybe some giant quad processor Tesla board or other supercomputing accelerator. Nothing exists really that even supports it yet. As of the launch of SNB-E, there will be no reason for it. Probably why intel didn't bother to include it.