What's up with the newest Intel processors?

[Wries]

At work I have a 16-core workstation with some dual Xeon solution. The software I use (Avid Media Composer, some Adobe AE, photoshop etc) rarely thread well enough to justify even 8 of those cores. Add to that that they are clocked pretty darn low (I believe around 2.4GHz per core) has given me the impression that my consumer-grade 4-core Sandy K can easily outdo the performance of that monster workstation in everything but select codec processing tasks (DNxHD and H264, if all the planets align).

As for 6 cores. We're entering the age where it seems to me that this is the sweet spot for an editing/all-round rig. You can still clock them about as high as the 4-cores and some high-grade software can actually make some proper use of all the threads. BUT they come at a cost. Give it some time, though, motherboard/ddr4-costs will go down (while the 5820K price will remain exactly the same because intel ) and we will see some more enthusiasts go for the x99 platform.

Will intel's 6/8-core platform be needed for gamers or people who are looking for best value? No. It will be of notable benefit the day we see them introducing them in a mainstream platform.

[Cyanotical]

What you got was the exception not the norm. At least it'll be like this until AMD wakes up and releases something that completes with Intel. Also $360 for a motherboard (assuming that's the motherboard price) is well beyond the average price of a LGA 1150 board. Your right about the memory at equivalent speeds but what 1150 based CPU needs anything faster than 1600Mhz? So long as the latency is low like CAS 9, you really don't need to go beyond 1600Mhz. The price difference of DDR3 1600 and DDR4 is nearly double. The only reason to go faster is cause you use an APU. But in a X99 you need that extra speed cause now you have twice as many cores as before or 50% more with the 6 core version. And remember now you have 4 slots of memory to fill instead of two.

there are overall system advantages to running faster, preferably with a low cas, i run my ram at cas 8 but speed is 2133 (mushkin redline) while ram speed wont make any real improvement in any specific program, it does make mildly noticeable improvements to the overall system performance, and is something you need to consider when building a system that will be more than just fast

It is for gaming. If you wanted something more professional then you would get a Xeon which they've had 8 cores for a while there. They've even gone down in price to nearly $1k which is probably why Intel released the X99 platform. You can tell especially with the motherboards having names like Extreme and or colors that have blue red black or mixture of said colors.

x99 is not really considered gaming, the reason being the the quad cores are just as powerful yet much cheaper, both Haswell and haswell-e share the same architecture, meaning they perform nearly identical in single threaded applications like games (multiple single threads is still single threaded but run under symmetric multi-processing, parallel computing is a bit different)

so x99 provides no direct performance benefit for gamers, and is meant for enthusiasts and prosumers, if you want to consider things like more PCIe lanes i would say at that level you are an enthusiast that plays games since your fix is shifted from simply playing games

motherboard colors are not meant for gamers as much as system builders, who build more for art than anything else, as evidenced by the rather bland and boring colors of standard boards that most gamers use because they are the cheapest

you use a Xeon when you need more cores, more cpus, or ecc ram

Also isn't rendering videos of games still game related?

not really, most gamers don't stream or make videos, despite how popular it is, it's not even a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of gamers

On the other hand people who do own these kind of products will defend them to justify their purchase. As is often the case. I'm telling people to be cautious before jumping into the x99 platform and you're basically saying "come in the waters fine". People with money to burn and an epeen to support can go right ahead. These products were made for you. For those a bit more fiscally responsible in what they invest their money into I would rethink and stick with LGA 1150.

people wouldn't have to defend their purchases if envious posters didn't project their emotion in the form of dubious statements about fiscal responibility

[fixx]

The ignorance is amazing here, that's why I like posting here.

You mean like somebody claiming last week linux has no security issues? :P

Also isn't rendering videos of games still game related?

Kinda since you need to be gaming in the first place to do that. And 4 cores is plenty for that unless you're rendering 4k.

[DeltrusDisc]

You mean like somebody claiming last week linux has no security issues? :P

Kinda since you need to be gaming in the first place to do that. And 4 cores is plenty for that unless you're rendering 4k.

I'll get to Duke's post eventually (homework calls) but I thought I'd go ahead and post the much shorter response you've called for:

4 cores is plenty... when it renders the video so fast that a 6 core or 8 core with even hyper-threading makes absolutely no difference.

That time will never really come, if resolutions keep going higher.

Let's assume my old i5-2500K took 1 hour to render a 1080p 30fps video at 10mbps bitrate at stock.

More or less, the added 2 cores, as well as 6 virtual threads of my i7-5820K, would make it happen in closer to 30-35 minutes in comparison. That's pretty nice.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=1320

I'll tease a bit, Cyanotical had a brilliant reply about the fiscal responsibility:

I didn't dip into my savings to buy this system. I'm still putting aside as much if not more money every day. Somehow I doubt Duke has a savings account that's going to be turned into a Roth IRA at the end of the year with compounding interest.

[Vash The Stampede]

At work I have a 16-core workstation with some dual Xeon solution. The software I use (Avid Media Composer, some Adobe AE, photoshop etc) rarely thread well enough to justify even 8 of those cores. Add to that that they are clocked pretty darn low (I believe around 2.4GHz per core) has given me the impression that my consumer-grade 4-core Sandy K can easily outdo the performance of that monster workstation in everything but select codec processing tasks (DNxHD and H264, if all the planets align).

As for 6 cores. We're entering the age where it seems to me that this is the sweet spot for an editing/all-round rig. You can still clock them about as high as the 4-cores and some high-grade software can actually make some proper use of all the threads. BUT they come at a cost. Give it some time, though, motherboard/ddr4-costs will go down (while the 5820K price will remain exactly the same because intel ) and we will see some more enthusiasts go for the x99 platform.

Don't look at the market now with the lack of support for multi-threaded applications. At some point developers will eventually support those 8 core CPUs better, especially for gaming. It's a matter of when they'll give up on the 360/PS3 platform and willing to sit down and totally rewrite their code. Most companies like Blizzard are dredging along code from as far back as the 90's. A lot of modified code but they need to totally rewrite it from scratch, and that's not cheap.

x99 is not really considered gaming, the reason being the the quad cores are just as powerful yet much cheaper, both Haswell and haswell-e share the same architecture, meaning they perform nearly identical in single threaded applications like games (multiple single threads is still single threaded but run under symmetric multi-processing, parallel computing is a bit different)

so x99 provides no direct performance benefit for gamers, and is meant for enthusiasts and prosumers, if you want to consider things like more PCIe lanes i would say at that level you are an enthusiast that plays games since your fix is shifted from simply playing games

Honestly right now quad core CPUs aren't for gaming. Find me a game that performs better on a quad core over a dual core? But everyone buys Core i5's or AMD FX 8350's? Why? Cause we're waiting for a game like Half Life 3 that might actually do something groundbreaking and in doing so might actually need those mutli-core CPUs.

So who else can use it besides gamers? Video encoding? Virtualize? 3DS Max? I'm not saying that we only use our computers for gaming, cause if that's the case why don't we just buy a PS4 and call it a day? But no, this is marketed for the enthusiast which is typically a gamer.

not really, most gamers don't stream or make videos, despite how popular it is, it's not even a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of gamers

You're right but it's new marketing material for companies to use. I've thought about streaming video but I wondered who would want to watch my dumb ass play games. Unless you have a personality like Game Grumps then nobody is going to watch you. It's just a cry for attention.

people wouldn't have to defend their purchases if envious posters didn't project their emotion in the form of dubious statements about fiscal responibility

So another one labels me as envious. You guys do realize that when it comes time for me to upgrade I won't care what everyone else has? I buy what is considered best price performance ratio. I've worked on computers since the late 90's and watched a lot of people do a lot of dumb things with them. I repair, and rebuild computers, phones, and laptops.

A few motherboards given to reviewers had blown up and I think people should be cautious. The reason that concerns me is cause I know anything anyone gives for reviews are hand picked. From my experience with AMD motherboards I know that a lot of motherboard manufacturers go cheap on VRM quality, and now that maybe effecting the x99 platform as well. Along with new ram that may or may not be super stable, I would leave it for early adopters. BTW OP if you're wondering why so many people are not talking about the x99 is because everyone is being cautious. Nobody wants to be the guinea pig and they're waiting for prices to fall.

You mean like somebody claiming last week linux has no security issues? :P

You know I never claimed that Linux has no security issues, but how quickly those issues get fixed. Bash has already been patched in Mint/Ubuntu. But next time I hear about a security vulnerability that Microsoft has known about for years and hasn't patched it, you'll be the first to know. Cause it's really, nothing new. That reminds me, I gotta watch this years DEFCON.

[Cyanotical]

Honestly right now quad core CPUs aren't for gaming. Find me a game that performs better on a quad core over a dual core? But everyone buys Core i5's or AMD FX 8350's? Why? Cause we're waiting for a game like Half Life 3 that might actually do something groundbreaking and in doing so might actually need those mutli-core CPUs.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1265?vs=1198

people buy the i5 because it delivers the most amount of performance without overspending on dollars per fps increase, its not the best price/perf chip, but it the best before you get severe diminishing returns based on the increased amount spent

people buying the 8350 for gaming are doing so either because they dont like intel or buy into the higher clockspeed/more cores means better performance marketing

So who else can use it besides gamers? Video encoding? Virtualize? 3DS Max? I'm not saying that we only use our computers for gaming, cause if that's the case why don't we just buy a PS4 and call it a day? But no, this is marketed for the enthusiast which is typically a gamer.

again, people interested in that are a drop in the bucket, most gamers only care that it plays cod/bf4/lol well, they generally don't care about virtualization, coding, or encoding, this is why dell still ships alienwares, the vast majority of gaming pcs are prebuilts bought by people who care nothing more than getting kills in cod

So another one labels me as envious. You guys do realize that when it comes time for me to upgrade I won't care what everyone else has? I buy what is considered best price performance ratio. I've worked on computers since the late 90's and watched a lot of people do a lot of dumb things with them. I repair, and rebuild computers, phones, and laptops.

then i would assume you have an i5k and a gtx-970, but in several threads you are overly critical of intel and nvidia, and more critical of people posting ideas of high end expensive builds, which usually means you're envious, leading to being upset at people for having either better than you, or having something you can't get, just because someone builds a $5k tower does not make them stupid or fiscally irresponsible, nor does it make you intellectually superior by believing that sticking to the best price/performance makes you fiscally responsible and therefore somehow ahead, the reality is that you are behind, much like cars and motorcycles, building the system you want is far more satisfying and self-positive than could be achieved with the saved money by settling for something lower

[yurano]

Adding onto other detractors to Haswell-E, CAS Latency on DDR4 kits is abysmal.

[DeltrusDisc]

Adding onto other detractors to Haswell-E, CAS Latency on DDR4 kits is abysmal.

And CAS latencies on DDR3 kits was abysmal in comparison to DDR2.

Please, don't start with this crap. You can't notice the difference, I assure you. -.-

[glo]

then i would assume you have an i5k and a gtx-970, but in several threads you are overly critical of intel and nvidia, and more critical of people posting ideas of high end expensive builds, which usually means you're envious, leading to being upset at people for having either better than you, or having something you can't get, just because someone builds a $5k tower does not make them stupid or fiscally irresponsible, nor does it make you intellectually superior by believing that sticking to the best price/performance makes you fiscally responsible and therefore somehow ahead, the reality is that you are behind, much like cars and motorcycles, building the system you want is far more satisfying and self-positive than could be achieved with the saved money by settling for something lower

I've found this to be quite common in my small circle of friends that also game on PC after I built this machine a bit ago, kind of sucks, and my system wasn't even that extravagant in comparison to SLI/CFX rigs.

Usually goes like:

Person - Cool system bro
Me - Thanks
Person - But way to waste so much money on dumb shit

I think it pretty much boils down to others admiring what they can't have, then making sure the owner feels bad about having it themselves so said people feel better about not personally owning it.

[Jackielope]

OK guys, thank you for your insights, it is all clear to me now. I will buy a usual 4770k and Z97 motherboard. While I don't buy the PC for gaming only, I don't think I am going to do anything requiring more than 8 threads.

Glad to see you were able to decide on something! Despite some of the bickering in the thread... lol

[fixx]

Let's assume my old i5-2500K took 1 hour to render a 1080p 30fps video at 10mbps bitrate at stock.

More or less, the added 2 cores, as well as 6 virtual threads of my i7-5820K, would make it happen in closer to 30-35 minutes in comparison. That's pretty nice.

Of course it makes a difference and it all adds up, but you'll have to do a lot of uploading daily to be in a position where you can't encode overnight enough 1080p30 with i5-2500k. More than most professional youtubers do.

[Saithes]

Honestly right now quad core CPUs aren't for gaming. Find me a game that performs better on a quad core over a dual core? But everyone buys Core i5's or AMD FX 8350's? Why? Cause we're waiting for a game like Half Life 3 that might actually do something groundbreaking and in doing so might actually need those mutli-core CPUs.

You're somewhat right about Quad cores being more than enough for most games but what most games gain a performance boost from is clock for clock performance. It's why a dual or quad core from 2008 compared to a modern dual or quad core will perform quite a bit lower.

AMD's have terrible clock for clock performance in comparison to Intel which is why most gamers lean toward buying i5's/i7's.

Adding onto other detractors to Haswell-E, CAS Latency on DDR4 kits is abysmal.

You saying this means you have no understanding of the relationships between latencies and clock speeds. You need to keep in mind that every new variant of RAM has always resulted in higher latencies. DDR2 had an average of CAS 4 and CAS 5 while DDR3 is at a CAS of 9-12.

DDR3 @ 9-9-9-18 running 1866MHz is equal to DDR4 @ 15-15-15-36 running 2133MHz.

[yurano]

You saying this means you have no understanding of the relationships between latencies and clock speeds. You need to keep in mind that every new variant of RAM has always resulted in higher latencies. DDR2 had an average of CAS 4 and CAS 5 while DDR3 is at a CAS of 9-12.

DDR3 @ 9-9-9-18 running 1866MHz is equal to DDR4 @ 15-15-15-36 running 2133MHz.

Someone can't maths, and its not me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utWnjA4NzSA&t=4m57s

[Saithes]

Someone can't maths, and its not me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utWnjA4NzSA&t=4m57s

Either way, timings always goes up.

[Vash The Stampede]

then i would assume you have an i5k and a gtx-970, but in several threads you are overly critical of intel and nvidia, and more critical of people posting ideas of high end expensive builds, which usually means you're envious, leading to being upset at people for having either better than you, or having something you can't get, just because someone builds a $5k tower does not make them stupid or fiscally irresponsible, nor does it make you intellectually superior by believing that sticking to the best price/performance makes you fiscally responsible and therefore somehow ahead, the reality is that you are behind, much like cars and motorcycles, building the system you want is far more satisfying and self-positive than could be achieved with the saved money by settling for something lower

I do actually own Intel/AMD/Nvidia hardware. My main rig has no Intel/Nvidia but my laptop is an Intel i3. My other laptop is a Core2 with Nvidia GT9600GT. I also have a GT 620 that I use mainly in my linux test machine. Not new or high end stuff but I swing back and forth when one product is better price/performance. Just so happens that's AMD. The 8350 it's considered the best price/performance as is most of AMD's graphic cards, until the 970 and 980 was released.

But hey if you feel better thinking that I'm jelly then go right ahead. Whatever makes you sleep better at night.

[Wries]

As it seems to boil down to "justify your purchase a 100% from priceVperformance". Ponder this. I bought a GTX Titan. A 1000 dollar Titan. It performs like a 780 more or less. I had to BIOS-mod it to get it to behave like a proper clock-aggressive gaming card. You guys think you have a hard time defending a puny i7? HAH!

The 8350 it's considered the best price/performance

During somewhat specific multithreaded workloads but not at all a statement that fits most usage scenarios. It's funny even AMD claims the bulldozer and its revisions are a failure and yet people defend the darn thing.

[Vash The Stampede]

During somewhat specific multithreaded workloads but not at all a statement that fits most usage scenarios. It's funny even AMD claims the bulldozer and its revisions are a failure and yet people defend the darn thing.

They are a failure. Admittedly I couldn't find a good use for the extra cores in the 8350. In my opinion it performs mostly like my old 4100 but my 4100 was overclocked to 4.2Ghz. The phenom X6 chips are actually faster, which really makes the bulldozer crap. Piledriver though just barely beats the Phenom X6 that it makes it somewhat worth it. Somewhat cause Intel has been handing AMD's ass on a platter long before Piledriver and still does.

Then there's the motherboard issues, cause when I got my 8350 and ran prime95 the machine would eventually BSOD. The fault was the motherboards VRMs couldn't handle the power demand of the 8350. As the people at Overclock explained is that AMD FX chips suffer from poor quality VRMs on motherboards cause AMD FX chips demand more power. And there are very very few motherboards that would actually do the job without issue. My Gigabyte board could handle it over my ASRock but I wasn't comfortable with the temps still so I put a water block on the VRMs. Now I see the same thing happening with X99 with Intel 8 cores also being power demanding as well.

With the 8350 I am willing to bet that the multithreaded performance will be enough to out do the single threaded performance of a i5. I predict that it will, but as we know most games do not benefit much beyond dual core right now. A Intel Pentium G3258 overclocked will easily match performance in games against an i5 or i7, cause that's how most games are. The 8350 was suppose to go down in price with the introduction of the 8370 but that for some reason hasn't happened. The 8350 should be $150 which is a price range no Intel can do, but it's $200 on NewEgg. Surprisingly the most CPU reviews done on Newegg seem to be the 8350.

But hey what do I know I'm just an angry tech nerd. But when Black Friday comes around I plan to replace my HTPC's Phenom X4 II 820 with most likely an i5. Maybe an i7 if the sales are really that good. If not then an FX 8320. My laptops for example are a HP DV7 and a Compaq CQ62. Yea both HP but they both came with AMD setups. Both failed IGP solder joints. Got sick and tired of heat gunning to repair them so I bought Intel motherboards to replace the AMD setups. AMD chips just get too hot for laptops. I am not a brand specific person. I will go with whatever works best for the price. Admittedly the AMD's failed much more often than Intels that the demand for replacement AMD boards raised their prices.

[Cyanotical]

With the 8350 I am willing to bet that the multithreaded performance will be enough to out do the single threaded performance of a i5. I predict that it will, but as we know most games do not benefit much beyond dual core right now.

unfortunately it doesn't work that way, a 100 core CPU with even the best multithreading won't beat a 4 core chip with a higher IPC rate, this is due to games not using more than a few threads ( which is also misinterpreted by people to think you dont need more than a dual core)

you really do need at least a quad core for gaming, there is a decent performance difference, just because a game only uses 1 or 2 threads does not mean only a dual core will suffice, you have hundreds of other threads running in the background, not just the two from your game, a quad core is much more able to take advantage of SMP than a dual core resulting in higher performance

But hey what do I know I'm just an angry tech nerd. But when Black Friday comes around I plan to replace my HTPC's Phenom X4 II 820 with most likely an i5.

plan out a build now, and save up to afford it at full price, then buy it on black friday, that way you get the system you want and either save some money, or are able to get more than you planned, like a larger SSD or second GPU

also, saving $25 a week pretty much gets you a new system annually

[Vash The Stampede]

unfortunately it doesn't work that way, a 100 core CPU with even the best multithreading won't beat a 4 core chip with a higher IPC rate, this is due to games not using more than a few threads ( which is also misinterpreted by people to think you dont need more than a dual core)

you really do need at least a quad core for gaming, there is a decent performance difference, just because a game only uses 1 or 2 threads does not mean only a dual core will suffice, you have hundreds of other threads running in the background, not just the two from your game, a quad core is much more able to take advantage of SMP than a dual core resulting in higher performance

Typically in a modern PC usuage that's true, since people have things running in the background, but I was fairly impressed the the G3258's performance when overclocked. You wouldn't want to use it for streaming live gaming or anything but for just playing games it's pretty attractive.

plan out a build now, and save up to afford it at full price, then buy it on black friday, that way you get the system you want and either save some money, or are able to get more than you planned, like a larger SSD or second GPU

also, saving $25 a week pretty much gets you a new system annually

I could get the hardware right now if I wanted to, but I like sales. Remember this is a HTPC and not going to be used primarily for gaming. Used for people to watch YouTube, videos, and browse the web. Gaming is very light and only done with my nieces and nephews. Found a good use for those Xbox 360 controllers I haven't touched in years. I was thinking of another 8 core AMD then I remember that I need to spend $100+ for a quality motherboard. With the i5's I don't need to worry about heat and power blowing out the board so I can get a basic board.

[Stormspark]

unfortunately it doesn't work that way, a 100 core CPU with even the best multithreading won't beat a 4 core chip with a higher IPC rate, this is due to games not using more than a few threads ( which is also misinterpreted by people to think you dont need more than a dual core)

you really do need at least a quad core for gaming, there is a decent performance difference, just because a game only uses 1 or 2 threads does not mean only a dual core will suffice, you have hundreds of other threads running in the background, not just the two from your game, a quad core is much more able to take advantage of SMP than a dual core resulting in higher performance



plan out a build now, and save up to afford it at full price, then buy it on black friday, that way you get the system you want and either save some money, or are able to get more than you planned, like a larger SSD or second GPU

also, saving $25 a week pretty much gets you a new system annually

Intel for some bizarre reason clocked the i5-4690k 500 MHz slower than the i7-4790k. I mean, if you get the k version you can overclock it yourself (overclocking the 4690k to 4.4 Ghz will make it perform identically in games to the 4790k). But still, I found that weird.