Well, i7 is upon us, and from the looks of things, it comes with a very noticable performance boost across the board. Bad news is, Intel's putting the bind on us part-time performance boot-leggers. I've heard from many reliable sources, aka guru3d/anandtech, that Intel have restricted their lower end CPUs so that they'll start throttling back the clock speeds once the chip reaches it's TDP limit of 130 W (110 A). The only CPUs exempt from this are the high end $1000+ Extreme Edition CPUs, which will have the option of turning off the TDP restrictions in the X58 BIOS, in a similar way in which these models have traditionally had unlocked multipliers. This is kind of killing two birds with one stone for Intel, as it means that all overclockers will need to buy the Extreme Edition chips to actually overclock them, as well as meaning that the Intel chipsets will be the only option available for overclocking these chips. I understand theres a very limited demographic of users on this forum that will find this relevent material, or even understand it's implications, (Xlink and myself being the only people I can think of), but if you've gotten into the habit of buying low end and overclocking beyond high end stock, think again. You'll be able to make the odd tweak, but that's about it. Luckily for me I don't bother overclocking my own gear, but I had intentions of upgrading my current rig to Nehalem sometime next year, but now I'm seriously considering whether the performance would even be worth the price.
looks like my next CPU will be an q9550 well maybe if we're lucky, nehalem will undervolt well... 4Ghz at 1V sounds doable at 130W...
Yeah. There's been a lot of discussion and speculation on my home tech forums OCNZ as to how the TDP limit will work. Some reckon that as long as it stays below a certain temperature threshold, the TDP won't take effect. Also, seeing results of the 920 at 4.5ghz+ already makes me feel inclined that it's not as significant to work around as it may initially seem, however it seems like a stupid move on Intels part. Most likely a sign of Intels deathgrip on the market.
I'm seriously considering just buying a EP45-Extreme, 4gig of DDR2 and a Q6600 and overclocking the ------ out of it. Problem is, the pick of the Q6600 has really started to go downhill. You're lucky if you can get a chip that does 3.6ghz, even with a G0 stepping.
Let my just say, that after playing with nehalem, overclocking it, etc, its not worth the money...but companys are going to push it in order to profit. The 9550 is producing better results, when they are clocked even.
Better results where? As far as rendering/encoding/servers etc, Nehalem does better. I'm really sick of the gamers demographic owning the rights to call a chip/card good. There's more to benching than just your latest 3DMark results. I'm probably just gonna stick with what I've got for now. It's really getting difficult to pick a niche in the market right now.
It has nothing to do with gamers owning the rights to call a chip good. I did not test the cpu with 3dmark, at least not yet. We used various cpu stressing software, all of the popular ones, on identical systems, and the 9550 out performed. It has nothing to do with gaming.
Yes, but much of what people consider good hardware is based purely on a gaming perspective. Also, in NZ, the difference in price between the Q9550 and the i7 920 is about $30 nz ($15 us), so it really comes down to whether you want to sink money into what hardware performs now, and what hardware will perform tomorrow, or next year, etc. However I do agree with you, the Q9550 at the moment, is the superior value chip. However once supply goes up, demand goes down, the i7 should hopefully see some price cuts.
it's an economic fact, intel is a profit seeking company and to maximize their profits on a chip that costs them $20-30 to make, they will slash their per item profits in half if that means that they can sell 3 times as many. but they still want to make money from the early adopters, those who are willing to pay the big bucks for something good now, so they do initially price higher, no reason not to, it just means they have the rest of the market wait a few months before they then get their money. look at it this way, my e6400 cost me something like $240 a bit over two years ago. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819116072 the e5200 is now a superior product for a third the cost
