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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2025
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 Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2025 12:40 am Post subject: i7? |
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| What is this i7 I keep hearing about?
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Xeroid
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2025 1:10 am Post subject: |
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Intel's latest offering. The chips and motherboards are too overpriced right now, IMHO. Perhaps something to look at in a year?
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/corei7/index.htm
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tlmiller
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2025 1:13 am Post subject: |
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| Well, some of the lower priced chips aren't too bad, it's the boards that are WAY too expensive IMO. I don't overclock, so don't need overclocking options...I'm perfectly happy with a basic board that for any other build in the past cost $60-$90 for the board...when i7 boards drop down to that price-point, I'll consider an i7 build. Until then, I'll consider Phenom II if I need to replace a pc.
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jada
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2025 3:59 am Post subject: |
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Well prizes are allready 30% down!
i7 you safe energy by more performance.
MSI X58 Platinum LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard @newegg US$150 this is what I have. |
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tlmiller
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2025 9:22 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, still 50% higher than what I'm willing to pay for a motherboard.
My current pc's are more than powerful enough for what I usually do, so I wouldn't save any power. They are getting along in age, so I've considered getting a replacement. I'm hoping there are i7 boards out that are affordable when I finally decide to, otherwise I will probably do an AMD build. I'm simply not willing to spend that much for a motherboard, when I don't need all the bells and whistles that cost $1 to put on it but they charge $150 for.
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jester
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2025 10:50 am Post subject: |
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the Core i7 range is about to be supplemented by the Core i5 range much like the orginal E6xxx Core 2 Duo line-up got superceded by series 9xxx, 8xxx, 7xxx, 2xxx
dates seem to be zooming in on a 2025 Q3 release; known differences between i7 and i5 seem to be:
triple-channel memory becomes dual channel
QPI becomes DMI
price drops
socket changes
I'm still waiting on firing up my i7-920 - bought a bunch of parts yesterday only to find that my vintage Lian-Li PC70 would need 'modding' to house the new system - so a new case looks to be in the offing...
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JP
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jester
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jada
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| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2025 2:18 am Post subject: |
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| jester wrote: |
- the apartment's too small to have all this stuff lying around  |
The Typical Japanese Apartment's  |
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jester
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| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2025 9:47 am Post subject: |
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| jada wrote: | | jester wrote: |
- the apartment's too small to have all this stuff lying around |
The Typical Japanese Apartment's |
OT: Tokyo competes with London and Paris admirably in the 'compact, bijoux, and criminally priced' stakes 
That said my last Osaka apartment was palatial by comparison...
Back on topic: there's a very thorough write up on Core i7 in this article at tomshardware
There's also an interesting article on intel's roadmap over at anandtech
It shows how Intel has been moving (according to plan) from 65nm to 45nm to 32nm to 22nm.
The article references the i7 (Nehalem) successor [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmere_(CPU)#Successor]Westmere (lower down the page)[/url] then [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Sandy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)]Sandy Bridge[/url] and following that [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Haswell_(microarchitecture)]Haswell in 2025[/url]
This from the company that brought us the notorious P4... that pipeline above is guaranteed to make any purchase obsolete within 6 months <-- but that's the bitter-sweet of progress
When I built the Core2Duo box, I thought I'd sit tight for about 4 years, but the Core i7 (especially the new D0 stepping 920 at sub $300 - much less than my early adopted E6700...) is getting rave reviews, so I caved in curious to see what all the fuss is about 
AMD does not yet have anything in the same ballpark as an i7 - PhenomIIs are competing against the Core2 products. PhenomII has put AMD back on the map, particularly for teh price points they are attacking (i.e. better bang for buck - not too dumb an idea in a global economic slowdown) - I don't follow that market so closely but I hear they are still quite competitive in the server market with the Opterons on a more even footing with the Xeons performance-wise - it'll be interesting to see if Oracle wants to ditch the hardware side of Sun who the takers will be - my guess is that there'll be 'encouragement' to keep that IP firmly within US hands
One other thing I'm wary of is AMD locking people into to Radeon/Crossfire graphics; to date they've been smart enough to avoid this but all it takes is some wet-behind -the-ears MBA type to dream up that Sony-esque scenario and AMD will be writing their own epitaph... the market needs at least 2 players (preferably more) in the consumer arena (where's the viable competition on the home-front from IBM, Transmeta, Cyrix? - the most promising recent development is the STI alliance's Cell Processor...)
So enough rambling, I still don't have a case so this C2D machine is going to become homeless for a few days because I can't resist the temptation any longer to build the new i7 system 
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jada
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| Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2025 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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| jester wrote: | the market needs at least 2 players (preferably more) in the consumer arena (where's the viable competition on the home-front from IBM, Transmeta, Cyrix? - the most promising recent development is the STI alliance's Cell Processor...)
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I see the future for ARM on the Laptop Market. I am still waiting now for the Nokia Laptop powered by Linux with a green ARM 600Mhz Processor.
Did you found now your right case? |
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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2025
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| Posted: Fri May 01, 2025 2:42 am Post subject: |
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i7 means what, to me the consumer?
I did a very quick scan of something talking about i7, I'm getting the idea that they've included the memory controller into the same silicon. So now we are seeing CPU silicon is incorporating silicon from the motherboard. Good for ram speeds, but what is the difference for me, the word processor, spreadsheeter and surfer? I get to see processing done in 1/5th of a blink of an eye right now, so this change might decrease that by a factor of 5 to 10.... no 'woot' here, even if ram to core decreases times by a thousand. I could see some benefit of i7 for 64 bit computing.... but almost nothing in the consumer realms is written for 64 bit OS. CADD, definitely.
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jester
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| Posted: Fri May 01, 2025 11:24 am Post subject: |
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| mmmna wrote: | i7 means what, to me the consumer?
I did a very quick scan of something talking about i7, I'm getting the idea that they've included the memory controller into the same silicon. So now we are seeing CPU silicon is incorporating silicon from the motherboard. Good for ram speeds, but what is the difference for me, the word processor, spreadsheeter and surfer? I get to see processing done in 1/5th of a blink of an eye right now, so this change might decrease that by a factor of 5 to 10.... no 'woot' here, even if ram to core decreases times by a thousand. I could see some benefit of i7 for 64 bit computing.... but almost nothing in the consumer realms is written for 64 bit OS. CADD, definitely. |
@mmmna: I'll agree with 99.9% not needing the horsepower of the i7 - for the tasks you describe.
I'll disagree on a 2 points though:
1) CAD is not the only place this CPU will shine; music/video processing encoding, photo (or other image manipulation) work, compilation (as in gcc), or just simply loading up the apps simultaneously (ripping a dvd, manipulating a few photos, listening to some tunes, multiple browser tabs open, skyping with family, it could happen - granted, my C2D handles that - any software that is coded for multiple threads (which would be way more than apps for the Windows world) is going to love the 8 cores (I tried setting makeopts to -j2 through -j9 in gentoo compiling the same package and saw a difference in the time required - will post back later with times - this is arch)
2) nothing for consumers in 64-bit - really? your kernel, toolchain, wm/de, music player, photo processor, office suite, e-mail client, browser, video player (give me some more software you use) don't come in 64-bit flavour?
64-bit computing is where linux shines IMO
But to your first question "what does an i7 mean to the consumer?" today it means a mid-range priced CPU (i920 at least) that delivers on Intel's 'tick-tock' strategy i.e. significant improvement over C2D, yet also involves the purchase of an expensive mobo and new DDR3 RAM which only the 1% is really going to derive value from. So no, it's not for everyone today, but the tech will cascade and it keeps jobs in the US (see the previously linked Anand article about the 4 fabs being refitted).
And to your original question, I think we can sum up the i7 as a 64-bit (actually 48-bit like all AMD64 CPUs) quad core CPU with Hyperthreading and an onboard memory controller (basically the best of AMD64 + Pentium 4 + Core2 Duo) with power/heat savings.
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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2025
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| Posted: Sat May 02, 2025 12:23 am Post subject: |
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Ok, so there are 8 cores, that's a big difference when you factor in hyperthreading to manipulate those cores. I didn't hear anything about how many cores! Sadly, I doubt AMD will match Intel's socket configuration so we will perpetuate the "CPU socket" war which essentially began back when AMD chose to not support Intel Slot 1. Again, the consumer has to pick a side, and again, the consumer can lose on the gamble. That is disappointing, but I'll go with Intel on this.
Regarding 64 bit, I guess I may have misunderstood some things. When I ran 64Studio, I was believing that I was MOSTLY running 32 bit apps under a 64 bit kernel. Some apps were 64 bit enabled, most were not. In other words, the rest of the software was not addressing the 64 bit world in which it operated.
More, the files we work with aren't 64 bits, so no benefit of greater resolution for the 64 bit effort, am I right? Maybe you (or anyone) could tell me the simpler parts of why a 16 bit wav/mpg/jpg gets any advantage from a 64 bit kernel? I still haven't heard of a 32 or 64 bit wav file, I believe there are 24 bit graphics somewhere, but I've not intentionally researched any of this.
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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2025
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| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2025 4:11 am Post subject: |
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Wifey just decided that her Dell Inspiron 1545 isn't cutting it (she just bought it last fall), so we went to Best Buy last night and spent some tax refund getting her another laptop, a Toshiba Satellite A505 with an i3. So far, so good, seems to be processing better than the 1545 (both are W7).
That means as soon as everything is settled, my stepdaughter gives me her Averatec 2370, (AMD TurionX2, 64 bit; embedded nVidia; not much bigger than the EeePC 900A) when stepdaughter gets moms "old" Dell 1545.
Wifey already retired her old Averatec 2370 with a shattered LCD (both were bought from the same Sams Club on the same day, 2+ years ago - serial numbers just x040 apart).
Stepdaughters 2370 has a bad "R" key and has been overheated repeatedly...
-me: "Don't block the $%^$ air vents!";
-stepdaughter: "Then why is it called a LAPtop if you can't put it on your LAP?";
-me: "Do you hear that fan howling like an air raid siren? That means it can't cool itself, you are blocking the air holes!";
-stepdaughter: "Yeah, and it gets REALLY HOT, too!";
-me: facepalm (right) and facepalm (left).
I'll HAVE to research a SSD replacement for it...
Buwahahaha! Franken-tec 2370!
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