How could anyone be disappointed with 915/925 & s775?

[Soapy]

My summary would be that performance is about the same. Neither the new chipsets nor the new CPUs offer any advantages (beyond the expected increase from 3.4 to 3.6 MHz).

But does that actually surprise anyone? DDR2 is full of trade-offs. It exists because it allows higher speeds to be reached - later. At 400 MHz it is worse than DDR, and at 533 Mhz it is about the same. DDR2-667 and -800 will be noticeably better, simply because DDR cannot achieve those speeds.

Anyone expecting a performance advantage from PCI-E was likewise ill-informed. Only in specific situations (eg. bus contention with RAID, multi-channel audio, and ethernet on the PCI bus) has PCI started to show any weaknesses. PCI-E is about future-proofing, and (potentially) new form factors.

I see 915/925 as a platform that performs about the same, but is future-proof, and offers some nice new features: S-ATA for optical drives, high-definition audio, and matrix RAID.

Combine that with s775 D0 Prescotts which are probably a bit more overclockable (although evidence of that would be nice!), and I'm not disappointed at all. Nothing here is *thrilling*, but then, I don't know why anyone would have expected thrills.

[Kunaak]

AMD releases a new socket(s) and whole new CPU line (s) and they offered a huge advantage over thier previous socket, and even take down the competitions CPU sockets at the same time, while offering a bigger leap in performance from even going from a P4 to A64....

but then LGA775 comes along, and its clearly slower then the older socket, a hell of alot more expensive, and on top of that, signifigantly slower then the competitions CPU at the same time, while having some major downfalls, like the motherboards are expected to be incredibly expensive due to the pins being in the board, and need for DDR2 (which isn't all that impressive in the least) and the CPU's are idling at 70C...

well...
thats why no one really seems excited about the 775.
on paper the specs sound great.
PCI EX, HD sound, Higher HT performance, DDR2, much better Raid systems.

but damn, come on.
every review out there was either completly horrid, and even toms hardware who tend to gloss over shoddy performance when it comes to intel, was alittle "blah" about the whole thing in thier conclusion.

I was excited about 775, till about 6 am this morning when I read the first reviews.
now, I think I'll just stick with the A64 from now on.

[runsalone]

Intel has just alienated their entire audience of enthusiasts.



If the CPU clock exceeds the threshold (we determined that this is 10% over specification), the required PLL (Phase Lock Loop) will reset and won't refuse to lock that frequency. Basically that is a very simple way of throwing a spanner in the works, as it causes a system crash.

( from http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/socket_775-23.html )


I for one will not be buying any intel processors for the foreseeable future.

F U INTEL!

[wuzzapiman]

omg maybe this intel switch is a bad idea?

[Soapy]

but then LGA775 comes along, and its clearly slower then the older socket
Hmm? I don't see any evidence of that. s775 Prescotts perform the same as s478 Prescotts. If you want to complain about the performance of Prescott relative to Northwood (which is certainly fair), the time for that was 6 months ago.

I haven't heard any 915/925 motherboard price quotes yet; have you? I think you're just guessing that they'll be a lot more expensive. s775 CPUs are the same price as their s478 equivalents.

The overclocking lock that runsalone mentioned is a real kick in the crotch. Even if most MB manufacturers implement the workaround (http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/socket_775-24.html), it sounds like +20% could be the wall. So the usual policy of buying the lowest speed grade and doing a +40% overclock won't work.

Sigh. It would be nice to have a decent option here. s775 has issues, s939 is ludicrously expensive, and s478/s754/socket A are dead ends. Bleh.

[Jiggahurtz]

I think this is like any first gen line of hardware. The first gen of anything new is usually slower than what the old stuff was. It'll take a new chipset and some evolution of the new tech before it is clearly better. Also how is Amd any better? They released the s939 with their new line. It uses alot of older tech thats very matured so it has no worries there. The first gen chipsets for it though obviously slowed it down. Then they let out s754 which is nothing but a slow version of s939 for all intensive purposes. Atleast Intel is using alot of new technology in thier new board designs. You can't expect fast and cheap in the first round. Its usually like I said before slow and pricey. But thats the price of advancement. Neither side is offering anything thats worth leaping at. Both s775 and s939 have their issues and until both sides can clean them up is best to stick with what you got or go with s478 or Socket A boards. Nothing out there is gonna require the upgrade for atleast a year or two.

[aNTiChRisT]

This is crazy. I know guys who have brought 10+ Intel CPUs because of thier overclockability, Yes we are a niche audience but we buy more hardware and spend more on it than 10 or 15 average joes. Its a real dissapointment, does this mean we will need third party chipsets to overclock? If this all unfolds like this looks like AMD will be the way to go.

Oh well, i'll stick with this rig until everything settles.

~t0m