early x38 ES preview @ Anand, 0-5% improvement

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3077&p=1

ES board with early BIOS not tweaked for top performance. Shows some improvements mainly in synthetics which don't translate to as much improvment to most real apps. If they can kick it up to 5%+ in real-world apps (SPi is not realworld sorry benchmonkies ) it might be worth considering along with a Penryn upgrade, but unless there is a lot of tweaking left in the BIOS I'm not concerned about replacing my P35 for those differences.

Interesting. I'll be keeping my P5K until the x38 matures... (not that my P5K is mature)

MadMan007 said:

(SPi is not realworld sorry benchmonkies )

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i beg to differ . . . helped us win the forum wars

/edit - not to hate, with all the rumor talk thats been around here as of late... this was my fav part -

(sorry, as of now there's no official SLI support),

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Well ok forum wars isn't 'real world' no offense What that really means is that SPi is not indicative of performance changes in the vast majority of apps. I am not an expert but from what I know it is much mroe sensitive to things like memory latency and cache size than most other programs. If a change shows a 10-15% increase in SPi there might be a 1-2% increase in many other apps, or no change at all. Of course ultimately each app is different.

I don't care if it's 0% faster clock for clock as long as it (or X48) hits 650 FSB a whole lot easier and that's all there is to it I'll probably wait for X48s to surface (cherry-picked, high-binned X38s that do nothing different except OC better...for a premium cost of course).

If all I do is SPi, that's real in my world. If I never encode video, I can care less. Just let them put the comparos up and let each reader decide what aspects are pertinent to them or not...I am pretty sure it's no one else's decision

Maybe a more interesting discussion would be: with 965 DQ-6s and P35 DQ-6s readily available, why are they testing against an Abit board?

I just want the IDE controller closer to my CD/DVD drives, instead of having them all the way down the mother freaking south pole!

I hear that. I finally just gave up about 3 weeks ago and ordered a SATA DVD/RW just for the connection. Again, don't really care if it's faster or slower than IDE counterparts since I don't burn much or anything, just needed an easier connection....and I guess SATA cable is a cleaner install to some extent.

I think that is mobo manufacturers' way of letting us know it time to get rid of IDE things...keep moving the one last IDE port they even put on the board in a more and more unconvenient spot Actually, it's Intel that is to blame, IDE hasn't been supported in the main chipset since 965 (maybe 955/975? either way, it's been a while) which is why it's tacked on via an extra controller. I guess we should be thanking mobo manufacturers for even making the 1 IDE port happen

Is it gonna be X48?

I'd think its like 965/975, 975 got released before 965 and has a higher number so maybe x28?

I might be confused by all your numbers there James, I have no idea what you mean by X28, but it was 955->975->965. 955/975 are virtually identical, so it was probably one of them that eliminated IDE in the chipset.

X48 is X38, just a different number for highly binned chipsets that will go in strictly top-end boards meant to OC better (and a price tag to match) and will only be shipped to tier 1 companies like Asus (= even more expensive). Giga will probably have one, but I doubt that review board is it officially. If they aren't binning for X48 levels on ES, it could be or could not be. Personally, I really hope it's not because it's not a whole lot better than P35 in results or FSB.

I am sure there will be no mistaking an X48 board either by price, features...and hopefully clocking (because that's what you are paying extra for)

I was just wondering cause it didn't come out in order.


In order it would of bean 955 965 975 but yeah I understnad what you're saying but i don't understanding my typing at the moment

I've seen 945 not 955 did I miss something?

@ James: yeah, I think the 975 was released before 965 for some reason...probably because it was so close to a rebadged 955.

@ Trap05: apparently you did 955X was the high end version of 945.

955X was high end launched together with 945, it took over for 925X, 955X had dual core support, 925X not.

ICH7 was the last with native IDE, and it has now reappeared in G31/P31 boards, so technically Intel IDE isnt dead yet.