Future Folding Farm Hardware Info Thread (LGA2011)

Intel Corp.'s Core i7-series microprocessors have been the highest-performing chips on the market for many years now. Apparently, Intel is so confident about the brand that even the next-generation high-end code-named Sandy Bridge-E microprocessors will continue to carry it.

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Intel's Next-Generation High-End Chipset May Possibly Support Current and Future Enthusiast Chips.

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With a few grains of salt (stuck between our teeth) and a heavy heart we have to report on a rumor that Intel has decided on delaying its high and mighty Sandy Bridge-E desktop platform from the previously-planned Q4 of 2011 to January 2012.

Sandy Bridge-E, which includes the new 32nm LGA2011 processors and the X79 Express chipset, is set to replace the LGA1366 platform and provide enthusiasts with a more capable solution for overclocking, gaming, and multi-threaded computing in general. This kind of offer would have been sweet coming out before the 2011 holidays but if the rumor is true then nobody will see it until the beginning of 2012.

True enough, Intel didn't have anything 'major' to show off at CES 2012 in January because the Ivy Bridge (22nm/LGA1155) platform is expected in March/April (2012) so the delay of Sandy Bridge-E will allow it to start the year very strong. Too bad this would come at the expense of Q4 which is a period of great spending. At least AMD Bulldozer will be more than happy to shower us with cores in 2H.

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loopflow said:

Is much known about what the Ivy Bridge offerings will be

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A couple of weeks ago we reported that Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge-E processor and Waimea Bay platform had been delayed until January 2012. New information has reached us that suggest that Intel is trying very hard to get the new platform out this year, although this means that the company will axe a lot of platform features.

The LGA-2011 platform is meant to last until at least the second half of 2013......

On top of all the chipset issues, Intel also seems to have run into a snag with the CPUs, as the C-0 stepping is meant to start shipping to its partners for qualification testing within the next two to four weeks. Intel is apparently waiting for revision C-1 until it feels confident with Sandy Bridge-E. The good news is that despite all of this, Intel's board design guidelines have proven to be reliable enough so that Intel's board partners won't have to do any board re-designs despite all of the changes that have taken place. Well, that is of course not taking into account things like empty space for missing SATA/SAS ports.

We're not out of the woods yet, but we might actually get to see a Sandy Bridge-E launch this time of Christmas, although it really depends on how quickly Intel can solve all of the issues. Then again, it might be better to hold off and wait and see what Intel will do with regards to the missing feature than take the plunge early on and miss out on the full platform.


Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-m...idge-e-out-this-year/12991.html#ixzz1SSsKLJ00

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The Details reveal Core i7 3000 series badge for the new Sandy Bridge-E Processors which makes them the 3rd generation Core of the Sandy bridge Family. The Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition is a Six Core model with 12 threads and Hyper Threading Enabled with 15MB L3 Cache, It’ll be stock clocked at 3.30Ghz which can turbo upto 3.90Ghz.

Next up is the Core i7 3930K (Unlocked Multiplier) which is also a 6 Core variant with 12 threads with a clock speed 100mhz lesser than the i7 3960X of 3.20Ghz and turbo of 3.80Ghz. L3 Cache is also cut down to 12MB. Last up is the Core i7 3820 which is a premium usage oriented model 4 Cores and 8 threads, Stock speed of 3.60 which can turbo to 3.80Ghz and 10MB L3 Cache, Overclocking is limited because of locked multiplier.

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EVGA teased its community with a picture of one of its first single-socket LGA2011 motherboards. The graphics card major was missed at this year's Computex event at the wall holding upcoming LGA2011 boards. The company then pacified its fans with news that it was working on a monstrous dual-LGA2011 motherboard along the lines of the SR-2. We can't tell very much about the board in the picture below, except that it has socket LGA2011 with a typical CPU area layout, makes smart use of the congested VRM area with high-C capacitors and driver-MOSFETs, and looks to have some innovations such as right-angled 24-pin ATX power connector. Power, reset, and clear CMOS buttons are found at a place accessible to overclockers, so are some voltage measurement points. One can also see a heat pipe winding its way about into the frame on the top-left corner. That's about it with what we can tell from the picture.

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All the motherboard makers we talked to at Computex this year told us that Intel's X79 chipset and "Sandy Bridge E" processors were due in the August/September timeframe. That window is fast approaching, and the Turks over at Donanim Haber have come upon some official-looking slides that reveal how one of the new CPUs will perform versus the Gulftown-based Core i7-990X.

If the slides are legit, Sandy Bridge E will arrive on the shoulders of the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition. The CPU will have six cores and 15MB of cache, putting it 3MB ahead of the 990X. Interestingly, the Gulftown CPU actually has a higher base clock speed than its incoming replacement: 3.46GHz versus 3.3GHz. The 3960X has a higher Turbo peak, though. It'll scale up to 3.9GHz, while the 990X tops out at 3.73GHz. One of the slides also mentions a Core i7-3930K, which lacks Extreme branding but still features an unlocked multiplier.

According to the slides, the i7-3960X is 12-15% faster than the 990X in Cinebench, POV-Ray, and ProShow Gold. There are much bigger gains in SPEC CPU2006 and in Sandra's multimedia and memory bandwidth tests. In the latter, the 3960X's quad-channel memory controller offers more than double the bandwidth of the triple-channel 990X.

Despite the fact that the X79 chipset seems to have been designed primarily with servers in mind, all the big-name motherboard makers have enthusiast-focused desktop boards in the works. If they're cheap enough, and the i7-3930K strikes a good balance between affordability and overclocking potential, the X79 might be able to lure power users away from Intel's current Sandy Bridge offerings.

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According to the source from OBRovsky Blog,Intel will unveil Sandy Bridge E processors in October.And the first launched CPUs include three model.

The source indicated that,the three models are Core i7-3960X/Core i7-3930K,which packs six-core,as well as quad-core Core i7-3820.The pricing of Core i7-3930K has been confirmed at US$560,while Core i7-3960X and Core i7-3820 may be priced at US$999 and US$300,respectively.

In addition,Bulldozer processors will be released during the period of 12th-23th,September,which just coincides with the earlier rumored September 19th.Meanwhile,the pricing of FX-8150P is predicted to be US$269.

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harlam357 said:

Man... I guess Intel really isn't scared of being Bulldozed. Would like to see AMD come to the party with a good offering though.

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The Road to Ivy Bridge-E

Desktop Socket 2011's maximum potential will most likely be reached only with 22nm Ivy Bridge-E, where, instead of just bolting on additional Ivy Bridge cores, further cache optimisation and enlargement can hopefully help to feed the CPUs. Instead, the initial Sandy Bridge-E parts will provide a platform for early adopters and, to a certain extent, a solution for the X79 Patsburg chipset rollout issue by offering different SKUs with some features initially disabled.

While the current chipset problems appear to be confined to the storage features, Intel may need to focus on enabling all possible features for such a high-end platform. In fact, I would like to see Intel integrate a proper XOR parity/ECC computation engine for hardware-assisted RAID 5 into the chipset during the time taken for the SAS RAID variant of the chipset to arrive. Such an implementation would be superior to relying on expensive CPU cores for software RAID. How much would adding the XOR engine cost on the chip level, anyway? 20 cents, perhaps?

In summary, my assessment is that Socket 2011 will likely dominate the top-level desktop platform, even with just 6-core parts initially. The combination of fast cores, large cache, very wide memory path for unmatched bandwidth, and plenty of PCIe lanes for any conceivable GPU configuration should give it comfortable headroom for at least another CPU generation in the same socket. On the other hand, we might see further stepping changes at the chipset level in the near future, and of course a 'recommendation' to upgrade to the Ivy Bridge-E generation a year later to unleash the full potential of this platform.

Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/socket-...t-road-to-perfection/13147.html#ixzz1Tme1WtGE

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Sandy Bridge-E now expected to launch in November, X79 chipset getting further feature cuts

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We don't like to be the bringers of bad news, but it's come to our attention that Intel has decided to change its high-end consumer Waimea Bay platform one more time before it launches. The only good news is that we've managed to pin-point which month the platform is expected to launch and that is November and there are several reasons behind this choice.

Intel's Waimea Bay platform is starting to become something of an epic saga by now with changed launch plans, chipset changes and what not. We're still not 100 percent sure that Intel won't change anything else in time for the launch, but we can only go on the information we have at hand. As for the November launch, the key thing here for Intel is not to hit the Christmas holiday season, but instead it's to get in with the big system integrators before they decide on next year's system spec. The big boys tend to only change their platforms once or twice a year and Intel has to be in on time when these companies are evaluating what they're going to be selling in 2012, miss this deadline and you have a lot less sales.

We're also hearing that Intel is worried about AMD's FX processor refresh which should take place early next year, maybe not in terms of raw performance, but the company needs to have its platform out there to show that the company has yet another high-end platform ready to go. Make what you want of this, but to manage to meet the November deadline, Intel has cut further features from its X79 chipset.

If you remember the article from a couple of weeks ago which had the same diagram as the one above, we told you that Intel had gone from the server level Patsburg-D to the Patsburg-B level chipset for the X79. Well, now we're talking Patsburg-A, i.e. no SAS support at all. In other words, we're looking at a chipset very similar to Intel's current P67 chipset, as it will only sport two SATA 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps. This is starting to make it look less and less like that Intel will simply be able to "enable" these features by a software upgrade in the future and instead we can either look forward to a chipset revision or a new, more expensive chipset for the Waimea Bay platform.

And it doesn't stop there, we have more bad news with regards to the X79 chipset, but that's another story…

Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/exclusi...further-feature-cuts/13173.html#ixzz1TptFy9SJ

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Despite everyone at Computex talking about Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge E processors arriving in the August/September timeframe alongside X79 motherboards, the rumor mill has recently hinted that there could be a delay. We've heard mumblings about the platform's PCI Express 3.0 implementation not being ready for prime time. There's also word that the X79 chipset, which was slated to have a staggering 14 Serial ATA channels, has been cut down considerably.

Intel remains tight-lipped on the subject, but Turkish site Donanim Haber has come upon pictures of a new Gigabyte X79 motherboard that may shed some light on the matter. The board proudly proclaims its PCI Express 3.0 support, so that's still in the cards in some form. However, given Intel's history with the gen-two spec, it's probably not safe to assume that the next-gen PCIe implementation is running at full speed.

Looking over the board reveals six edge-mounted Serial ATA ports and at least two Serial Attached SCSI connectors. The X79 was supposed to have up to eight SAS ports, but that always seemed like overkill for high-end desktop systems.

That's not to say the Gigabyte board, referred to as the GA-6PXSV, is entirely free of excess. There are eight DIMM slots onboard—two for each of Sandy Bridge E's four memory channels. You also get PCIe x8 and x4 slots in addition to a pair of x16s. Amusingly, the port cluster appears to be peppered with a pair of serial ports. There's no new information on when we'll see boards like this one in the wild, though.

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When it comes to pricing, Intel is a very predictable company and although we're not quite sure why the company is sticking to the exact same prices over and over again, it's just how it is. One of our very reliable sources have come through with the pricing for Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge-E processor and although there were whispers of a price point over US$1,000, well, let's just say that there aren't any big surprises in store.

In fact, Intel has stuck with its regular tiered pricing, so in other words, the Core i7-3960X will be priced at US$999, just as pretty much every other Extreme Edition desktop CPU since back in the Pentium 4 days. That said, as you're not getting a CPU cooler thrown in this time around, you're actually paying a bit more than you do for the current Core i7-990X, at least if you use the stock cooler.

The Core i7-3930K will end up replacing the Core i7-980 and it'll also end up with the same price, US$583. Finally the Core i7-3820 should be replacing the lower-end Core i7's and as such we're looking at US$294 price point. As such the Core i7-3820 will be cheaper than the Core i7-2600K, the question is how it will perform in comparison to Intel's top of the line LGA-1155 CPU.

On a related note, if you look at recent Intel roadmap leaks, you'll notice a little symbol that looks like this ≥ and it's suggesting that Intel is about to replace, or at least add a faster Core i7 K-SKU sometime this quarter which happens to corroborate some whispers we've been hearing. As to why Intel would be doing this is anyone's guess, but it's possible that the new model will have additional multipliers unlocked compared to the Core i7-2600K. We'll just have to wait and see how things develop, but right not it's not looking good for Intel's Core i7-3820, unless it can really outperform the LGA-1155 by some margin.

Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-s...expect-any-surprises/13298.html#ixzz1V6iJVtIU

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