Dual i7-2600K Motherboard

[BinarySynapse]

Microcenter just had them for $279 each.



I'll take a look, however, I don't really care for AMD for CPU's as of late. I may give them another chance some day. Had a bad experience with a pair of Athlons many years back.

Care to elaborate what that bad experience was? Because there's plenty of bad experiences to go around on both sides. Athlons have never been bad processors (not always the best), if you had a bad experience, it was likely due to a poor chipset (like anything from VIA or SiS), or just plain bad luck.

 

[aubsxc]

I'll take a look, however, I don't really care for AMD for CPU's as of late. I may give them another chance some day. Had a bad experience with a pair of Athlons many years back.

In other words, you are not really looking for a practical solution to your perceived computing needs, even though such solutions are readily available and can be procured at relatively reasonable cost. A hex-core Xeon based multi-socket solution is too expensive, while a multi-socket solution based on AMD Opterons is not acceptable because they are just icky and don't fit the image you are trying to portray. What exactly are you looking for here?

 

[Untitledone]

It wouldn't cost less than $600 unless you got some crazy sales. 2600ks are going for $329 a piece on Newegg right now.

I have a solution that actually exists in the real world that costs a less than your theoretical dual 2600k solution. I realize this probably won't be as fast as two Sandy Bridge processors but those systems don't exist yet. However, I haven't seen a 4 core

For $575 you can get an 8-core Opteron with a dual socket motherboard.

$575 - ASUS KGPE-D16 Dual Socket G34 AMD SR5690 SSI EEB 3.61 Dual 8/12 Core AMD Opteron 6000 series Server Motherboard + AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz 8 x 512KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server Processor

For another $275 you can add an additional 8 core Opteron to the system.

$275 - AMD Opteron 6128 Magny-Cours 2.0GHz 8 x 512KB L2 Cache 12MB L3 Cache Socket G34 115W 8-Core Server Processor

An imaginary dual processor i2600k system would cost $658 for the two CPUs, plus say $300 for the motherboard putting you at about $950. For $100 less ($850) you can get 16 cores. The included motherboard will even take regular DDR3 (i.e., unregistered non-ECC) If Second Life is as multithreaded as you make it sound, the decreased performance per core should be more than made up by having 4 times as many cores.

That thought has crossed my mind with the opterons. I do have concerns though. They are server based designs, and it seems that there are a lot more consumer oriented server products these days. It used to be rare to find server boards with any kind of graphics upgrade but that board has two x8 pci express slots which really has me interested. I am just wondering how that system would work as a normal desktop/workstation. How is the driver support, and are there many issues that will be faced in such a system? Probably the most important thing for me would be overclocking. Is there any ability to overclock with opterons? I would be willing to put up with two 8 core opterons if I could get them to do close to 3 ghz.

I know there are options on the server side for those that want them, but it comes at more than just a money cost, usually you lose most consumer functionality just to get pure processing power.

 

[tonytnnt]

That thought has crossed my mind with the opterons. I do have concerns though. They are server based designs, and it seems that there are a lot more consumer oriented server products these days. It used to be rare to find server boards with any kind of graphics upgrade but that board has two x8 pci express slots which really has me interested. I am just wondering how that system would work as a normal desktop/workstation. How is the driver support, and are there many issues that will be faced in such a system? Probably the most important thing for me would be overclocking. Is there any ability to overclock with opterons? I would be willing to put up with two 8 core opterons if I could get them to do close to 3 ghz.

I know there are options on the server side for those that want them, but it comes at more than just a money cost, usually you lose most consumer functionality just to get pure processing power.

Reading reviews on Newegg for that motherboard, overclocking is a no. SLI is unofficially yes (something about a patcher?) Driver support is good, board is rock solid.

Google indicates that overclocking on the 6128 may be possible, but I don't know what kind of board you'd need. It probably wouldn't be as "cheap" as the server/workstation board I linked to above.

 

[Tsumi]

Most server/multi-CPU boards do not have overclocking capabilities. They are designed mainly for solid system stability, with performance as a secondary. The only multi-CPU board that I know of that supports overclocking is the EVGA SR-2.

Also, the thing about AMD is just pure BS. It seems more like you're trying to justify reasons for yourself to go Intel only, and the i7 2600k specifically. Technology from just 2 years ago is vastly different from technology today, so to judge things today based on experiences "few years ago" is just stupid.

 

[Untitledone]

I am almost sold on an opteron build. I am going to have to do more research. If I can find an overclockable board with at least one x8 pci express slot I would be good. What about socket G32? I looked and they have $250 ish G32 motherboards, and there are 4 core opterons for $109 socket G32. Dual quads/Dual 6 core might be my cup of tea since they run at a bit higher clock speed, but still would have enough core count. I am not a huge gamer, but I like to play some games. I probably wont be upgrading until june or july though.

 

[aubsxc]

I would really avoid using a server board if I had any significant interest in gaming. Server boards can provide several advantages (over consumer boards) when used in a server/workstation environment; the use of ECC ram in large quantities (many times more than that available on consumer boards), the presence of one or more high quality on-board network ports, on-board SAS controllers, remote management features, support for mutiple sockets and so on. On the other hand you usually pay a premium price, have little support for high end gaming GPU systems (like SLI), and you typically lose the ability to overclock.

 

[omniscence]

If you really need the compute power/memory I would suggest a dual Xeon X5680 setup. I use such a system at work and it is really worth its money. They are internally nearly identical to the i7-990x, marginally slower clocked and only like 30% more expensive but support much more memory. Really, what are 30% if you need something that fast and spend 1000$ per processor anyway.

Gaming systems with the fastest consumer processors are usually limited by graphics cards and don't need more cores. The suggestions for cheap low-power server processors make no sense. A drastically overclocked SNB processor can have almost three times the clockspeed and will completely devastate such systems even for higly threaded workloads at a much lower price. The only reason for these systems are large memory requirements like heavily virtualized environments.

 

[BinarySynapse]

If you really need the compute power/memory I would suggest a dual Xeon X5680 setup. I use such a system at work and it is really worth its money. They are internally nearly identical to the i7-990x, marginally slower clocked and only like 30% more expensive but support much more memory. Really, what are 30% if you need something that fast and spend 1000$ per processor anyway.

Gaming systems with the fastest consumer processors are usually limited by graphics cards and don't need more cores.

He's trying to avoid spending $1000 per processor.

 

[tonytnnt]

Summary of what the OP wants: something to make Second Life and his renderings run better. He claims dual 2600ks would be awesome for it (and I agree, they would, but they don't exist at a price he's willing to pay.) Eventually OP explains that he needs many cores since Second Life is so poorly written (but heavily threaded) and his rendering can use a farm but it's just a hobby so he doesn't want to spend that much. That's about the first 4 pages of this thread.

Summary of my solutions: Xeons (too expensive.) Opterons (OP doesn't like AMD.) I suggested the Opteron build with the server board because he doesn't want to spend SR2 money. Yeah server boards aren't ideal for gaming, but OP claims a 2600k doesn't cut it.

 

[sethk]

I can somewhat sympathize with the OP. The last time I owned a true dualie workstation, it was a dual Athlon XP box (and I had 2 before that). Since then, the Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and currently a i7 920 with its quad core + hyperthreading design have each provided an experience that is comparable to what was available a year before the release of each of those CPUs on a dual processor workstation. This progression has tempered my desire to continue building dual processor workstations. I think that it's likely that within a year from now 8 core CPUs *may* be available (from either AMD or Intel, or both), and that makes buying a dual socket workstation now seem less appealing.

I think that right now, AMD is uncompetitive in the enthusiast segment (~$300 CPU with mild to moderate overclocking on air) that I mainly shop in nowadays. Some may disagree, and that's OK, but I truly hold no bias against AMD or preference for Intel, other than their current performance levels.

Bulldozer may well change the competitive landscape in the segment I'm interested in, and if so, it may also be the first CPU in a while that makes dual CPUs interesting to me at the consumer level (based on projected performance and backwards compatibility with existing motherboards). I can see picking up a lightly used AMD dual CPU motherboard, slapping in some Bulldozers and seeing how that works out. If AMD really had the foresight to release the equivalent of the SR-2, I would be bowled over, although I'm not so sure that will happen right off the bat.

Both Intel and AMD are on the fast-track to making many-core CPUs (i.e. a lot more than 4 cores) available soon. It's been a while since Intel really had to act to counter a truly superior AMD product, but if AMD was to start releasing CPUs with IPC (Instructions per clock) that is competitive with today's Sandy Bridge CPUs AND has more cores than the mainsteam intel CPUs, which is what they are promising to do, then I think we will see an acceleration of Intel's roadmap as well. Here's hoping...

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

Summary of what the OP wants: something to make Second Life and his renderings run better. He claims dual 2600ks would be awesome for it (and I agree, they would, but they don't exist at a price he's willing to pay.) Eventually OP explains that he needs many cores since Second Life is so poorly written (but heavily threaded) and his rendering can use a farm but it's just a hobby so he doesn't want to spend that much. That's about the first 4 pages of this thread.

Summary of my solutions: Xeons (too expensive.) Opterons (OP doesn't like AMD.) I suggested the Opteron build with the server board because he doesn't want to spend SR2 money. Yeah server boards aren't ideal for gaming, but OP claims a 2600k doesn't cut it.

Just out of curiosity, which Opteron comes close to the speed of the 2600K? The only one I can see that is anywhere near close is the 6176 SE and it is priced at $1300. How is the Opteron even a comparable chip to the 2600K?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Also, to clarify, if all it took was the purchase of the SR-2, it would be worth it for me to purchase 2 of the 2600K's. Problem is, it doesn't seem like any chip that works on the SR-2 is anywhere near the 2600K price range (save the much older \ slower chips).

 

[BinarySynapse]

Just out of curiosity, which Opteron comes close to the speed of the 2600K? The only one I can see that is anywhere near close is the 6176 SE and it is priced at $1300. How is the Opteron even a comparable chip to the 2600K?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Also, to clarify, if all it took was the purchase of the SR-2, it would be worth it for me to purchase 2 of the 2600K's. Problem is, it doesn't seem like any chip that works on the SR-2 is anywhere near the 2600K price range (save the much older \ slower chips).

The whole point is that you can't buy MP enabled 2600K's. We're trying to give you the next best thing. A system that will fit your needs without breaking your wallet .

Although the Opterons are slower than the 2600k's, you can have up to 24 cores on a DP board, or 48 cores on a QP board. If your needs are such that having more cores is better than fewer faster cores, that would be the way to go. You can get 16 cores for less than $1000, or 32 cores for just under $2,000, including a motherboard.

 

[Tsumi]

Summary of what the OP wants: something to make Second Life and his renderings run better. He claims dual 2600ks would be awesome for it (and I agree, they would, but they don't exist at a price he's willing to pay.) Eventually OP explains that he needs many cores since Second Life is so poorly written (but heavily threaded) and his rendering can use a farm but it's just a hobby so he doesn't want to spend that much. That's about the first 4 pages of this thread.

Summary of my solutions: Xeons (too expensive.) Opterons (OP doesn't like AMD.) I suggested the Opteron build with the server board because he doesn't want to spend SR2 money. Yeah server boards aren't ideal for gaming, but OP claims a 2600k doesn't cut it.

+1 a very accurate summary right there. And that's very likely going to continue for the next page or two.

 

[tonytnnt]

Also, to clarify, if all it took was the purchase of the SR-2, it would be worth it for me to purchase 2 of the 2600K's. Problem is, it doesn't seem like any chip that works on the SR-2 is anywhere near the 2600K price range (save the much older \ slower chips).

*bangs head*







*bangs head*

 

[Tsumi]

*bangs head*







*bangs head*

That's one way to describe it. Here's another:

*facepalm*







*facepalm*

 

[Crest]

If you guys need more horsepower on the cheap, why not just set up a poor man's beowulf cluster? If you need more horsepower for rendering, set up a rendering farm. I don't see how more cores is going to help with every day tasks except maybe leasing out virtual machines where the more cores, the better.

Edit: I don't really even know what a cluster is. I've simply seen it from my on and off research for network transcoding. I'm currently on a Q6600 and I wanted to get a very good multicore system, but a 2600k is all i guess I can run. for under like 3,000.

 

[plugwash]

but a 2600k is all i guess I can run. for under like 3,000.

That is pretty much the case. Even counting for the fact that price/performance tends to go down as total performance goes up there is a massive gap above the 2600K at the moment due to the fact that the "mainstream" parts are a generation ahead of the "high end" parts. You could buy a 990x but unless you have a very special reason I don't see the point in spending $700 more to get a marginal performance increase in highly multithreaded tasks.

When LGA2011 comes out I'd expect things to smooth out a bit again with a CPU option arround the $1000 mark that beats the 2600K by a substantial margin in highly multithreaded tasks.

I don't really even know what a cluster is.

A cluser is a group of machines working together on a common task. This is generally how you get the best bang per buck for large computing jobs that can live within it's constraints.

There are essentially two ways clustering can be implemented.

One option is to do it at the operating system level. You get an extension to the operating system (such as linux) that can make a group of machines look somewhat like a single machine and distribute processes on to them but there are a number of limitations as to what types of process can be distributed. Take a look at http://linuxpmi.org/

The other option is to do it at the application level. You would have some kind of long running process on the nodes that runs units of work that are provided over the network. Then a management process splits your job into units of work and hands it out to the long running processes.

Either way your apps have to be friendly to being split across a cluster. This means they need to be able to be split into units of work that can be completed with relatively little interaction.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

That is pretty much the case. Even counting for the fact that price/performance tends to go down as total performance goes up there is a massive gap above the 2600K at the moment due to the fact that the "mainstream" parts are a generation ahead of the "high end" parts. You could buy a 990x but unless you have a very special reason I don't see the point in spending $700 more to get a marginal performance increase in highly multithreaded tasks.

When LGA2011 comes out I'd expect things to smooth out a bit again with a CPU option arround the $1000 mark that beats the 2600K by a substantial margin in highly multithreaded tasks.

This is exactly why I really wish there was a dual 2600K option or an equivalent chip to match what two 2600K's could offer. I just put together a 2600K system with 16 Gigs of mem, two Nvidia GTX 570's and an older Radeon 5850, and will add a Vertex 3 to it later in the week when it comes. Meantime, using an older regular Vertex SSD I had laying around with the SL cache files running from a ramdrive.

Anyway, this system, although it gave me a nice bump up from my Q6600, is nowhere near what I need to run my app (Second Life in high-rez 6 panel). All the cores are already maxxed out running at 70%+ each, higher with more complex rendered scenes (dynamic shadows \ framebuffer objects \ massive oceans \ sims with 40+ people), etc.

So, basically, for me, it's already obsolete, and I'm thinking of building another system but there is nothing reasonable to build, the power I need is not there yet unfortunately at a cost I feel is justified.

When I watch (which is the same as rendering in realtime) ocean scenes in Second Life, I get maybe 24 fps in that resolution with my current setup. If I could double the 2600K speed, I would be getting closer to what I need. And I can't double the W3690 or X5680 (I forget which has QPI of the two), because that would be crazy insane overpriced at $2500+ just for the cpu's.

Oh well. I'll just have to wait until something better comes along.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

I'm currently on a Q6600 and I wanted to get a very good multicore system, but a 2600k is all i guess I can run. for under like 3,000.

I'm in the same situation. There really is a gap here in terms of what we can get for decent price\perf.

I do like the 2600K much better than my previous Q6600, but for my primary threaded app (SL), a single 2600K is just not good enough. Wish they would have released a 5200K at twice the speed and twice the price of the 2600K. I would have been all over it.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

If you guys need more horsepower on the cheap, why not just set up a poor man's beowulf cluster? If you need more horsepower for rendering, set up a rendering farm. I don't see how more cores is going to help with every day tasks except maybe leasing out virtual machines where the more cores, the better.

It's not everyday tasks I'm wanting (although I do multitask with SL running), but a render farm won't render Second Life, needs to be on the same box. It's much different than rendering individual frames with LW \ 3D Studio \ Maya, etc.

With those apps you can easily tie 10 servers together and run the render agent on each box, with SL, it's all on the same box only. You can't bring in other servers \ clusters. It can use each core as long as they are all on the same motherboard. If you had a 16 core MB, it would work. I'd settle for 8 (16 with HT), but that is very cost prohibitive for now. There is no decently priced product on the market at the moment per Plugwash's explanation.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

Care to elaborate what that bad experience was? Because there's plenty of bad experiences to go around on both sides. Athlons have never been bad processors (not always the best), if you had a bad experience, it was likely due to a poor chipset (like anything from VIA or SiS), or just plain bad luck.

I had wanted to purchase a specialized DVR video card that was not supported by AMD processors at the time I owned AMD Athon boxes (and I think it was due to the VIA chipset).

I had to use a card I did not want to purchase just so it could run on AMD at the time since I had built the systems a year before. Smaller companies (dvr card suppliers) sometimes go with Intel only. It's just how it is sometimes. Also, the AthonXP's had heat issues and an additional VIA chipset nightmare prob I barely remember and something else I don't remember because it was so long ago. Also, Intel as of late seems to produce the much faster chips, and I am usually in the market for faster CPU's. (but not Xeon prices).


BTW, how do you delete a message on this forum? After I realized how many successive posts I made, I was going to multi-quote and delete the redundants but it wouldn't let me delete messages, only edit, when I click the edit/delete link. Anyone else run into that issue with this forum? (running IE9\FireFox4, same issue on both)

 

[BinarySynapse]

You can't delete posts, only edit them (except in the News subforum, where you can't edit at all).

If you want more power, you'll have to wait until sockets 1356 and 2011 are released later on. Socket 1155 products are only meant to be a mainstream platform, not enthusiast like the 1366/i7-9xx series were.

 

[Spooony]

Francios Piednoel said if we want another Skulltrail we must keep on putting in requests to Intel. The more the better. That's the only time they will do another project like Skulltrail. If the public demand is there. So if you want one keep sending those emails or letters.

 

[dook43]

You can't multitask and play games in Eyefinity unless you like SLI/Crossfire being disabled. (windowed mode). I haven't met a game that didn't capture the mouse in fullscreen mode, so even if you have 86 monitors, you're SOL.

BC2 is the only game I play that uses more than 15-20% of my i7 920 at 4.0.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

You can't multitask and play games in Eyefinity unless you like SLI/Crossfire being disabled. (windowed mode). I haven't met a game that didn't capture the mouse in fullscreen mode, so even if you have 86 monitors, you're SOL.

BC2 is the only game I play that uses more than 15-20% of my i7 920 at 4.0.

I'm not using Eyefinity\SLI mode as SL isn't programmed properly to be able to offload what it needs to the GPU anyway as it is mostly CPU based.

I only have 1 Eyefinity card in the mix and I don't always run on all panels, sometimes I'll be running on only 4 at a time, but even then, CPU usage is extremely high. So this is an application being stretched across 6 screens with other apps opened in windows on top of that so you can multitask as much as you want. I don't do too much heavy mt but I do some. I might have an SL window open on 6 screens and pop a Firefox browser on top of one of the panels in a small window, etc., or do the same with word docs\pdfs, all light stuff. Occasional Photoshop, but the point is, even without the mt, the SL app itself can use the 4 cores (8 with HT), and still use much more if it's available.

 

[Spooony]

Why do you want more power. What do you want to use the pc for

 

[Uberbob102000]

I doubt it, at least not on a build with new parts. According to newegg the cheapest processors that could do it. are about $200 each. I doubt you could get your PSU, case, motherboard and ram for less than $275.

And i'm pretty sure in most benchmarks (even multithreaded ones) such a system would lose to a single i7-2600 (at least at stock, i'm not sure how overclockable bottom end 5500 series xeons are but my guess is that the low multipliers would limit achievable speeds). The only point to doing it would be if you really needed a lot of ram support.


It's not cost prohibitive for those who really need that much grunt in one system and/or need one of the other advantages of a dual socket setup (lots of ram in my case). Why would intel want to set things up so that a pair of xeons that beats an extreme edition chip cost less than the extreme edition chip?

Well I meant just for CPU/Mobo prices not for the whole rig, sorry if that wasn't clear.

Also: I apologize for my quoting from a page and a half back.

 

[tonytnnt]

I'm in the same situation. There really is a gap here in terms of what we can get for decent price\perf.

I do like the 2600K much better than my previous Q6600, but for my primary threaded app (SL), a single 2600K is just not good enough. Wish they would have released a 5200K at twice the speed and twice the price of the 2600K. I would have been all over it.

This will provide close to what you're asking for. Not the chipset per se, but the 8 core chips that go along with it.

With as much time as you've spent lamenting over the current lack of an 8-core Sandy Bridge I think you should have just ponied up for an SR2 system to drive your six-screen gaming rig rather than complaining about how a midrange part (the 2600k isn't actually a high end) isn't cutting it for a game that isn't coded to effectively use your graphics cards. Your usage demands are quite likely above the 99.9th percentile. Maybe even the 99.99th percentile, and you're unwilling to pay for the panacea to your six-screen problem.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

This will provide close to what you're asking for. Not the chipset per se, but the 8 core chips that go along with it.

I've seen the link but don't understand how that will help. Are there going to be CPU's released at that time which are twice the speed of the 2600K or something?

I've considered the SR2 Xeon combo but after pricing it all out, it was just way too expensive for what you get compared to a single 2600K system. It would be like if you went to McDonalds and you bought a Big Mac meal and they told you it was going to be $58.

You would think, wow, is this Big Mac meal really worth $58? In the end, you would probably pass on the deal.

I do agree though, I am in the 99th percentile but I know there are many others who would really like to have a dual 2600K system. I mean we double everything else at low costs. Guess I'll have to bug Intel.

 

[blackhawk777]

You gotta pay to play..... no chance Intel will release a dual socket midrange board, and even if they do the costs will definitely still be unreasonable... memory for two chips, premium pricing on the board.... there is no logic in a low priced dual socket 2600k board for them because it would undercut their server products i.e. 8 core xeon, etc. Intel looks at it like this: There are way too many businesses willing to pay the premium for that type of power, so giving them a lower priced way out by offering that level of performance at a mainstream price is like leaving money on the table... it just doesn't make sense.

 

[Tsumi]

Most DVR cards now support AMD systems, and they have almost always worked on AMD chipsets. It is the VIA chipset that DVR cards hate.

You seriously are biased, and you have issues. It isn't even AMD's fault that the VIA chipset sucked, maybe you should have gotten a better chipset? AMD is now large enough that even small makers make things compatible with AMD systems. Additionally, you're talking about overheating issues from parts generations ago. That has absolutely nothing to do with current systems. True, the Phenom line was mediocre at best, but the Phenom II line holds it's own, and considered to be very good chips. You seriously need to fix your way of thinking. Your bias against AMD is comparable to being racist against black people and hating all black people just because some black kid in your elementary school bullied you for a year (no offense against black people intended).

Intel won't care what you say, because there are enough big companies/enthusiasts that are willing to pay for those high-end servers. They just aren't going to cater to the 99.99th percentile, not enough business there to justify it. And although there may be many people who want dual 2600k systems, 99.99% of them will never use that system's full power. Those that do need them, set up multiple systems, because they're using it for things like rendering or folding, and that does not all need to be on the same system. You are probably only one in a hundred million that absolutely needs that kind of power in one system, yet won't pay the money for it.

 

[tonytnnt]

I've seen the link but don't understand how that will help. Are there going to be CPU's released at that time which are twice the speed of the 2600K or something?

Well, almost double. Maybe double if you believe Wikipedia. Wikipedia's Sandy Bridge article references an 8 core (16 with HT) chip due out in Q4 2011. However, there's no reference to back it up. If you look at the two references on that page (currently 39 and 40) for the upcoming chips, you'll get these two articles: Reference 39 and Reference 40.

They both talk about 4 and 6 core, high end Sandy Bridge chips with larger caches and the ability to overclock both the multiplier and the DMI clock frequency. These will likely come out in Q4 2011. There will also probably be an Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition coming out in Q2 of 2011.

It's not unreasonable to assume that Intel will be coming out with a 6 core Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor as they already had one in the last generation. It's just a matter of when the release date will be.

Your bias against AMD is comparable to being racist against black people and hating all black people just because some black kid in your elementary school bullied you for a year (no offense against black people intended).

Eesh, I dunno if being biased against a company is really on the same level there... Otherwise all those Ford, Chevy, and Dodge truck owners with a Calvin peeing sticker on them have some explaining to do...

 

[Tsumi]

Eesh, I dunno if being biased against a company is really on the same level there... Otherwise all those Ford, Chevy, and Dodge truck owners with a Calvin peeing sticker on them have some explaining to do...

It's an exaggeration to make a point. Not really sure what being a Ford, etc owner with a Calvin sticker have to do with it though...

 

[omniscence]

Intel will definitely come out with an 8-core SNB processor at the end of this year. It will be on LGA2011 and have double the memory channels and processor PCIe lanes compared to LGA1155. I'm not sure if it makes even sense to release processors with more cores for LGA1155. At some point they will start to get limited by the memory bandwidth. I would prefer higher clocks over more cores. Four is a good number, not everything can be multithreaded ad infinitum.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

Most DVR cards now support AMD systems, and they have almost always worked on AMD chipsets. It is the VIA chipset that DVR cards hate.

Indeed, but that didn't help me at the time, did it? At the time I had the AMD proc, it didn't work, only Intel processors did for the card.

It isn't even AMD's fault that the VIA chipset sucked, maybe you should have gotten a better chipset?

Maybe AMD could have chosen the better chipset to begin with...

AMD is now large enough that even small makers make things compatible with AMD systems. Your bias against AMD is comparable to being racist against black people.

Again, didn't help me at the time back then, did it? If you have bad experiences with a company, you tend to stay away if alternative options are available, it has nothing to do with being racist and you thinking that along with your bias against making historic comparisons for hardware purchases is comparable to being an idiot. I decide which company gets my purchasing dollar based on a previous history of purchases, it's unwise not to use purchasing history for future purchases.

Additionally, you're talking about overheating issues from parts generations ago. That has absolutely nothing to do with current systems.

People make purchasing decisions based on past history with companies. I have seen all the reasons for AMD procs, and I still like to choose Intel, plain and simple. I believe Intel provides a better product, that's my opinion, and I make purchasing decisions based upon it, just as you make your purchasing decisions based on what you believe is the best option for your needs.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Indeed, but that didn't help me at the time, did it? At the time I had the AMD proc, it didn't work, only Intel processors did for the card.

That wasn't AMD's fault That was the company that made the add-in card.. or possibly VIA. AMD had no control over VIA, Nvidia, or SiS when it came to chipset manufacturing, or the motherboard manufacturers when it came to choosing a chipset to put on a board, or when you chose to use a VIA chipset based system when they were well-known for providing problematic chipsets, problems which went all the way back to the socket 7 days when AMD and Intel processors would work in the same board. So if this occurred long enough ago, you would have had the same issues with an Intel CPU.

Maybe AMD could have chosen the better chipset to begin with...

AMD had nothing to do with the chipset or motherboard manufacturing once the design was finalized and licensing was handled.

Again, didn't help me at the time back then, did it? If you have bad experiences with a company, you tend to stay away if alternative options are available, it has nothing to do with being racist and you thinking that along with your bias against making historic comparisons for hardware purchases is comparable to being an idiot. I decide which company gets my purchasing dollar based on a previous history of purchases, it's unwise not to use purchasing history for future purchases.

You may have had a bad experience with a company, but it wasn't AMD. So your purchasing bias is based on illogical premises.

People make purchasing decisions based on past history with companies. I have seen all the reasons for AMD procs, and I still like to choose Intel, plain and simple. I believe Intel provides a better product, that's my opinion, and I make purchasing decisions based upon it, just as you make your purchasing decisions based on what you believe is the best option for your needs.

Personal preference and illogical decision making practices aside, Intel does not have a product that suits your needs for the price you're willing to pay. AMD might. But you're summarily disregarding any option they may bring to your table simply because an add-in manufacturer couldn't or wouldn't support a VIA platform years ago.

 

[Tsumi]

That wasn't AMD's fault That was the company that made the add-in card.. or possibly VIA. AMD had no control over VIA, Nvidia, or SiS when it came to chipset manufacturing, or the motherboard manufacturers when it came to choosing a chipset to put on a board, or when you chose to use a VIA chipset based system when they were well-known for providing problematic chipsets, problems which went all the way back to the socket 7 days when AMD and Intel processors would work in the same board. So if this occurred long enough ago, you would have had the same issues with an Intel CPU.



AMD had nothing to do with the chipset or motherboard manufacturing once the design was finalized and licensing was handled.





You may have had a bad experience with a company, but it wasn't AMD. So your purchasing bias is based on illogical premises.



Personal preference and illogical decision making practices aside, Intel does not have a product that suits your needs for the price you're willing to pay. AMD might. But you're summarily disregarding any option they may bring to your table simply because an add-in manufacturer couldn't or wouldn't support a VIA platform years ago.

+1 to all this, well said.

 

[tonytnnt]

Personal preference and illogical decision making practices aside, Intel does not have a product that suits your needs for the price you're willing to pay. AMD might. But you're summarily disregarding any option they may bring to your table simply because an add-in manufacturer couldn't or wouldn't support a VIA platform years ago.

+1 to that too.

LittleTinyScooby, I think there's a disconnect going on because of some fundamental misunderstandings of what went on with your past computer and why it led you to dislike AMD (which is perfectly fine, it's your money and your computer.) In the end it doesn't matter though because you already bought your 2600k and it doesn't cut it. But if you check back in November or December there will probably be a chip that will help because of the additional cores, and it'll be Intel. If you don't want to wait, you can try an 8, 12, 16 or even 24 core AMD setup with an AMD chipset. Whatever you do though, you're the one who has to live with the stuttering on your wall of monitors.

 

[LittleTinyScooby]

+1 to that too.

LittleTinyScooby, I think there's a disconnect going on because of some fundamental misunderstandings of what went on with your past computer and why it led you to dislike AMD (which is perfectly fine, it's your money and your computer.) In the end it doesn't matter though because you already bought your 2600k and it doesn't cut it. But if you check back in November or December there will probably be a chip that will help because of the additional cores, and it'll be Intel. If you don't want to wait, you can try an 8, 12, 16 or even 24 core AMD setup with an AMD chipset. Whatever you do though, you're the one who has to live with the stuttering on your wall of monitors.

The AMD\Via incident and a few others I experienced at the time are not the only reasons I don't go with AMD. These days, I mostly don't go with AMD because their chips aren't as powerful as Intel's and because of compatibility issues I read about all the time.

For chip power, using Passmarks benchmarks for instance, Intel's chips reign the performance part of the chart. Why would I even consider an AMD chip when even Intel's top of the line chips are too slow for my application?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

AMD doesn't even show up on the high end of the chart unless you count the Opteron 6176 SE at $1,400.

That is the reason I don't choose AMD these days.

If Bulldozer turns out to be great, who knows, I would give AMD another shot, but over the past few years I haven't been impressed by AMD at all. I used to like AMD, I had a 386-40 at one point in time which was great, but I just prefer Intel lately. I really don't see a comparable AMD chip out there that has anywhere near the performance of the higher end Intel chips.