Socked 775 lifespan?

[ToddMcF2002]

I tried to search but couldnt find a reference. How much longer for the 775? I got burned pretty badly by the AGP conversion to PCIe on my last build and don't want to end up in that boat again.

Thoughts? Thanks.

 

[LuckyNV]

next socket might be here as early as Q3 08

 

[ToddMcF2002]

Damn. I hate swapping motherboards.

 

[pxc]

You don't have to upgrade on day one.

I believe mainstream desktop Nehalem CPUs are not due until the beginning of 2009. Server versions were moved up to Q3, and there will probably be high end dual socket and Extreme Edition versions earlier. IDF next month (April 2-3) should clear up the official dates.

 

[ToddMcF2002]

Thanks for the advise. I'm sure the 775 processors will have legs and nothing is CPU bound. I just want to ensure I'll get a good 4 years out of the box (with one or two vid card upgrades) before the cpu/socket combo forces my hand.

AGP really killed me. Its been a bit over 4+ years and I'm still using it but Oblivion was really the end of the line for my machine's abilities. I havent run any AAA titles since then. My bullet proof x850XT PE has treated me well but its crying uncle.

 

[Arkalius]

Yeah I'm sure Penryn chips will be selling a year or more after Nehalem comes out so it's not as if 775 is going to become obsolete instantly.

 

[doormat]

Yea, and don't forget that as Nehalem chips start to roll in, prices will drop for Penryn chips. So that expensive 3Ghz quad core might be a sweet deal around Q4 this year. You can start now with a cheap dual core (once they become available) for around $220 and then upgrade that to a fast quad core early next year for cheap.

 

[NKDietrich]

Yeah, while you likely won't see anymore S775 CPUs beyond whats already been announced, as far as mainstream parts, the overclocking headroom on them is pretty good and I think you'd be hard pressed to find something in the next 18 months that will be throttled back by having "only" a 3.6GHz S775 Quad Core or a 4.0GHz S775 Dual Core.

Hell anyone with a solid 3.0GHz Core 2 or better can probably just sit tight and wait for Westmere (the 32nm Die shrink of Nehalem).

 

[crazymonkee84]

Nehalem is using a new socket and it'll be out Q1-Q2 of 09. Making me hold out for that since I, like everybody else, hate swapping motherboard/cpu. Annoying as hell...

 

[Leman]

What I'd like to know is what socket will Nehalem be using. Probably LGA. Possibly some sort of optical interface with a piece of diamond for the plug.

... Admit it, that'd be cool.

 

[MrWizard6600]

next gen from intel has an on-die memory controller which completely reconfigures the motherboards layout. Even if they keep it in the LGA775 form factor, no current chipset will support it.

Denab, next gen AMD proc will use a new AM3 socket (I believe).

 

[gluzko]

hmm prolly should hold out onto another yr before i make my splurge for an upgrade

 

[NKDietrich]

What I'd like to know is what socket will Nehalem be using. Probably LGA. Possibly some sort of optical interface with a piece of diamond for the plug.

... Admit it, that'd be cool.

LOL. Just LGA 1366 and a couple other variants I think. One for server end one for low end.

 

[DrFreeze]

hmm prolly should hold out onto another yr before i make my splurge for an upgrade

dont worry, any sort of future-proofness in computerland is purely an illusion. Even if sockets stay the same, you can hardly expect to just plop in the newest CPU, for instance i dont think my current mobo officially supports 1333 mhz FSB, which means that upgrading to a wolfdale/yorkfield would mean having to run OCed 24/7 to even get the stock speed out of the CPU, if the thing would even boot

Besides, you said 4 years right? according to intels time table:
Q1 08: launch of wolfdale/yorkfield (45nm core 2 architecture)
Q1 09: launch of 45nm nehalem, new socket
Q1 10: 32nm shrink of nehalem
Q1 11: 32nm, new architecture, end of nehalem, possibly new socket, but who knows?
Q1 12: 21(?)nm shrink of the new architecture?

so your 4 year scale basically means that upgrading the cpu to something current is ruled out in about two years (major architecture change) anyway, and probably sooner due to chipset incompatibility. As for the AGP thing, if you get a pci-e 2.0 mobo now, you will probably be safe for a long while, pci-e 2.0 cards also work in 1.1 mobos, so any potential 3.0 cards will probably work in 2.0 mobos too

but then again, seeing how you can still pick up some s478 cpu's these days, it would surprise me if in three years time you could just walk into a store and pick up a Q9300 for 100 bucks, even though nehalem is about to get its ass kicked by then

 

[NKDietrich]

Good point, Intel's new Tick-Tock strategy pretty much guarantees there will be motherboards that become useless annually. (Those that for whatever reason are not compatible with a new architecture, new socket, or new die shrink.)

Its possible that sockets wont change every 2 years, but its a good bet it'll be at least every 3.

 

[jonneymendoza]

dont forget that when nehalem first comes out it will be full of bugs/issues and will cost an arm and a leg. after a years time it will become affordable.

add in ddr3 which will definetly be the only memory compatible with nehalem and the prices of ddr3 is amazingly cheap(NOT) and will take a while for ddr3 prices to come down.

either way your looking at maybe 1 and a half years time from this point onwards till nehalem becomes affordable and bug free.

for gaming i recon a quad core pci2.0 will last u 3 years playing the newest games at very high settings at 1680 res. why? Because atm games dont even use even 50% of todays quad core's And pci 2.0 just came out and it will be maybe 6-12months before a gpu card uses even half its speed. atm todays cards dont even make use of the full pci 1.6x speeds atm and we all know that games are more GPU bound then anything.

all you have to do is upgrade your card once a year for around £200 and your good to go

correct me if im wrong but whats the chance of a completely new socket for gpu's comming out less then 3 years? that was my main problem when i built a agp system just when pci e was around the corner. pci e will be here for at least another 3 years unless someone can say otherwise and with the state of pc gaming atm, pc gaming may get worse by that time too.

Also note that programs are designed for single core let alone dual core so in 3 years time dual and quad programs will become the norm by that time and it will be the perfect time to do a complete rebuild to get a faster cpu that doesnt sweat on current programs and games.

changing sockets is a bitch but i have learned that going from a p4 3.2 to a dual core doesnt make my games, OS or programs load or run any faster.

 

[Mithent]

Any Nehalem processors out this year will almost certainly either be high-end limited-quantity server chips or Extreme Editions which no-one will buy, yes. There's no real reason for Intel to rush into this when they're doing pretty well as-is, either, so things could get delayed.

But some good points made here; I've similarly said before that, even if Nehalem is ten times faster than current processors, it won't mean that the current ones suddenly get bad. There are a few use cases which want all the CPU power they can get, but for most things we're comfortably at the point where the CPU is not really a problem at the moment, and that's unlikely to change rapidly.

 

[Kniteman77]

That reminds me I still haven't even seen a motherboard with the new AMD socket . . . 939 is the most recent thing I've touched from them

 

[Bhatch]

With Intel competition at high end almost zero, the late release of the 45nm quads and duals...i would be surprised if Intel releases Nehalem on that schedule and cannibalize sales on 45nm shrink. I would imagine Mid 09 for Nehalem. IMHO.

 

[aethelwulf]

With Intel competition at high end almost zero, the late release of the 45nm quads and duals...i would be surprised if Intel releases Nehalem on that schedule and cannibalize sales on 45nm shrink. I would imagine Mid 09 for Nehalem. IMHO.

I would guess 2Q for duals and a little later for quads. I'm sure they won't release on schedule, but I don't know how far they will push it back. The way people around here talk about it, you'd think it was coming out next week. Either way, I plan on waiting until AT LEAST Nehalem shrink before I upgrade my CPU, so I'm not too worried.

 

[isai95]

changing sockets is a bitch but i have learned that going from a p4 3.2 to a dual core doesnt make my games, OS or programs load or run any faster.

I agree with you 100%.
I still use at my work an Asus CUSL2, P3 933mhz, 512mb ram PC and can do very well email, internet, word, excel, powerpoint, burn movies, cds, loan calculations, backing up my palm, etc and it's reliable as hell. What I would need a faster computer than my P4 3.0ghz would be to play games, which would cost me good $1,500.00 ~ $2,000.00.

Most of the computer stuff is pure marketing strategy, but I'll upgrade when these machines don't serve me any good.

 

[jonneymendoza]

all cpu does is to see how many porgrams you can load at once with only encoding/folding being the only thing that tests the speed of a cpu. i can see why people say quad core makes no difference towards a dual core

 

[Leman]

That reminds me I still haven't even seen a motherboard with the new AMD socket . . . 939 is the most recent thing I've touched from them

AM2? That's been out for a while.
AM2+? Thats just a BIOS update for some boards.
AM3? Not out yet. (And I can't believe they're still using PGA for it. PGA makes me nervous, you know?)

 

[Chombo]

I agree with you 100%.
I still use at my work an Asus CUSL2, P3 933mhz, 512mb ram PC and can do very well email, internet, word, excel, powerpoint, burn movies, cds, loan calculations, backing up my palm, etc and it's reliable as hell. What I would need a faster computer than my P4 3.0ghz would be to play games, which would cost me good $1,500.00 ~ $2,000.00.

Most of the computer stuff is pure marketing strategy, but I'll upgrade when these machines don't serve me any good.

Lucky, my work computer (which is a corporate machine so I don't have any control over) is an AMD 64 3200+ with 512MB RAM and an AT XPress 200. With all my required programs up I am around 80% system resources used at idle. When I have to start actually working the CPU load and RAM max out and I start having HDD Swap files working. Major pain.

 

[MrWizard6600]

Sorry in advance for the long post, I know its going to be a fatty, but I disagree with almost everything this guy says.

don't forget that when nehalem first comes out it will be full of bugs/issues and will cost an arm and a leg. after a years time it will become affordable.

What makes you say that? There have been a handful of buggy CPU launches in the history of CPUs, and all of them were rush products. Intels the king of the hill, the launch may be late, but it wont be buggy. Nehalem will also introduce a whole new lineup, top to bottom, of processors, I don't think Intel will be able to skim the market (like they're doing with 45nm Core 2s) nearly as easily, as skimming the market with nehalem would mean mean memory manufacturers would be left in the dark and the motherboard partners would need much more diversification. Nehalem will launch with a top to bottem lineup of SKUs. I suspect, at launch, you will even see a sub $250 quad core available, granted, in traditional Intel fashion, it will probably have some missing L2.

add in ddr3 which will definetly be the only memory compatible with nehalem and the prices of ddr3 is amazingly cheap(NOT) and will take a while for ddr3 prices to come down.

By the time intel releases Nehalem, memory manufacturers will be in full DDR3 production mode. DDR3 prices will be only marginally more expensive then DDR2 prices are now, and DDR2 prices will begin to climb

either way your looking at maybe 1 and a half years time from this point onwards till nehalem becomes affordable and bug free.

Nehalem will launch in the first quarter of 09, or perhaps even the last quarter of this year. It will be available from the get go to all consumers at any price point. It will not contain any major bugs.

for gaming i recon a quad core pci2.0 will last u 3 years playing the newest games at very high settings at 1680 res. why?

This is entirely a subjective statement. My core 2 Duo E6300 at stock speeds stands no chance against the physics required in crysis. Its just over a year old. has it lasted as long as it could? An Athlon XP (barton or thoroughbred) wont play COD4 because it doesn't have native support for the SSE3 instruction set. Is that when a processor has lasted as long as it could?

pci-e 2.0 is a marginal upgrade and will have no major standing on the time frame of pcie. A new standard backwards compatible or not, will have to be introduced by the end of the (presumably named) Geforce 10 and Radeon HD4k series. PCI-E 2.0 offers exactly twice as much bandwidth as PCI-E 1.1, which is an illogical extension to the PCI-E family. The bandwidth needed by graphics cards is an exponentially growing scale, every next gen requires two or three times as much bandwidth as the generation before it. In order to have any long standing Graphical Interface, you need to have several times more bandwidth than the generation before you did. Your correct, The HD4k and Geforce 10 series will only need half the bandwidth provided by PCI-E 2.0 (or all of the bandwidth provided by PCI-E 1.1), but the generation after that will require all if not more bandwidth then PCI-E 2.0 can supply.

Because atm games dont even use even 50% of todays quad core's And pci 2.0 just came out and it will be maybe 6-12months before a gpu card uses even half its speed. atm todays cards dont even make use of the full pci 1.6x speeds atm and we all know that games are more GPU bound then anything.

Again, all areas in computers are exponentially growing scales. Every CPU generation (~18 months?) has twice as much power as the generation before it. So if we're already up to 50%, it wont take nearly as long to reach 100% as it did to reach 50%.

And again, 50% is a strange statement. In some scenarios, the CPU usage in a game might be tiny. In others, it might be huge. I would tend to think that Crysis with maximum post-processing and maximum in game physics would give any quad core a run for its money.

all you have to do is upgrade your card once a year for around £200 and your good to go

I would agree with that. My upgrade cycle is every 3-4 years. Half way in between, I do a half upgrade, usually involving a new graphics card, more memory and possibly a new processor. Shortly after nehalem is released, I plan to spend maybe $600 out of my pocket (ie I'll sell my current proc, ram, and gpu for maybe $400 total, making my total upgrade $1000) on an R700 series GPU, 2 4gig kits, and perhaps a Q9300.

correct me if im wrong but whats the chance of a completely new socket for gpu's comming out less then 3 years? that was my main problem when i built a agp system just when pci e was around the corner. pci e will be here for at least another 3 years unless someone can say otherwise and with the state of pc gaming atm, pc gaming may get worse by that time too.

I'm willing to bet a new, faster graphical interface, possibly backwards compatible, will be in the process of being distributed by the 2nd half of 2009.

People have been claiming that the PC gaming industry is dieing for years now, and I don't believe it will any time in this decade. So many major developers are still PC exclusive, which means their transition to console exclusive will be a several year process, and even if they leave us, some current indie studio will rise to take its place.

Also note that programs are designed for single core let alone dual core so in 3 years time dual and quad programs will become the norm by that time and it will be the perfect time to do a complete rebuild to get a faster cpu that doesnt sweat on current programs and games.

Programs couldn't care less how many threads you've got. Its all about multi-threading. If I was to create a script that was designed to count every non-video non-picture file in my programs directory and simply add 1 to the count every time it finds one, there are two ways I could design this program in regards to what it does when It finds a folder containing multiple sub-folders. 1. If it finds a folder with two subfolders in it (1, and 2) It opens the first (1), counts all the files, and the returns to the folder. It then opens the second (2) and counts all the files. It then returns to the folder, sees that theres no more folders, and returns back to the base original directory. If I wanted to make this program multi threaded and its put in the same situation as above: I ask it to open a 2nd identity of itself, and ask its clone to count the other folder, while it counts the first one.

On a single core single thread processor, for all intensive purposes, they would have identical speeds, as the processor couldn't support the clone running simultaneously. On a dual core multi threaded processor, the 2nd version would be much faster, as the program and its clone would each have their own dedicated thread to work with. If the first programing strategy was executed on the dual core system, it would have nearly identical speeds to the single core single thread processor.

It has only been since the introduction of Intels Hyper Threading (single core but two threads) that multithreading in programming has really caught on. Now, pretty well all programs in development today are optimized to create as many threads simultaneously as they can, thus taking advantage of any multi-thread capable users.

Programming 101!

changing sockets is a bitch but i have learned that going from a p4 3.2 to a dual core doesnt make my games, OS or programs load or run any faster.

rofl. I have noticed grave speed increases in the system in sig (before it was overclocked) from an old Athlon 64 3200+.

 

[Mithent]

Now, pretty well all programs in development today are optimized to create as many threads simultaneously as they can, thus taking advantage of any multi-thread capable users.

In your example, it's easy to fire off n threads and have them all work completely independently; none of the child threads care about what any other thread is doing, they just work on their part of the directory tree. (Come to think of it, this operation may not be CPU bound, but if it was.) Similarly, it's easy to make something like compression, image manipulation, scientific data analysis or video encoding multi-threaded, in most cases, since you can give each thread a largely independent task.

It's a different matter for games though, and games are likely to lag behind in utilising additional cores. You can't really divide the work a game is doing into arbitrary chunks in the same way, and there's a lot of interconnectedness: the AI of each entity depends on what other entities are doing, what the environment is like (which brings in threads tracking object positioning and physics) and, critically, what the player is doing, which changes very frequently and has effects on all the other threads. It's not impossible to multi-thread all of this, but it's challenging, and it's unlikely you're going to be able to create n threads as you can for data processing.

 

[agmarley]

Like you I am trying to decide do I jump on the 45mm Bandwagon. I want a processor and subsytem that will last about 3 years. I do wish that the 790i came in a DDR2 flavor as I have 8gigs of 1066 sweetness.

 

[jonneymendoza]

you made some good points there but in terms of games, crysis doesnt tax out a quad core when you put the pre processing on the highest as far as i know

when nehalem comes out it WILL be expensive. not only the cpu but the mobo as well. as there is no competition from amd at the moment, intel cold increase the price of nehalem too.

plus how do you kow nehalem wont contain bugs? IMO almost every single new tech weather its a cpu or a mobile phone always carry some sort of issues

 

[wadec22]

I love the [H]. I'm trying to decide when to hang up my s939. Go with Wolfdale? Wait for Nehalem? Not sure. I'll tell you what though, this thread is a damn good read.