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When are dual socket 1366 motherboards expected?

S

sphinx99

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 23, 2006
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I know Asus showed off one (that seemed to have a workstation / 2U rack server bent to it) and there's talk of a future Skulltrail i7, but is there anything firm, or even a reasonably educated guess out there? Is this something we might see in 2009? Obviously these will be oriented toward Xeon EP processors, but I assume the i7 9xx series should work as well?
 
The desktop processors, while they share the same socket, won't work. They are supposed to be out at the end of the month as far as I know (28th I think).
 
That's too bad. I've been looking for a highly parallel platform for database work (my day job involves supporting highly parallel transactional databases) more for personal education / testing at home. i7 gives me four cores (plus four fake ones) and a dual-i7 platform, even clocked slow, would be a fantastic simulation of even the largest single node systems I troubleshoot at work.
 
From what I understand the 55xx Xeons will work in single socket 1366 boards, but you can't put 35xx ones or the desktop variants in dual socket 1366 boards due to them only having the single QPI link (as opposed to 2 in the 55xx Xeons).
 
Ah right. And hence, waiting for quad-QPI links for the 4-socket platforms as well. Oh well.... I suspect bad things about the 55xx series price points.
 
Those are a lot further off and certainly won't be cheap (they don't use the same socket either). The current quad 604 boards are still rather expensive because of the 6 core processors that Intel is selling. I stuck with AMD for my quad socket board since it was so much more economical. The 55xx Xeons won't be cheap either.
 
It looks like the E55xx Xeons showing up at the end of this month (Gainestown DP) will cost about ~ 20% more for an approximate ~ 15% lower clock speed, using the same DDR3, L3 cache, etc. However, they will use quite a bit less power (< 100W TDP) and feature dual 6.4 GT/sec QPIs versus the single 4.8 GT/sec one on our current 920/940s. So, some pluses and minuses. It does appear that the E5520 will fall between current 920 and 940 prices... you just have to live with the 2.26GHz cores... you could get 16 2.26GHz cores for less than the i965, and you'd be getting the same QPI bandwidth as the Extreme processor too. Something for people to think about.

Also releasing at the same time are the Wxxxx series Xeons, which seems to be identical the 920/940/965, even same price points, just with the "Xeon" name on them.
 
For some reason I don't see the kings of selling things for more than they are worth selling something on the border of profitability.
 
danman said:
A Mac Pro is probably cheaper than a DIY.
Click to expand...

One minute... I can't stop laughing...

Ok, back to the topic at hand... yes there are dual 1366 boards, just have to know where to look. I would expect more to come in the months ahead.
 
So, the E5520 at 2.26GHz is pricing at $373. It uses the same triple channel DDR3-1066 RAM, has the same 8MB L3 cache, and has the same 8 logical cores due to Hyperthreading. You give up 400MHz and about $125, but you gain wider QPI of the i965 (how much of that clock speed difference does that make up for?) as well as the option to drop a second processor in there for 16 cores.

The motherboards also look to be about $100 more expensive.

So I got to thinking, using rough numbers,
i975 + Motherboard = $1000 + $300 = $1,300
E5520x2 + Motherboard = $375 x 2 + $400 = $1,150.

For my highly parallelized database work, I'd surely take 16x 2.26GHz cores over 8x 3.33GHz ones, especially if it costs me less! But otherwise, it's awful close.

Of course, no matter the option, this is a ridiculous amount of compute power for the cost...
 
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