Intel Core i7 Thoughts
12.19.08 - 03:23am
Intel’s Core i7 was officially unveiled to the world about a month ago and it has taken the world by storm. Compared to Intel’s Core 2 Quad and AMD’s Phenom, Core i7 was a sweet combination of multi-threaded and single-threaded performance. AMD may have been the first to have a monolithic quad-core processor but Intel definitely did it correctly with Nehalem, the architecture that composes the Core i7 lineup. So one month since launch, where do we stand and what has changed?
Core i7 is without a doubt a server architecture with it’s heavy emphasis on connectivity, memory bandwidth, and scalability. These properties don’t necessarily make Core i7 a bad desktop chip but it definitely isn’t a huge improvement over Core 2’s Conroe and Penryn architectures. For typical applications like gaming, audio, and video playback, Core 2 was more than sufficient for most consumers. Making the jump from a dual-core two threaded Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 to a quad-core eight threaded Intel Core i7 920 doesn’t result in a four fold increase in performance. Typically you are looking at a 10% to 15% performance increase, mostly due to the increased memory bandwidth, lowered latency, and subtle architectural changes that have increase performance per clock cycle.
Where Core i7 does hold massive improvements are in highly specialized applications that can fully utilize many processors in highly parallelized(is that a word?) scenarios. Things like video encoding, file compression and decompression, and high performance rendering all witness significant performance gains simply due to the huge jump in available threads for these applications to utilize. Dual-socket Nehalem systems have been shown to literally annihilate quad-socket Phenom systems like Anandtech’s SAP preview.
So once again, where do we stand? I can confidently say that Intel’s Core i7 is definitely overkill for the general consumer. If anything we’re moving towards netbook style computers based around Intel’s Atom architecture with sufficient power to perform HD playback and your average activities of answering email and surfing the web. For the gamer, it is a very tough call between Core i7 and Core 2 Duo, chances are the additional costs of Core i7 make the limited performance gains not a prudent financial investment. The way I see it, the hardware is there, now we just need the programmers to utilize it. Until then, stick with your E8600s.
You’re a douche. I shat on the business card you slipped in my bag. I hope I see you on MARTA again so we can have a few words face to face.
Bob, that is most entertaining. I dropped 10 business cards into open bags on MARTA 9 months ago and it takes you this long to formulate a response? Thanks for the response though, that makes business card #4 that served its purpose in entertaining me.
Things like video encoding, file compression and decompression, and high performance rendering all witness significant performance gains simply due to the huge jump in available threads for these applications to utilize.
Core i7 is without a doubt a server architecture with it’s heavy emphasis on connectivity, memory bandwidth, and scalability.
It’s true, Core i7 is without a doubt a server architecture with it’s heavy emphasis on connectivity, memory bandwidth, and scalability.
Things like video encoding, file compression and decompression, and high performance rendering all witness significant performance gains simply due to the huge jump in available threads for these applications to utilize.
I can confidently say that Intel’s Core i7 is definitely overkill for the general consumer.