Intel Mainstream Six-Core?

[cappa84]

I was just wondering, does Intel have a mainstream six-core CPU in the works? If so, when is it due?

[ericfulmer]

As much a I would like one of these, I don't see there is room for one in the near-term. They announced the i7-970 at ~$850, and the current i7-960 ($550)and i7-930 ($280) are unmatched in performance by the competition. Where would a Gulftown fit in the number soup?

[Game_boy]

Not that I've seen.

Their official roadmaps through Q1 '11, and only has the i7-970, speedbumps for most other ix products in Q2 and Q3, and Sandy Bridge duals and quads coming Q1.

http://anandtech.com/show/2960/3

There are unofficial roadmaps suggesting more core SBs not coming until H2 '11, to coincide with SB server chips.

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/img/pcw/d ... 7.jpg.html
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/img/pcw/d ... 2.jpg.html

[UberGerbil]

It depends on your definition of "mainstream" I suppose, but in this generation Intel has said the six-core Gulftown chips are socket-1336 only. Most people wouldn't consider that platform "mainstream." Intel certainly doesn't, and although Intel's definition of mainstream is a bit lower than would generally be accepted around here, Gulftown is no-where near it. Intel clearly is of the opinion that mainstream users don't need more than two cores (especially with SMT), so even quad-cores are a stretch. And to be fair, it's probably true that anyone who is actually utilizing all six cores in Gulftown needs the added memory bandwidth the X58 chipset provides. So pretty much by definition it's not a mainstream product.

Mainstream Six-Core, to the extent that market segment exists, appears to belong to AMD this year.

[cappa84]

This is all pretty interesting. I guess the quad-core i7 9XX series and quad-core i7 8XX series are good enough to fight AMD's cheap six-cores.

See, I do A LOT of HD video editing and rendering. I was going to buy the i7 930 and overclock the hell out of it. But the 3.2GHz AMD six-core seems like a good deal...don't think it out-muscles the i7 930 though...

[Flying Fox]

See, I do A LOT of HD video editing and rendering.

That already puts you out of "mainstream". Even with cell phones that are capable of taking 720p videos, most users will just simply upload their videos to youtube and be done with it. Editing may take a while once HD capable cell phones and camcorders (for family videos) drop a bit more in price and reach critical mass. So in the meantime you may have to go to AMD if you need to buy in the near future.

[UberGerbil]

See, I do A LOT of HD video editing and rendering.

That already puts you out of "mainstream".

And makes you one of the few folks who can make proper use of that many cores (vs the "gotta have more corez for my gamez to lower my pingz!" crowd). Though some video software has trouble making use of more than four cores also.

You actually might want to consider looking at low-end servers instead, since the "budget server" segment overlaps the "extreme desktop" one and there's more upgrade headroom there -- you could buy a 2S system and only populate one socket for now, for example.

[cappa84]

Thanks for the replies guys!

I'm currently using a Xeon E3110 (C2D E8400) running at stock 2 x 3.0GHz. I had it at 2 x 4.2GHz at one point, but motherboard really didn't like that...

Anyways, do you guys reckon going from a Xeon E3110 @ 2 x 4GHz (assuming I can get it stable @ 4GHz) to a i7 930 @ 4GHz, or a Phenom X6 @ 4GHz is going to give me a big performance jump? Cause these rendering times are KILLING ME!

Also, what kind of server setup could I build on the cheap?

[TheRyuu]

Anyways, do you guys reckon going from a Xeon E3110 @ 2 x 4GHz (assuming I can get it stable @ 4GHz) to a i7 930 @ 4GHz, or a Phenom X6 @ 4GHz is going to give me a big performance jump? Cause these rendering times are KILLING ME!

Yes.

Even though it has two less cores the i7 will probably be faster. Intel's new stuff is supposedly coming out later this year so it's up to you what you want to do but I really don't believe in waiting for stuff like that. The market is always changing so if you always like to wait for the next 'big thing' you'll be waiting forever.

x264, the h264 video encoder gains 25% performance from the HT alone on the i7 (compared to an i7 with HT off). Granted I don't know what kind of video rendering/encoding you do but I figure it would be a good deal faster on the i7 especially if it is threaded.

[FuturePastNow]

You'll probably have to wait a year or longer for a truly "mainstream" (not 1366) six core from Intel.