Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200..._ee_955/1.html

[valium]

Intel can never seem to top AMD who is now big man on campus.

[MrWillyWonka]

Originally Posted by valium

Intel can never seem to top AMD who is now big man on campus.

But... They are very close to AMD, this is just the beginning! Having 4 threads is quite impressive!

Although preferably I would go for the AMD. What are the temperatures like? Anywhere near like the P4 temps?

[Tim S]

Yes, it was warm, but not firey hot. I saw temperatures around 75'C fully loaded up with the reference cooler. That seems in check with the temperatures of the Prescott/Smithfield CPU. However, its worth noting that the D975XBX appears to be over-reading temperatures - some boards are overreading so much that it's causing throttling. (check the update at the bottom of the final page)

[valium]

Wonder what AMD has up their sleeves

[Bindibadgi]

You have to really really get the LGA heatsink exactly right. Even when you think it's right it often isnt, so the only way Ive ever managed to get it perfect is with springs and bolts.

Val: FX60.

[RotoSequence]

"Software, such as VMware, has been able to emulate this process for a while now, but the inclusion of the technology on die will take performance on a step further. In short, the technology essentially allows the CPU to act as if it was several CPUs working in parallel and subsequently run several operating systems and/or applications to run simultaneously on the same machine. You might confuse this with HyperThreading technology, but it's actually a little different.

Virtualisation technology allows you to run several operating systems simultaneously, each with its own pool of applications running. Basically, it means there are several virtual CPUs, with one running each operating system - this is not quite the same as HyperThreading technology. HyperThreading only allows you to execute multiple threads in a single operating system by simulating two CPUs - these two logical CPUs cannot be used separately. Obviously, the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 is a dual core processor, so there are four logical threads as opposed to two - the theory is the same, though. "

Is that extraordinarily repetitious to anyone else?

Good review Tim, though I think you could use a camera with better abilities for close up shots

Im a bit dissappointed that no overclocking experiments were performed; ive been hearing plenty of rumours that the 65nm process allows for some pretty extreme overclocks, and was hoping for some verification of this

[FIBRE+]

Nice article as usual, and nice to see Amd still on top.

Intel, like Ati seem to be playing catch up with there rivals all the time. By the time there latest efforts are out on the market they get "trumped" again by Amd/Nvidia which means the leaders secound best model gets a nice healthy price reduction making it even harder to make Intel's/Ati's own stuff look as appealing.

Seems a bit odd they havent gone for raw clock speed to appeal to gamers, I dunno bout anyone else but Id rather have a 3.8 or whatever than HT etc on an already multithreaded cpu.

How come you used a 6800GT in a "high end" test machine? Just wondered, i'm sure theres a reason

Sorry for any noobyness

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by RotoSequence

Good review Tim, though I think you could use a camera with better abilities for close up shots

Im a bit dissappointed that no overclocking experiments were performed; ive been hearing plenty of rumours that the 65nm process allows for some pretty extreme overclocks, and was hoping for some verification of this

Unfortunately, time was short on both parts. I didn't get the kit til Wednesday and I planned on celebrating Christmas with my parents this year.

The shots aren't as good as they could be because of a lack of light - I took the pictures when it was dull, grey and snowing rather a lot outside. Artificial light isn't a substitute for real light.

We will be revisiting Presler again in the new year without a doubt. FWIW, most reviewers seem to have gotten to 4.26GHz without too many problems though.

EDIT: thanks for pointing out the repeatitiveness - I've edited it to reflect that.

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by FIBRE+

How come you used a 6800GT in a "high end" test machine? Just wondered, i'm sure theres a reason

We've used the same test system since our Athlon 64 X2 preview back in May - GeForce 7800 GT/GTX weren't released back then. I wanted to re-run everything with a new set of benchmarks that fit closer with what we use in our motherboard reviews, but I couldn't give as wide a perspective of performance on multiple CPUs on a new selection of benchmarks because of the lack of time.

I had 2 1/2 days to do this (p)review, which meant I had to be picky on what I did do. As I've said above, we've certainly not finished with Presler and we'll be doing more investigations into its performance in the next few weeks.

[Hamish]

Originally Posted by valium

Wonder what AMD has up their sleeves

quad core

curious as to how you manage to bog-down your X2 tho, i haven't found anything that will do that yet
well the eve character selection screen makes everything jerky but thats just eve cos it does it no matter what else is running/affinty is set etc
if i run 3 xvid encodes at the same time or something then they'll slow down a fair bit but windows is still very responsive

[valium]

I really don't think clock speeds matter much anymore, Intel keeps ramping up the clock speeds but with no overall performance benefits and AMD keeps producing lower clocked processors that do the same if not more work in shorter order.

[Nature]

Will the FX60 only be for the AM2 socket? I'd hate to see socket 939 get AGP'd...

[Tulatin]

24 Pin ATX, 8 Pin Xeon, and a Molex for power?
FFS Intel, are you going to start bundling PCP&C 850SSI's with this thing?

Otherwise, looks impressive

[ychamp]

when the fx 60 comes out we'll start talkoing buisness

[Althalus]

Why does it when i try to view the article it says i dont have permission to view the page? :|

[Pookeyhead]

Originally Posted by Nature

Will the FX60 only be for the AM2 socket? I'd hate to see socket 939 get AGP'd...

I bet it is. I hate that... cos that means a new board... and then new RAM. But hey... that's progress.

[RotoSequence]

AMD maintains commitment to sustain the lifespan of the socket for 18 months after the introduction of another; its part of their "Stable Image" program. The FX-60 will be for both 939 and AM2 from what I understand.

[timmehtimmeh]

Benchmarking with DVD shrink, thats what I like to see.

Nice Review Bigz

I'd love to see how my Winchester 3000+ would fair on those multi-tasking benchmarks.

How much juice do these new pentium cores invelop?

[timmehtimmeh]

Originally Posted by RotoSequence

AMD maintains commitment to sustain the lifespan of the socket for 18 months after the introduction of another; its part of their "Stable Image" program. The FX-60 will be for both 939 and AM2 from what I understand.

Ah thats good, thats one of the reasons I went for s939 from remembering them saying it was going to be around for 18months. I've been getting worried recently with this new M2 socket talk.