News Rumour: Intel discovers Sandy Bridge E bug

Old chips still have lots to show. My Q6600 works really fine and only bad coded mono-threaded app can struggle him sometimes (Google Scketchup for example).

 

Same here; I've not seen anything that makes me really want to move away from X58. As it stands, if I wanted an upgrade I'd more more likely to go for a hexacore LGA1366 chip than I would LGA1156/1155/2011.

Although I'm quite interested in trying AMD again, even if they're not the raw performance crown holder. Would definitely be interested in trying a 990FX board and a Bulldozer chip.

 

Besides desktop benchmarking, it doesn't feel as though there are as many reasons (certainly not the old reason of new PC games), to justify keeping on the constant upgrade treadmill, especially dumping X58, i7.

There was a time before the mass rush by game Studios to consoles , where you literally felt compelled to buy the next iteration, be it CPU or GPU, just to get playable performance, or to mavel at the latest, greatest, newly released PC game which integrated the latest DX features.

Nvidia sticking with the '500' series longer and Intel leaving X58 around longer, seems to offer an indication about how confident they are of shifting their new HW in an era of consolization.

 

I'll start by answering the last bit first, and this will also explain why a bug in VT-d isn't too important for personal use (yet).

Current Intel processors support two types of virtualisation, VT-x and VT-d. VT-x came about first (introduced with later Pentium4 models) and was originally known as "Vanderpool" (as opposed to AMD's "Pacifica", later known as AMD-V).

VT-x allows for hardware virtualisation of the CPU itself and because of that is the most important type of virtualisation. It's what really speeds up your VMs insofar as you are running any, because your VM can run code directly on your CPU instead of some emulated CPU.

VT-d, on the other hand, virtualises access to peripheral devices such as Ethernet NICs, graphics cards, audio cards, hard disk drive controllers etc. In essence, VT-d makes the VM see and be able to access more of your actual hardware instead of some emulated piece of hardware, e.g. from within the VM you'd see your GTX460 card instead of a "VMware SVGA" card and you'd be able to install the actual drivers for said card. Essentially, VT-d does for your "other hardware" what VT-x does for your CPU.

However, for VT-d to work properly you also need the proper support in your virtualisation software and, as far as I know, that's still missing in virtualisation software for home use.

AMD's version of VT-d is called AMD-Vi, by the way.

 

I'd heard there was a nasty bug going around

 

Mines modestly clocked at 3ghz. I've decided to wait for Ivy Bridge, dont want to sound part of the brigade, but not enough reason to upgrade just yet. Maybe Battlefield 3 will change my mind!

 

Im still rocking my "bugged" Launch day P67 board without issues. I opted out of the B3 freebee spree.
I dont think many people are going to cough up the moola for the new gear right away anywho minus the people that just have to be on the bleeding edge of hardware. Most people are still rocking Q6600 and the like just fine.
Heck I have 2 Q6600 still and use them all the time minus the 2500k in the main PC.

 

Cheers for that gents - I love seeing stuff I don't understand being translated into English!

 

Without VT-d i wont be getting one of these. It would be pretty much essential for my work and uni. Not like it want to drop my 1366 930 anyway. Its been a great purchase and will be sitting in my case for a long time to come me thinks

 

I replaced my E8400 due to an upgrade bug, and well frankly, the need for a Quad Core. Outside of that, I wouldn't have even bothered.

 

Yeh I am offered a VT-x support option in VirtualBox.

But I can't see many home users going socket 2011 - personally I looked at the power consumption and chocked (no better than socket 1366)!! Surely business users will want the full VT-d support for VMWare or similar??

 

I'm upgrading next week, buying a i7 2600K, I originally was going to wait for these, but since they aren't really aimed at the home user. Since Sandybdige E now has further problems, I'm glad I've decided on the 2600K.

But I will say that intel seems determined to hold onto their crown at all costs, perhaps they could do with a bit more extensive testing on things before they release them? This will be the 3rd major bungle by intel since I started building PC's. Anyone remember the divide by zero error on the original Pentium?, I do and it seems they haven't learned anything from this.

 

Won't be buying until it's fixed and they're next gen are out. Have been right royally ripped off with the last high end purchase, only for Intel to drop prices shortly after, so wont be making that mistake again (i7 950 and i7 970)