Intel P55 Launch Activities - We want your opinion!
by Gary Key on August 25, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
If it has not been obvious based on the number of P55 pictorial previews here and at other sites, Intel and the motherboard suppliers are conducting a full court public relations press for your attention and hopefully dollars in a couple of weeks. Of course we are still under NDA in regards to actual performance results even though the new i5/i7 processors and P55 motherboards have been on sale at various locations throughout the world for the past couple of weeks. However, we are finally entering the home stretch for this product launch. As such, there are a few questions we would like your opinion on before we complete our benchmark testing.
We would greatly appreciate a response to our three poll sections today. Our first section simply asks if you are planning on upgrading to the P55 platform or not. The second section covers component decisions. We want to know if purchasing a P55 platform will drive you to spend additional funds on other components like DDR3 memory, video cards, and power supplies. Also, we would like to know your primary driving factor for choosing a particular motherboard.
The third section is my personal favorite. We
would like to know what information you are expecting in the P55
motherboard roundup on launch day. We have a new and exhaustive
benchmark suite to roll out for this article along with a double digit
count of motherboards for review. We have locked down the motherboard
suppliers regarding BIOS or driver changes and testing has "officially"
started. Besides motherboards, we have several new P55 specific memory
and cooling kits to provide analysis on at the same time. Our platters
are obviously full but we want to tailor this roundup as much as possible to what you find
important when reading through a large roundup.
That said, we look forward to your answers and any comments you might have on these subjects.
Editor's note - We had technical difficulties with the answer all command when this article first appeared yesterday. Unfortunately, we have not solved the problem yet. We have separated the problem questions into individual polls and dropped a few questions based on user feedback. We apologize for any inconveniences.
Are you even interested in the P55?
{poll 156:250}
If you answered Yes in the first poll, please complete this poll.
{poll 144:400}
If you answered No in the first poll, please complete this poll.
{poll 152:400}
If you answered Undecided in the first poll, please complete this poll.
{poll 153:350}
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ClagMaster - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
I am really looking forward to the Lynnwood/P55 release. This upgrade will bring the Nehelem architecture to mainstream and high performance desktop computing at reasonable cost and power consumption. Specifications and limited discussions of these products is very promising. I have not felt so keenly interested in a product release since the Core 2 Duo/P965. I suspect we will not be disappointed with the Lynnfield/P55.My plans for upgrading to a Lynnwood/P55 system are to wait until July/August 2010 when prices are their lowest and rebates are their sweetest.
Other important advantages for this delay:
1) Allow time for Intel to introduce improved steppings for Lynnwood i5/i7 and P55 chipset
2) Allow time for me to fully assess the P55 motherboards with properly developed test data and reviews.
3) Allow time for motherboard manufacturers to straighten out motherboard BIOS.
4) Allow time for nVidia and ATI to release GPU's based on 40nm parts.
5) Allow time for mainstream DDR3-1600 low latency memory operating at 1.5V to become available.
I do a major upgrade of my PC every 3 years using the following strict rules:
1) Component must have been in use for at least three years before replacement.
2) Replacement must have double the performance, or double the capacity.
3) Replacement must cost the same or less than the original cost of the replaced component.
4) Replacement must have power consumption the same or less than the replaced component.
If a component does not meet the above criteria, it's not worth my money. What I care about is cost and performance in equal measure. And true performance must be normalized to the power required to achieve it. That's why power consumption must be the same or less when double performance is realized in a synthetic benchmark or application.
I upgrade the CPU, motherboard, memory and graphics card following this standard. I do this because double performance of any of the above components is not achievable unless these are replaced simultaneously.
I will be upgrading a rig with a Intel E6600 CPU, a Intel DG965WH ATX mobo, 2GB DDR2-800 memory and a nVidia 9600GT graphics card. I comtemplate upgrading to a rig with a Quad Core i5 ($200), a P55 motherboard ($130), 4GB of DDR3-1600 1.5V low latency memory ($120), and a 40nm nVidia Video Card with 1GB of memory requiring 55W-65W of power ($140). Very nice mainstream upgrade for $600.
I will be using legacy items such as my CPU heatsink, two 640GB SATA 3G Harddrives, 500W power supply, Lian Li case, Plextor DVD burner, Plextor CD burner, Iomega Zip Drive, Altech XM-28U card reader and 32-bit Windows XP Home.
I like the i5 with four cores at 2.66 GHz. I am not interested in hyperthreading because this technology only amounts to ~10% performance gain for double the memory burden.
Features I will consider important on the P55 motherboard: an IDE port for legacy optical drives, eight USB ports, six SATA internal ports, a high quality onboard audio CODEC, and a simple, efficient four phase power supply. I do not overclock.
With memory sizes pushing 16 GB using memory with smaller memory cells, lower voltages, higher operating frequencies, I expect memory parity errors will eventually become an emergent problem with desktop systems. DDR3 memory is probably more susceptable to parity errors than DDR and DDR2 memory. Memory parity errors arise from memory cells loosing their charges from alpha particle interactions from radioactive decay of uranium or thorium impurities within the silicon, or cosmic ray interactions. This lost bit causes data corruption that ECC can detect and fix. Don’t be surprised in ECC memory becoming more popular with desktop systems in the not-so-distant future.
One of the pet peeves I have with synthetic benchmarks at Anandtech and other sites is the difficulty of comparing three year old components and recently released components with the same benchmark. How can I ascertain with certainty double the performance when there is not a single PCVantage benchmark for my existing PC components?
I prefer PCMark2005 as a reliable indicator of performance between past and current PC components for most applications people use. Even for Vista OS. Use 3DMark2006 for DX9/DX10 performance benchmark.
erple2 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Wow. I think you're going to stand to be disappointed. All quad core processors are going to use up more power than your dual core E6600. Any Video card you buy today to net you ~2x the performance of your 9600GT is going to use up quite a bit more power.Though I more or less agree with your points 1-3, however. I do, however, swap out video cards a little bit more often than 1 every 3 years (about 1 every other year now). However, my driver for that upgrade is "the system can't handle the particular game I'm currently interested in", and not much else.
Also, everything (with the possible exception of the move from the P4 to Core2 architecture) has increased the power consumption of the CPU over time.
And finally, doubling the performance is a bit of a misnomer - it's very hard to show double the performance of a particular part, at least when it comes to CPU limited cases.
I also like your insistence on respectable ("a high quality onboard audio CODEC") onboard audio chip. I haven't seen much recent analysis on that sort of thing in a long time. Does that mean that the state of onboard audio hasn't appreciably changed in the last couple of years? Heck, there's no "Audio" tab at the top of AnandTech...
ClagMaster - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Your comments about my disappointment going from an E6600 (65W) to i5 Quad (95W) is certainly a valid one. I am hoping that by July 2010 Intel introduces 65W versions like was done with the Quad Penrym.If that does not happen, I may bend this rule in this case if the performace justifies it. The processor I had prior to the E6600/DG965WH was an Athlon XP-M 3000+ aboard an EPOX 8RDA6+ Pro overclocked to 2.4 Ghz. It had a 80W power draw at those frequencies ;).
strikeback03 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
A Zip Drive? Wow, that is a very legacy component.ClagMaster - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Yes a ZIP drive is legacy. But it is also very private and secure too.gmyx - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
What I would really like to see is the chipset / other areas to be cooled with alternative systems including water. It has been my experiance that many chipsets are poorly placed for aftermarket water coolers.plamengv - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
You are missing one important option there - I won't upgrade to P55 from 975 because I plan to upgrade to X58. Yes it is not that new but better than P55 definitely.anandreader - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
Have you seen benchmarks that back that up? I thought the big deal about p55 boards was moving more circuitry into the CPU. I'm waiting to see the i7 820 numbers before I decide which way I'm going to go.Fox5 - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
The support questions bring up an interesting point, though I don't know if a core i5 article is the right place to bring it up.In general, I'd be interested in knowing how support compares between brands/models. How helpful is tech support? Do they release bios updates to correct issues even after the board is out of production? How much of a pain is the board to set up the first time? Does it have a wide range of useful adjustable bios features, like a full range of voltages both up and down? (perhaps that's more of a feature thing) If there's a problem/incompatiblity, do they help fix it, or just pass the buck? Will the board support new cpu models?
In the past, I had a pretty bad experience with a Gigabyte motherboard, and they would have lost me as a customer if not for their fantastic tech support. On the other hand, Foxconn and evga have been big losers for me.
Asus is almost like the Apple Computers of motherboard makers, providing extra, often not related to the core functionality of the product, but worthwhile if it's something you need/want.
MSI is the exact opposite, cost cutting to all extremes and keeping only the core product, perhaps with an upgraded heat sink.
And Zotac right now is, imo, in the position that Shuttle Computers and DFI were in when they first started their rise.
yacoub - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
well hopefully any company that sees the data from this review is smart enough to realize that it's not that we don't care about support/warranty, it's that we:A: Assume the product will be of high enough quality that we won't need to make use of the warranty or tech support
B: Realize those other choices are more important to the review than support/warranty, but that doesn't mean support/warranty isn't important
C: If product quality falls, support/warranty will immediately become a hot-button issue, but they (manufacturers) should be taking steps to ensure that doesn't happen.