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Why we may never see a Core i7 Apple machine
With the recent crop of new Apple desktop hardware - The Mac Pro, iMac and Mac Mini (all of which we reviewed in Personal Computer World) - we noted the use of Intel's older Core 2 Duo processor rather than the newer and more powerful Core i7 chip. The Mac Pro is an exception, but Apple's high end workstation doesn't use Core i7 either, as it's built around Intel's Xeon 5500 processor (which is similar, but not identical, to Core i7)
It's a certainty that Apple will upgrade its range to use Intel's newer processors at some point, but it may be the recently announced Core i5 and Core i3 that it chooses rather than Core i7.
If you haven't been following Intel's roadmaps, Core i5 will use a completely different socket to current Core i7 processors, using 1,156 pins rather than 1,366, meaning if you want to use a Core i5 processor, you need to fork out for yet another new motherboard. Intel's decision to bring another socket to the market has been met with confusion and some disappointment from those who have already invested in Core i7.
The good news is that Core i5 processors and components should be much less expensive than Core i7, but still offer high performance, partly thanks to an integrated memory controller that gives better memory performance than its predecessor.
This leaves Apple with a choice of processors for its next mainstream desktop line. We'll bet on them choosing Core i5 for the iMac, Core i3 for the Mini and sticking with Xeons in the Mac Pro, meaning LGA 1366 Core i7 processors end up never used in an Apple computer.
Of course, Apple hasn't even announced a new desktop line, and Core i5 processors aren't on the market yet, making this little more than speculation on our part. However, as long as Core i5 is relatively affordable and offers a reasonable performance boost, we'll call this an educated guess on what Apple's next move will be.
First Looks - The Athlon is Back
AMD have announced two new dual core processors, both built on a 45nm process with the surprising news is that one of them carries the Athlon name. The first member of the new Athlon II X2 family is the 250 which has a clock speed of 3.0GHz. Based on the Regor core the 250 has no L3 cache which makes it smaller (117.5mm²) and cheaper to manufacture, but to make up for this AMD have given it 1MB of L2 cache per core.
Launched at the same time is the first dual core Phenom II, the Phenom
II X2 550 based on the 410mm² Callisto core. As the flagship of the new line, the X2 550 is a Black Edition meaning that it's unlocked so it can be overclocked past its 3.1GHz reference clock speed. It comes with 1MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache shared between each core.
Both cores have a 2.0GHz HyperTransport bus frequency and support both DDR2 and 3, up to DDR2-1067 and DDR3-1600. The TDP of the Phenom II X2 550 is 80W while the Athlon II X2 250 is rated at 65W
We managed to overclock the Phenom II X2 550 to a stable 3.958GHz with ease, while the Athlon II X2 250 was more problematic, but eventually we got it to run stably at 3.72GHz.
UK pricing for the Athlon II X2 250 is around £69.99 while the Phenom II X2 550 costs approx. £80.99
For full test results see our results database reportlabs.com
Microsoft makes your PC talk in its sleep
New Athlon processor from AMD
Hard on the heals of last weeks launch of the Phenom II X4 955 processor comes yet another AMD processor launch, this time its the turn of the Athlon X2 family to get a new member - the 7850 Black Edition.
Clocked at 2.8GHz, the dual core 7850BE is likely to be the fastest on the 65nm K10 dual core before AMD move to the 45nm K10.5 core. It has 2 x 512KB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3
An introduction
As the newest member of staff here at Personal Computer World, I should introduce myself. My name is Orestis, and I'm the new Reviews Editor. On a day-to-day basis, I'll be in charge of our reviews and group tests, following on from the excellent job Nigel Whitfield has been doing.
I have a long background with computing, as I've been completely hooked ever since I first pressed the rubber keys of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. There are few areas of computing I don't find interesting: programming languages, mobile devices, 3D games and operating systems are just some examples of what piques my interest.
New products and technologies are what has kept me interested for so long, and despite everyone's credit being slightly more crunchy this year than in the past, there's still a long list of exciting releases I am personally looking forward to in 2009.
As long as development remains on track at Microsoft's HQ in Redmond, Windows 7 should be on that list. Having tried the beta, I'm very much looking forward to using the final version of the OS. Regardless of the side you belong to in the Windows Vista versus Windows XP debate, few would doubt that Windows 7 has the potential to be greatly superior to its predecessor.
It will also be interesting to see if Intel can stick to its yearly 'tick-tock' update that was announced back in 2007. Last year's launch of Nehalem, better known as the Core i7 line of processors, constitutes a 'tick' as it was the company's first new microarchitecture since Core 2. This year, it should be followed by Westmere, the first 32nm processor line Intel has produced, which is a 'tock' according to their strategy. Intel has announced it's going to spend $7bn upgrading its fabrication plants to produce such astonishingly small transistors, which should offer better power efficiency and hopefully improved performance over the previous generation.
Although operating systems and processors are two of the most important components of a computing system, the technology launch I'm most looking forward to is USB 3, even though it will take a while before many devices support it. While USB 2 offers only 480 Mbits/sec of bandwidth, USB 3 bumps this to a whopping 5 Gbits/sec, and allows even more power-hungry devices to be powered solely via the Bus. With USB 3 in place, the speed of data transfers from external devices should no longer be bottlenecked by the speed of USB.
Admittedly Firewire 800 already exists, outperforms and is arguably superior to USB 2, but Firewire has never proved quite as popular as USB, which is found on a much wider range of computing gadgets and peripherals. I have come to depend on the inherent utility and ubiquitous nature of USB, whether it's USB powered 2.5 inch hard disks which I use to carry files around, USB chargers for my phone, or USB rechargeable batteries that i can use in anything from cameras to remote controls. As USB is a technology that affects nearly every part of my computing experience, a major update to its specification is big news.
It's more than likely we will still be enjoying the benefits of USB 3, even after both Windows 7 and 32nm processors have been superseded.
Intel Nehalem to be called Core i7
Intel has just announced that the upcoming 45nm 'Nehalem' processors will carry the Core i7 moniker. The logos above show the variants for mainstream models (blue) and the Extreme Editions (black). Nehalem is due to launch by the end of 2008, and includes novelties such as an integrated memory controller and a graphics chip built into the CPU package. It also introduces Intel's replacement for the traditional front-side bus, known as QuickPath Interconnect (QPI). Hyperthreading also returns, allowing two threads per core.
Remote voice recording kit
A new wireless device allows you to record meetings and make audio notes onto your PC frpm up to 30 metres away, says vendor Lindy.
The £69.99 (inc Vat) Wireless Voice Recorder package consists of a wireless handset, a USB dongle and software.
Recordings can be played back either on your PC or on the handset's built-in speaker. The integrated lithium battery lasts for up to twelve hours, Lindy says.
Phenom X4 9850 overclock record: 3.1GHz
We’ve had the Phenom X4 9850 for a day now and we’ve clocked all four cores stably to 3.1GHz using a regular Akasa AK-876 air cooler. That’s a modest 24 per cent boost over its native 2.5GHz clock speed.
We used a Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 motherboard, 2GB Corsair TwinX 1066MHz Ram (downclocked to 800MHz but linked to the bus so it increased to 888MHz), a 0.225V core boost, a 14x CPU multiplier and a 222MHz bus speed to achieve this magic number.
That voltage boost is rather big, but our sample was also happy to sit at 2.8GHz with a simple 0.05V increase. It even booted at 3.2GHz, but couldn’t load Windows properly.
When overclocked, our preliminary results show it is 13 per cent faster than a 2.66GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700 in PCmark05 and two per cent faster in Cinebench 9.5. It’s still slower than a 3GHz QX6850 and a long way off high end Penryn quad cores.
At its default speed (2.5GHz) the Phenom X4 9850 can’t keep up with Intel’s slowest Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor in PCmark05 CPU test, Cinebench 9.5 or X. It does beat the Q6600 by 160 points in 3Dmark06’s CPU test though.
The Phenom X4 9850’s big hope lies in a decent retail price. Pre-order pricing lies at £170 which, in the UK, is £20 more than a Core 2 Quad Q6600.
A full review will follow, but here are some more scores from our 3.1GHz overclocked sample:
3Dmark06 CPU: 4526
Cinebench 9.5: 478 (single core), 1473 (quad core)
Cinebench X: 2707 (single core), 9959 (quad core)
PCmark05: 9172 (just 7396 at 2.5GHz)
A full review will come soon, but for now these results can be directly compared to PCW's other CPU tests at www.reportlabs.com
Why Moore's Law needs AMD
Intel appears to have walked all over AMD in the past few days, releasing new quad-cores to spoil the much-heralded unveiling of its rival's Barcelona processors and then flourishing 32nm and 45nm wafers to point up the fact that AMD is stuck at 65nm.
There was little new on the processor front at the Intel Developer Forum, but the mood was upbeat. Intel founder Gordon Moore said that his famous law predicting that transistor density (and thus processing power) would double every 18-24 months looked good for up to 15 more years.
Enter the second, er... the third, er... the fourth AMD generation
Nobody from PCW Towers could make it to today's launch of AMD's Barcelona chips in Barcelona (where else?) and we could find no-one at the company to elucidate a somewhat confusion announcement. The nine new quad-cores all have names of the form 83xx or 23xx. The first digit, according to AMD, indicates the scalability: eight means that number can be used on a single motherboard.
The last two digits indicate relative performance, and the second digit the generation. So, following this logic, all today's processors are third generation.
But, according to an AMD presentation, all the quad-cores including 45nm versions launching next year, are second generation and the third generation will come in 2009 with the launch of 45nm octal-cores. And yet another AMD paper refers to them as fourth-generation, though this could relate to the manufacturing process used. We trust that the processors themselves won't get their data so mixed up.
