Reynod :
You don't throw away 10 years worth of effort sorting bugs out of a core unless the previous model was better ... its very hard to start from scratch.
That's why they threw the Pentium 4 away and reworked the Pentium 3 (mobile) to come up with core2. P3 had a higher IPC than P4 ... the pipes were a better design ... or could be improved moreso. The core2 cores are at the heart of the i7 ... some changes of course.
Sorry for the oversimplification ... very crude explanation.
While this is close, its a bit off. Core 2 is actually based off of the Pentium III Coppermine that was a desktop part. What happened was that during the Pentium 4 era is that Intel needed a good mobile offense against AMDs Athlon that was low power and decent performance.
What they did is they wrapped the Pentium III Coppermineinto a mobile package naming it the Pentium M.
What they saw (well the guys in Israel anyways) was that it would run better than a Pentium 4 and clock per clock it whomped it and Athlon like there was no tomorrow.
So they took what they learned from Pentium 4 (lets faces it, the P4s pipeline design was better since it gave the ability to clock higher than others it was just the rest of the arch that had leakage up the arse) and applied it to the Pentium M thus creating Core 2.
Core i7 is Core 2 with a lot of IPC enhancements, a IMC and QPI.
speedbird :
In my opinion the Phenom II is still better value for money and fast enough for most. The Average user isn't going to really see a difference. Oh yeah Hyperthreading is a Gimmick, it still only has four processor cores.
Its not HT. And it was a gimmick but SMT actually does give a nice performance boost. But yes the average user wont see any difference which is why a Pentium Dual Core E2200 is suffice for most average users.
Helloworld_98 :
phenom II is better value until the i7 price cuts come, and i5 will be just a bit cheaper than i7 is now so AMD doesn't really need to be worried.
I think Intel is making a mistake though by using larrabee as a GPU, if they used it as a CPU they would easily own the market but then I guess the EU would stomp down on them for taking out the competition.
Well that depends on the Core i5s performance. It may be something AMD might worry about.
And Larrabee is a bit different. The design of the processors for it re mainly for GPU applications. Of course they could be using their design based off of Terascale mixed with Core i7s SMT (I think its supposed to be 32 processors with 64 threads and each core is capable of so many shaders) which will be great since Terascale was completely modular.
That means they could have some of the processors be PPUs(Physic Processing Units) and link it with Havoks Physics engine since they now own havok.
And you are right. If they released a CPU like Terascale or Larrabee they would end up monopolizing the market and especially the server market. Terascale was shwon to be able to do the same job as 130 CPUs (it was only 80) and only used 62w @ full load @ 2.5GHz per core. And we all know Intel doesn't want that to happen or they will be broken up again which in the end is bad for us end users.
q_nanotubes :
thanks guys... So the i7 does better work per clockspeed but not better work per dollar?
Actually I'm gonna build a desktop in quarter three, so this helps me although i don't really understand what some of guys are saying. lol
My plan is:
MSI GD-70
Phenom II 955
2GB Corsair DDR3 1333 DHX
Corsair TX 650
2 X ATI Radeon 4770
Cooler Master CM 690
Are these things suitable?
And good value for money?
I just want to play games a lot because I have restrained my self from doing so for three or four years
Well what do you plan on doing? For gaming thats a pretty decent rig right there although for me I would go with the HD4870 2GB but thats cuz I am crazy.
Also, do you know what OS you plan to use? If its XP 2GB of RAM is fine but if its Vista or even Windows 7 4GB+ is always better.