Intel Gives More Details Six-Core Gulftown CPUs
In a press conference yesterday Intel offered a few more tidbits of information on the six-core Gulftown chips it plans to launch later this year.
Scheduled for release sometime in the first half of this year, Gulftown is aimed at high-end desktops and workstations. Intel yesterday offered some juicy deets on the Westmere chip, including that 1.17 billion transistors onto 240mm sq. die and carries 12MB in L3 and a thermal design power of 130W at 3.33GHz. But the part we're most excited about is improvements in power efficiency.
This is the first design that can do power gating with not just CPU cores, but also the "uncore" parts of the chip. Previously, power gating the L3 cache was not possible because all that core data needed to be stored somewhere after everything else was shut down. However, rather than saving core data in the L3 when it shuts off, Intel has added a dedicated SRAM to store core data and enable Westmere 6C to power gate the L3 cache.
Other information revealed yesterday is that Gulftown will be sold under the Core i7 brand, will be capable of running 12 threads at once, and will not include integrated graphics. Unfortunately, the folks at Intel kept it zipped in terms of clock speeds
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Brb, need to go cut off my arm and leg to get one of these.
Brb, need to go cut off my arm and leg to get one of these.
your arm and leg aren't worth $5.
Sell the 6-core @ 2.8Ghz for $380 and I'll buy it. TDP of 130W is crazy... I guess the lower clocked versions will be less? I sure wish I had an operating system that would take advantage of all 12 threads natively... *sigh*
your arm and leg aren't worth $5.
Yeah, but he can probably get 2K for a kidney.
I'm sure one of these CPUs will be the price of my entire rig.. maybe double
I'll pass and wait for software to catch up with my triple core
THIS IS SPARTAAAAAA OF CPU
I've got to get me one of these!!!!
You know what would be better than 6-core CPU's? Dual or Triple Socket Motherboards that could support overclocking. I would rather have three 2-core CPU's that can be overclocked to 4.2 GHz than one 6-core CPU at stock 3.33GHz for 1/4 the price. That would give me a hard on.
so how much is it gonna cost? like 1500?1200?
You know what would be better than 6-core CPU's? Dual or Triple Socket Motherboards that could support overclocking. I would rather have three 2-core CPU's that can be overclocked to 4.2 GHz than one 6-core CPU at stock 3.33GHz for 1/4 the price. That would give me a hard on.
If I misinterpret your statement correctly, you want to pay 4 times the money for a three-socket dual core setup that will have the same performance as a 6 core CPU?
amd is getting even further behind they need to release their new shit NOW!
I want bulldozer already and i refuse to upgrade my cpu until its released.
"juicy deets"?
What kind of moron writes this garbage?
If I misinterpret your statement correctly, you want to pay 4 times the money for a three-socket dual core setup that will have the same performance as a 6 core CPU?
You know what I mean.
Will this finally be the time I lay my Q6600 to rest. Who knows?
Unfortunately this will be available only as an extreme edition processor initially, and from every road map I've seen that means for at least the next six months this will be the only desktop LGA1366 32nm processor. I think Intel plans to expand and possibly release other 4/6 core processors sometime in the third quarter.
This is bad news for me and anyone else who has a reasonable budget, and had plans to build a high end system with the LGA1366 32nm processors. I don't know about anyone else but it definitely seems like Intel is starting to slack off with bringing their 32nm process to market. Lack of competition from AMD in the high end? No 32nm AMD processors for at least another year? Guess there's no real reason to rush... sucks for everyone.
Hmmm, 130w thermal envelope...
Intel is crazy for some high power usage huh? P4 days here....
So what if it runs low power when idle, I'd like a CPU that doesn't require quad-rads with 1000rpm fans and its own line on my power bill.
but the power usage is no more than overclocked quad cores...they can run uup to 175W when clocked high enough
I can use 6 cores easily.. I stress my q9550 out very fast.. all 4 cores... 6cores, gimmmmie gimmmie..And on a Vmware server esx (white box of course),, then 6 cores will definetly be an improvement over the quad core currently inplace. (single cpu's..)
hmm.
that die picture makes it look suspiciously like 2 triple core's duck taped together
on the same die tho, and I'm not going to make the suggestion that I know ANYTHING about how that stuff works... I assume all 6 cores share the same pool of L3 cache?
For any one doing renderings, CFD, or the likes of that, you can never have enough cores/threads.
I think Intel is realizing that for them to do integrated on die graphics is a waste of money for high end CPU's, because the integrated Intel graphics are horrible compared to AMD's or Nvidia's or dare I say discrete graphics from the red and green team!!
"Gulftown is aimed at high-end desktops and workstations."
OK! But from reading the comments it looks like gamers and enthusiasts are itching to give a try.
I'm sorry, I have to do this..
"But can it play crysis..?"
no it can't play crysis cause intel euthanized larabee...
"Gulftown is aimed at high-end desktops and workstations."OK! But from reading the comments it looks like gamers and enthusiasts are itching to give a try.
That would be covered in the "high-end desktops"
I just thought of a new Mac Pro with two of these in it... 12 cores, 24 threads... **drools on self**
I'm Thinking That This Will Be The End For Consumers(Home And Business Not Enterprises). What Will We Do With Anything Above This. Everything Will Run So Fast And Efficient That There Is No Room For Improvement Anymore. The Next Task Will Be Penn State's And IBM's Graphene Processors Which Will Bring .5 To 1 Tera-hertz Processors. Where Gonna Fuck Up And Created Non-Stoppable A.I. To Destroy Humanity. I Mean Do We Really Need 8,10, or 12 Cores After This For anything? By That Time We Can Just Use Single Or Double Floating Points On Graphics Card Instead Of CPU Chips.
Definitely A Buy Since It's LGA 1366 And Good Asus Mobos Should Be Cheaper By This Time. I'M GONNA START SAVING MY UNEMPLOYMENT PAYMENTS NOW!
I KNOW THAT I'M A SHIT BAG!!! CHEERS
You know what would be better than 6-core CPU's? Dual or Triple Socket Motherboards that could support overclocking. I would rather have three 2-core CPU's that can be overclocked to 4.2 GHz than one 6-core CPU at stock 3.33GHz for 1/4 the price. That would give me a hard on.
EVGA already has an OCable dual 1366 on the way.
with software currently going the way it is and hardware constantly improving while prices drop, cpu upgrade beyond 3-4 cores is a waste of money.
OC 4.5GHZ AMD quad looks really good for under $200 paired up to 2 5800 series cards that for under 2g this CPU intel is toating about will cost about as much as the whole amd/ati computer