Intel Announces Xeon E7 10-cores, 20 Threads

GPU computing isn't the answer to everything. First, GPU computing doesn't help integer (it mainly helps floating point), so these will absolutely wipe the floor with GPUs for integer operations. Second, these are made for a completely different market - high end servers where reliability is critical. These aren't workstation or desktop CPUs - they're for large servers.

I'm pretty sure these are Westmere-EX processors and have nothing to do with Sandy Bridge.

I use 3ds max and although there are render plug-ins that make use of Cuda technology, the use of the technology is still in its infancy. It has so many incompatibility problems with current material, lighting, and fx plug-ins. My current system has 24 CPU logical cores @ 3.06ghz, and 1024 Cuda cores using 2x GTX 580 phantom 3gb cards. Production rendering using Cuda cores and Iray is damn fast, and has greatly improved final render times when working on photo realistic architectural scenes, but the quality of the render takes time to match the render quality produced using mental ray using CPU cores, and you have to start a project completely from scratch using materials and lighting etc that you know will be compatible with the iray plug-in. Because of this, it makes it impossible to use Cuda technology for most of my work, as clients send me files using materials, lighting and plug-ins that do not work using iray, so for the time being, as many CPU cores as possible is a must for my work, and 3ds max makes use of all 24 CPU cores in production rendering. Production rendering with 24 CPU cores is still blisteringly fast. Nvidia claim that using their Cuda technology can be a lot faster than using Multi-core CPU’s, but that depends entirely on the system its being compared against, and the application being used. And another problem is power consumption. The two CPU’s I have installed, have a max TDP of 95w per CPU, the two GTX 580 cards have a max TDP of 488W, so there is still a lot of work to be done as far as getting GPU’s to be as power efficient as CPU’s. The Companies that are most likely to buy these new Xeon’s are large businesses that run massive data centres, server farms, and production studios, where low power consumption and reliability are critical, and GPU’s score very badly in this area. My system is prepared for the future, and I am very sure that one day when the use of Cuda technology has matured, that GPU production rendering will be more popular than CPU’s in this task, but that day is not yet, at least not in my line of industry. Iray also uses the combination of GPU and CPU technology together, so there is nothing wrong with having as many CPU cores and GPU cores in one system as possible.

Check your facts, Tom's! These E7 processors are built on "previous generation" architecture. Here's the link from Intel to prove it:
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/04/05/performance-reliability-security-intel-xeon-processor-formula-for-mission-critical-computing?cid=rss-258152-c1-265964

joytech22I can't think of any reason why you would need so many cores, anything that needs that many cores for visual, animation and physics is better off using a GPU for anyway.Please, tell me what use of so many cores really is.On a side complaint, $4600 for a CPU when ordered in batches of 1000+?Intel would be making a BUCKET load off each CPU.Business as usual.
Two Words for what a processor like this is used for: Virtual Servers.

With that many cores and enough memory, the one processor could effectively act a 10 different servers where you only need one core for the virtual server.

Pretty much this is a heavy RoI/low TCO processor.

joytech22I can't think of any reason why you would need so many cores, anything that needs that many cores for visual, animation and physics is better off using a GPU for anyway.Please, tell me what use of so many cores really is.On a side complaint, $4600 for a CPU when ordered in batches of 1000+?Intel would be making a BUCKET load off each CPU.Business as usual.
Ummm??? A Server? Duh!