Having staunchly avoided the Intel NetBurst Marchitecture in the form of the Pentium4 and PentiumD, where the former had dictated that “Megahurtz-madness” as the only true way since 2000 since the NetBurst line, which débuted on the 180nm process and used the “Willamette” codename… with successive die shrinks, would take Intel to the “magical” 10GHz milestone around about the 65nm/45nm transition in 2007.
History however, tells us that NetBurst was a great big lumbering and power guzzling elephant where back in late 2004, Intel were to change their tune and that from 2005 onwards CPUs from Intel (and AMD) were to be of the multicore (well, dualcore initially) variety. For 2006, Intel’s watchword was “Performance per Watt” by the way of the Core architecture, which would form the basis of CPUs in the mobile space, desktop space and commodity server space.
Pentium M’s (namely “Banias” on 130nm and “Dothan” on 90nm) introduced in early 2003 had already revamped the “dead” Pentium III line in producing a low-power, high IPC CPU in pretty much the form that the RWT guys speculated way back in 2001 in how to make x86 run cool. “Yonah”, fabricated in the 65nm semiconductor process node allowed Intel to bring two lower power high performance cores into one piece of silicon!
Of course, problem with “Yohan” was that it was a CPU purely for the mobile space (that is, laptops) as it lacked features such as EM64T, XD bit and more recently VT, as seen on the desktop Pentium4s/PentiumDs and server Xeon 50xx/70xx. That said, it didn’t stop Intel from releasing a Core based server processor under the Xeon LV brand, codenamed “Sossaman” since low power blade servers have seldom need for 64bit-ness.
Less one has been living under a rock, Intel are starting to push the new Core 2 architecture into servers with Xeon 51xx codenamed “Woodcrest” back in June, desktop with Core 2 Duo E6xxx/X6xxx codenamed “Conroe” and mobile Core 2 Duo T5xxx/T7xxx codenamed “Merom” (for both 2 MiB and 4 MiB L2 cache variants) to both officially launch on 27th July, i.e.: not that long to go now!
Personally, my 1.5GHz Celeron M (130nm “Banias” with just 512kiB instead of the usual 1MiB L2 cache) based laptop is getting rather long in the tooth with the dual Pentium-III 700E (Slot1 180nm “Coppermine” with 256kiB L2 cache) only useful for server tasks, so am in pretty dire need of something (read anything) faster and hopefully be a bit more productive in the computery things I do.
Whilst a new laptop would just be a brain-dead simple answer of anything “Merom” based, a new desktop/workstation is a little trickier. You see, back in the day when I built my dually, Pentium II/III Xeons for servers used the same SECC2/Slot1 package as desktop Pentium II/III CPUs. Also, desktop CPUs were able to work in dual processor mode when coupled with a suitable dual slot/socket motherboard.
Nowadays, if you want a dual-socket computer for some multiprocessing goodness, it has to be a Xeon which adds a little to the cost of things. Furthermore, even though dual-cored CPUs are now here, the lure of some 4-way (oh eer!) lovin’ is a bit too much to resist! ;) Still, I have in mind what I’d like to build (yes build… home-rolled computers beat anything off-the-shelf in terms of geek satifsaction :P) for a desktop/workstation.
A single-socket computer which would help satisfy my hardware craving would probably look like this:
| Component | Item Cost | # | Collective Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz, 4 MiB L2) | £250 | 1 | £250 |
| Intel D975XBX “Bad-Axe” ATX motherboard | £150 | 1 | £150 |
| nVidia Geforce 7900 GTX | £320 | 1 | £320 |
| Crucial CT2KIT12864AA80E (2×1 GiB DDR2-800) | £233 | 2 | £466 |
| Lian Li PC-V600 (ATX, Al mid-tower, silver) | £85 | 1 | £85 |
| Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP (1920×1200, 24″ widescreen) | £700 | 1 | £700 |
| Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe soundcard | £115 | 1 | £115 |
| Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 (SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MiB) | £150 | 4 | £600 |
| Antec Phantom 350 PSU (350W, fanless, ATX12V2.0) | £109 | 1 | £109 |
| LiteOn SHW-16H5S DVD ReWriter | £23 | 2 | £46 |
| Mitsumi FA404M 1.44″ FDD | £13 | 1 | £13 |
| Logitech Ultra-X Media Keyboard | £14 | 1 | £14 |
| Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 | £25 | 1 | £25 |
| Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX (CL-P0310) | £30 | 1 | £30 |
| Total Cost | £2923 | ||
Bucketloads of processing grunt for under £3k where the Conroe E6600 can comfortably overclock to 3.0GHz (1.333GHz FSB) right up to around 3.6GHz (1.6GHz FSB) on air-cooling without the need for exotic methods. On top of this is a display exceeding 1080p HDTV resolution, 4 GiB of RAM with 1.5 TB of RAID5 storage enough to store some 300 hours of DVD quality video!
On the dual-socket front, one can be restrained balancing cost with performance, or just go all out burning money like no tomorrow. For the former (sensible) option, I’d personally go for something like this:
| Component | Item Cost | # | Collective Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Xeon 5130 (2.0GHz, 4 MiB L2) | £254 | 2 | £508 |
| Supermicro X7DAE E-ATX motherboard | £350 | 1 | £350 |
| nVidia Geforce 7950 GX2 | £450 | 1 | £450 |
| Crucial CT2KIT12872AF667 (2×1 GiB ECC FB-DIMM) | £220 | 2 | £440 |
| Lian Li PC-V1200plusII (E-ATX, Al mid-tower, silver) | £130 | 1 | £130 |
| Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP (2560×1600, 30″ widescreen) | £1450 | 1 | £1450 |
| Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe soundcard | £115 | 1 | £115 |
| Seagate 750 GB Barracuda (SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MiB) | £265 | 4 | £1060 |
| Tagan TG900-U95 PSU (900W, ESP12V, ATX12V2.0) | £165 | 1 | £165 |
| LiteOn SHW-16H5S DVD ReWriter | £23 | 2 | £46 |
| Mitsumi FA404M 1.44″ FDD | £13 | 1 | £13 |
| Logitech Ultra-X Media Keyboard | £14 | 1 | £14 |
| Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 | £25 | 1 | £25 |
| Total Cost | £4766 | ||
Works out not that much more than a Core 2 Duo E6600 based system considering the shift of a 24″ display to a 30″ one offering nearly 80% more screen real-estate, a beefy video card in the shape of an nVidia Geforce 7950 GX2 to drive such insanely high resolutions plus an extra 750 GB storage space with the vast 2.25 TB array! All off this is powered by 4 “Woodcrest” cores each clocked at 2.0GHz which should be more than plenty even for people that abuse computers like I do. ;)
Lastly, ultimate geekpr0n would be something in the shape of this “all out” Xeon system:
| Component | Item Cost | # | Collective Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Xeon 5160 (3.0GHz, 4 MiB L2) | £650 | 2 | £1300 |
| Supermicro X7DA3/i SAS E-ATX motherboard | ~£500 | 1 | ~£500 |
| nVidia Quadro FX 5500 | £2080 | 2 | £4160 |
| Crucial CT2KIT25672AF667 (2×2 GiB ECC FB-DIMM) | £595 | 4 | £2380 |
| Lian Li PC-V2000plusII (E-ATX, Al full-tower, silver) | £152 | 1 | £152 |
| Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP (2560×1600, 30″ widescreen) | £1450 | 2 | £2900 |
| Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe soundcard | £115 | 1 | £115 |
| Terratec Phase 88 recording interface | £200 | 1 | £200 |
| Seagate 146 GB Cheetah 15K.4 (SAS, 15000rpm, 8MiB) | £532 | 4 | £2128 |
| Seagate 750 GB Barracuda (SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MiB) | £265 | 6 | £1590 |
| Supermicro All-in-One ZCR card (AOC-LPZCR2) | £270 | 1 | £270 |
| Tagan TG1100-U95 PSU (1100W, ESP12V, ATX12V2.0) | £235 | 1 | £235 |
| LiteOn SHW-16H5S DVD ReWriter | £23 | 2 | £46 |
| Mitsumi FA404M 1.44″ FDD | £13 | 1 | £13 |
| Logitech Ultra-X Media Keyboard | £14 | 1 | £14 |
| Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 | £25 | 1 | £25 |
| Total Cost | £16028 | ||
Yes that is a 5-digit sum you see there which if converted to American dollars is just a teeny bit shy of the 30 grand mark! Impressive eh? ;) Out goes the pair of “slow” Xeon 5130 and replaced by the top-end Xeon 5160 clocked an extra 50% faster. Everything hangs off a yet-to-be-released Supermicro board which supports SAS where the goodies include a pair of nVidia Quadro FX 5500 each driving a Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP giving a rediculous 5120×1600 pixels of screen real-estate.
The system is “only” half maxed out in terms of RAM sporting some 16 GiB, since going the whole hog for 32 GiB would require 4 GiB modules which roughly cost about £3200 each, 16 of these will then total an astonishing £25600 for just memory alone! :D Storage wise, this time we exceed 4 TB with the 4 ultra-fast SAS disks set up as a 292 GB RAID1+0 (stripped-mirror) array and the 6 SATA disks collated in RAID5 for an enormous 3.75 TB array. ;)
Silliness aside, all three systems are upgradeable to quad-cores when “Kentsfield” arrives as a Core 2 Extreme probably under the X7xxx designation and “Clovertown” most probably as a Xeon 7xxx of some sort. 8-cores in 2-sockets will obviously gain full marks on “e-penis” stakes! ;)
