Linux Hardware Looks at Core 2

Penguin Lover writes "Linux Hardware has just posted a new story on how Intel's new Conroe performs under Linux. From the article: 'Now is a great time to be CPU shopping because no matter which side of the isle you look on, you have great choice for both CPUs and motherboards. Along with Intel's chipset offerings, keep in mind that NVIDIA has the nForce series for Intel CPUs which would give you SLI support for all your Quake Wars and UT2007 gaming needs.'"

which side of the what?

[njvic (614279)]

Isle? Come on /. editors! It's aisle!

Re:which side of the what?

[chrismcdirty (677039)]

Give them a little bit of credit. Maybe they live on a small island, and the only computer shops are on either side of the isle.

Re:which side of the what?

[njvic (614279)]

Actually now that I have RTFA, I see the spelling error is in the story, so the /. editors (or Penguin Lover) should then add [sic] to the quote.

Re:which side of the what?

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

You're assuming that Taco&Co actually have any real editorial experience and even know what [sic] means...

Re:which side of the what?

[skoaldipper (752281)]

Give them a little bit of credit. Maybe they live on a small island, and the only computer shops are on either side of the isle.

I heard the Skipper is trying to pass off the boat radio as a computer at his shop, while the Professor is selling a sweet beowulf coconut cluster running linux on the other.

Re:

[tverbeek (457094)]

I've always preferred shopping on the windward side of the isle. The leeward side of the isle always seems to have higher prices.

Bang for the buck

[Ritz_Just_Ritz (883997)]

The Core2 E6600 seems to be a nice bang for the money as it is right around the middle of the currently available speed grades and is the cheapest iteration with 4MB of L2 cache. It also seems to be competitive with dual core AMD products (my usual choice) that are substantially more expensive. It's definitely a buyer's market these days...let the price war begin! :)

Re:

[the_humeister (922869)]

Depends on the usage I guess. I can pick up a 1ghz duron at my local university surplus for next to nothing, and it will run MS Word and Mozilla just as well as the latest octa-core processors.

Re:Bang for the buck

[qortra (591818)]

Of course it won't run them as well. Clearly, you've never tried to open a large document (100+ pages) with pictures, tables, and indexes using Word (or especially OpenOffice which saves more money than a hardware upgrade would cost). It's a nightmare; imagine trying to drag an 18 wheeler with a Geo Metro. Even webpages can be a bit taxing these days. A sufficiently complex flash animation (yes, I hate flash too), or even AJAX webapp can bring a 1Ghz duron to its knees, especially when the rendering gets complex; Google fortunately has fairly simple AJAX pages, but others are not so kind.

Moreover, there is nothing like using an SMP system: either two processors or a single dual-core (hyperthreading is exempt from this comment). Having all those piddly little background tasks on one core means that the second core is available just to obey your whims. The latency in executing business and web apps with a dual-core is unparalleled.

Clearly you're cheap, and I can respect that (heaven knows I'm almost as poor as they get). Perhaps you have a point that the $350 processor that the grandparent spoke of is not in the optimal point of the price/performance curve, but even for people that just use Word and Firefox, you can't claim that a new $150 dual-core won't run stuff significantly faster than Duron; and you don't even have to blow that extra imaginary money on an octa-core[sic] processor to get the extra horsepower.

In either case, I consider your minimalist elitism offtopic.

the isle

[Anoraknid the Sartor (9334)]

which isle would that be?

Penguin Isle?

Isle be going now...

Dontcha just love...

[MightyYar (622222)]

I like the "NOW is a great time to buy..." argument for anything that improves steadily over time. Can you point to a time in recent computer history where "NOW" wasn't the best time to purchase a new rig? It can't possibly be news to readers here that the processor-power-to-dollar-ratio is at its best point ever, can it? It would be like saying "NOW is the best time to buy a new car", as if there has been a point in the last 20 years where the general trend of car quality has dropped, but even more ridiculous because of Moore's Law.

Re:Dontcha just love...

[AcidLacedPenguiN (835552)]

I know a friend of mine got burned when buying his rig about 2 years ago, PCI-e had just come out, and he didn't expect it to kill AGP in a matter of days. So, I'd say that was a bad time to buy a midrange system. (PCI-e was at the expensive end at the time)

Re:

[Frumious Wombat (845680)]

386sx, 486SLC, P60-wienie-roaster-edition, early Intel-EM64T. I think those were points not to "Buy Now".

Yes, I can.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Can you point to a time in recent computer history where "NOW" wasn't the best time to purchase a new rig?

Say it with me now: Itanium.

Re:Dontcha just love...

[Konster (252488)]

Yeah... 4 weeks ago the AMD 3700+ was $200.

Now it's $99.

NOW seems to be a pretty good time to pick up on decent processing power. NOW I can get a decent CPU for $99, a 320 GB drive for $95. ...and the list goes on. Silent 7600 GS for $110. Top name DVD recorders all day long for $28.

I just built that system for less than $600 and it uttlerly vaporizes the box I built last year at double the price.

But you are still on a 486 waiting for the right NOW time to upgrade.

Constant Battle

[DarkNemesis618 (908703)]

This only extends the constant battle between AMD & Intel. Intel comes up with something better than AMD...shortly thereafter, AMD comes up with something that beats that out...and so on and so on. While I have not personally tested any of the Conroe chips, I do have 2 linux boxes, one using an Intel P4 & the other an AMD Athlon64. Both run Ubuntu perfectly. Pretty much what I'm trying to say is simply that in a month or two, or when AMD comes out with their next line of CPUs, the discussion will just restart.

Re:

[AcidLacedPenguiN (835552)]

I think the significance of the Conroe is that it is an entirely new architecture and it caught AMD off guard as their new architecture won't be out until next year. Because of this newer better chip by Intel selling at a moderate price and AMD has no product to counter it, the only defence they have is extremely reduced prices. Reduced prices means that it is a better time to buy, say an AMDx2 4200+ now than it was say, 3 weeks ago. I imagine that Intel is reducing prices on their current lines to counter

Back and forth

[LaughingCoder (914424)]

There was one really important point at the end of the article that should not be overlooked:

Also keep in mind that AMD has yet to go to a 65nm manufacturing process.

AMD remains competitive with Intel, even though they are still at 90nm. Speed goes up and power goes down with die scaling! Now, clearly the Core2 is the fastest processor you can buy today, and Intel is (smartly) offering speed grades in the mid-price range in order to try and "buy back" the enthusiasts. But AMD will get a nice speed bump when they bring 65nm on line. Of course Intel is not standing still either, as they are aggressively moving towards 45nm.

I love capitalism.

Re:Back and forth

[MrFlibbs (945469)]

A good point, but keep in mind that the performance and power differences between Prescott (90nm) and Cedarmill (65nm) were decidely underwhelming. The greater leakage current in Intel's 65nm process ate into most of the gains from the smaller process. It did make the die smaller and thus cheaper, but not much better in either performance or power consumption.

Perhaps the AMD/IBM SOI process will do better at 65nm in controlling leakage current and provide the needed performance boost. Intel plans to release the 45nm Penryn in 2H07, and claims to have greatly improved the leakage current situation. AMD needs to leapfrom Conroe's performance with their 65nm part to remain competitive. Schedule is critical here: if Intel is late, AMD will regain momemtum; if AMD is late, Penryn will make the 65nm AMD part unattractive.

But what compiler flags to use?

[MarcQuadra (129430)]

I'm going to buy an e6600-based desktop in the winter, and I'm wondering if GCC will add tuning for the Core 2 processors. My guess is that '-Os -march=pentium-m -msse3 -mfpmath=sse' is the way to do it now in 32-bit mode, but there have been enough changes in the Core 2 to make for a new DFA profile, no? I thought they radically revamped the Pentium3 core, adding execution units and such.

I just rebuilt my Core (1) Duo laptop with the aforementioned options and it seems to get me the most bang for my buck.

From what I've read, compiling and running in 32-bit mode is still the best choice for now, the Core 2 is a lot better than the EM64T pentium 4 at running 64-bit code, but still not as fast as just using the 32-bit code (stuff like video encoding is happening in the 128-bit vector unit anyway, and I don't need more than 4GB addressable space).

Re:But what compiler flags to use?

[Agelmar (205181)]

I downloaded the 32-bit precompiled version of firefox, and was able to install the flash plugin into that.

Actually, for me, 64-bit is entirely convenient. I just type "emerge mozilla" and it works ;-) Haven't tried VMWare though

But have you actually tried to buy one?

[JustNiz (692889)]

>>> 'Now is a great time to be CPU shopping... you have great choice for both CPUs and motherboards.... keep in mind that NVIDIA has the nForce series for Intel CPUs which would give you SLI support for all your Quake Wars and UT2007 gaming needs

Umm nope. Iv'e been trying to buy the bits to make a no-compromises gaming PC and can't get anywhere at all.
Products that have been actually reviewed, benchmarked and advertised for weeks but are still not available to actually buy include:
* a retail core2 X6800 CPU (I want the official fan too)
* any motherboard with Nvidia 590 sli intel ed. chipset
* the fastest memory (corsair 6400c3)
and finally not yet reviewed but:
* the new Nvidia GPU that will do directX 10 (for vista comaptability)
If you were to buy a non-directx 10 top-end GPU now you'd be crazy.

The worst offender is Intel. I don't know why even now about a month after the core2 launch you still can't find a retail x6800 extreme anywhere. I'm guessing intel are just letting the big builders like Dell grab the entire supply still. Intel shouldn't just feed those guys without putting some out on the street too.

Re:

[fabs64 (657132)]

To run a decent sized lcd at native resolution would be a start... but in all seriousness for anything other than gaming you're right, there's no real need to keep up with the cycle

Re:Apart from gaming

[MightyYar (622222)]

Compiling anything, encoding video, ripping CDs to MP3, large relational database queries, scientific computing, etc.

Oh, you meant for reading email and surfing the net? Yes, your hardware is fine.

Re:Apart from gaming

[MightyYar (622222)]

"save money on hardware"

Especially iPods!