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From: R on 1 Jul 2010 05:38
I'll be setting up a new system within the next month or two.
Originally planned on Bloomfield, but a friend just demo'd the six
core Gulftown, and damn, it was fast! And unfortunately expensive.
Still...would be nice, especially if prices drop (around $1000 for CPU
right now, I believe).

I'm looking for perspective on how the faster Bloomfields stack up to
the Gulftown, especially in regard to the price difference. Also
wondering if there's a motherboard that would handle both processors
(I believe the Gulftown is still an LGA 1366 package, right?).
From: Foke on 1 Jul 2010 16:04
On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:38:40 -0400, R <R(a)nospamorspam.com> wrote:

>I'll be setting up a new system within the next month or two.
>Originally planned on Bloomfield, but a friend just demo'd the six
>core Gulftown, and damn, it was fast! And unfortunately expensive.
>Still...would be nice, especially if prices drop (around $1000 for CPU
>right now, I believe).
>
>I'm looking for perspective on how the faster Bloomfields stack up to
>the Gulftown, especially in regard to the price difference. Also
>wondering if there's a motherboard that would handle both processors
>(I believe the Gulftown is still an LGA 1366 package, right?).

There's not many apps that will gain from having 4 threads, much less 6.
So unless you know for sure that you'll be using your new system with
applications that support six threads, then Bloomfield should work just
fine. Gulftown is LGA 1366.

Or for a more cost-effective system, you could get a factory unlocked
i7-875K. It uses the LGA 1156 on the P55 chipset which supports dual
channel; as opposed to the triple channel Bloomfield chipset, which
according to benches really doesn't provide any real-world performance
gains. There are tons of solid P55 chipset boards out there.
From: geoff on 2 Jul 2010 03:55
> There's not many apps that will gain from having 4 threads, much less 6.

.. . . and that is a good general point. A lot of the hardware interfaces,
such as SATA II or things like NorthBridge are not running at full capacity,
ie not saturated with data which uses all the bandwidth, but we are led to
believe that we need SATA III, etc.

--g


From: R on 2 Jul 2010 15:25
On 1 Jul 2010 15:04:01 -0500, Foke <Foke(a)foke.com.invalid> wrote:

>On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:38:40 -0400, R <R(a)nospamorspam.com> wrote:
>
>>I'll be setting up a new system within the next month or two.
>>Originally planned on Bloomfield, but a friend just demo'd the six
>>core Gulftown, and damn, it was fast! And unfortunately expensive.
>>Still...would be nice, especially if prices drop (around $1000 for CPU
>>right now, I believe).
>>
>>I'm looking for perspective on how the faster Bloomfields stack up to
>>the Gulftown, especially in regard to the price difference. Also
>>wondering if there's a motherboard that would handle both processors
>>(I believe the Gulftown is still an LGA 1366 package, right?).
>
>There's not many apps that will gain from having 4 threads, much less 6.
>So unless you know for sure that you'll be using your new system with
>applications that support six threads, then Bloomfield should work just
>fine. Gulftown is LGA 1366.

I've been working on a couple apps that use the new .NET multi-core
support platform (TPL: Task Parallel Library), so I'd be able to make
use of it, if only in a more R&D sense. But given that the TPL is now
mainstream, maybe other apps will be doing this more. In the past,
threading was tough enough but supporting multi-core was way more
difficult to code.

>Or for a more cost-effective system, you could get a factory unlocked
>i7-875K. It uses the LGA 1156 on the P55 chipset which supports dual
>channel; as opposed to the triple channel Bloomfield chipset, which
>according to benches really doesn't provide any real-world performance
>gains. There are tons of solid P55 chipset boards out there.

Once every four years or so I get (more or less) up to speed on
current CPUs. This is not one of those times, so I appreciate the
advice. <g> Too much to keep track of. By 'unlocked', I presume you're
talking about overclocking. Haven't done that for ages.

So the Bloomfield hasn't made much of a practical jump in speed over
the Lynnfield? This stuff gets more confusing with each generation. Is
there a good site that encapsulates most of the current status on
various chipsets?

BTW, the 2.93GHz i7-875K Lynnfield is $329 on Newegg (I thought they
were down to a bit over $200). The 2.8GHz i7-930 Bloomfield is $289.
Would that make a difference re your comparison above, or is the
Lynnfield still the way to go?
From: Foke on 3 Jul 2010 15:03
On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:25:29 -0400, R <R(a)nospamorspam.com> wrote:


>Once every four years or so I get (more or less) up to speed on
>current CPUs. This is not one of those times, so I appreciate the
>advice. <g> Too much to keep track of. By 'unlocked', I presume you're
>talking about overclocking. Haven't done that for ages.

Yes, the unlocked variant allows for overclocking. But since the newer
Core models utilize "turbo boost", they are essentially factory
overclocked anyway so overclocking isn't all it used to be. I only
recommend the 875K because it's actually $250 cheaper than it's locked
counterpart at the same clockspeed, the i7-870.

>So the Bloomfield hasn't made much of a practical jump in speed over
>the Lynnfield? This stuff gets more confusing with each generation. Is
>there a good site that encapsulates most of the current status on
>various chipsets?

A couple of decent articles that address your question can be found here:
http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/making-sense-of-lynnfield-is-bloomfield-really-better/
and here:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17545

>BTW, the 2.93GHz i7-875K Lynnfield is $329 on Newegg (I thought they
>were down to a bit over $200). The 2.8GHz i7-930 Bloomfield is $289.
>Would that make a difference re your comparison above, or is the
>Lynnfield still the way to go?

To correctly populate the triple-channel memory controller of the
Bloomfield you'll need a couple more sticks of memory, and the
motherboards tend to run a bit more so that's liable to balance out
cost-wise.

I'm using an Asus P7P55D
http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=RBA8CzWoopUlYRFZ
with an i7-860 and am very pleased. The motherboard is only $150 from
Newegg. Any 1366 board will cost at least $50 more, so there's your price
difference between the i7-930 and the i7-875K. You could of course also
go with the 860 vs 875K and save yet another $50. I can't speak to the
performance difference between the two since I don't have the 875K, but if
I were building my system today I would probably spend the extra $50 for
the 875K. It wasn't available when I put this one together two months
ago.
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