Will they run Crysis?

I'll hang on for Skylake-E - hopefully by then we'll see 12cores+ so that I'll actually get a doubling from my Gulftown, otherwise I can't see the point in upgrading. But finally we're moving on from 8…

I remember back when a flagship product launched about the same time as the mainstream, not over a year later and it's getting longer.
I think Nehelem was the last in fact. Since then intel have been tech that's a generation old with the same naming nomenclature as the current mainstream ie SB-EX was 2xxx gen tech but released as 3xxx.

zaph0d
I remember back when a flagship product launched about the same time as the mainstream, not over a year later and it's getting longer.
I think Nehelem was the last in fact. Since then intel have been tech that's a generation old with the same naming nomenclature as the current mainstream ie SB-EX was 2xxx gen tech but released as 3xxx.

Say what you like about Intel though, their market segmentation is brilliant. If you thought charging a premium for overclocking was clever, splitting overclocking parameters and then charging for each tier separately is a stroke of (evil?) genius!

If anyone ever wondered why a competitive AMD is vital for PC users this speaks volumes.

PCI lanes info would have been nice :-(

Looking at the ridiculous Skylake pricing I dread to think how much these will be.

These should be good for my VM pc ha

Luke7
Will they run Crysis?

such an outdated comment lol

Luke7
Will they run Crysis?

Not without a dedicated GPU to help things along !

I picked up Crysis a couple weeks ago in a steam sale and only just get over 65fps average at 1440p using a gtx 970 and 4790k. When Crysis first came out I could run it at a decent frame rate (can't remember what but it was smooth) at 1680x1050 on my 8800 Ultra and Q6600. So hilariously enough it's probably a fair question with todays higher resolutions.

is it worth it?
I will just comment it with this graph.

Text doesn't appear to match the picture. Perhaps Hexus ought to add wild(?) rumour to the title ;)

why cant they call xeon which sound much cooler

username2
is it worth it?
I will just comment it with this graph.

That graph assumes only one single kernel of one single program running across all cores.

My work PC, a bit busy:

top - 15:54:42 up 35 days, 6:03, 18 users, load average: 10.98, 5.05, 2.00
Tasks: 402 total, 20 running, 382 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

Yeah, I could use 10 cores. I max out 6 cores/12 threads on a daily basis.

WOW, sick! Can't wait for these to come on the market!

Needs more PCIe lanes. We had 40 with 6-cores back with SB-E. With the rise of M.2, etc., 40 isn't enough anymore.

DanceswithUnix
That graph assumes only one single kernel of one single program running across all cores.

My work PC, a bit busy:

top - 15:54:42 up 35 days, 6:03, 18 users, load average: 10.98, 5.05, 2.00
Tasks: 402 total, 20 running, 382 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

Yeah, I could use 10 cores. I max out 6 cores/12 threads on a daily basis.

You said you did max out at your work, so probably in the IT industry it would be great but for home users does it make a big difference?

DemonHighwayman writes:
> I picked up Crysis a couple weeks ago in a steam sale …

I just bought some original packs on eBay, only about 2 or 3 UKP each, good to have
the proper booklet, etc. I include them with PCs I build for people. :D

Still playing it myself, and Warhead.

> and only just get over 65fps average at 1440p using a gtx 970 and 4790k. …

I was using two 580 3GB SLI with very modified settings (extreme draw distance, better
shadows, etc.), gave about 45fps @ 1920x1200 (running with a 5GHz 2700K). Upgraded to a
single 980, went up a decent amount. However…

> When Crysis first came out I could run it at a decent frame rate (can't remember what
> but it was smooth) at 1680x1050 on my 8800 Ultra and Q6600. So hilariously enough it's
> probably a fair question with todays higher resolutions.

… thing about Crysis is the engine was not really that good. For ages after it came out,
everyone just assumed because it punished GPUs so hard that somehow that meant it was an
inherantly useful benchmark, but Warhead proved the original game's engine was not so well
optimised (Warhead runs noticeably and measurably better).

I also get some very odd numbers when trying to test configs with the Crysis Benchmark Tool,
as if it's ignoring some of the settings. I started doing various tests, but stopped after
some initial runs as some configs just didn't make sense (there's a 7970 CF result here
which shows what I mean, but I was seeing the same thing with SLI setups):

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/crysis.txt

Anyway, I plan on moving up to 2560x1440 at some point, but for that I'll switch to a 980 Ti.

As for BW-E, it boils down to pricing. Intel made the 5960X too expensive. Given the 3930K
was an 8-core CPU with 2 cores disabled, we already know they can sell these CPUs much
cheaper than they are. If Intel wants to revive the PC desktop platform, then top-end CPU
pricing needs to come down to sensible levels, though that seems unlikely given the crazy
price they set for the 6700K (who buys that thing in place of a used SB-E/IB-E or new HW-E?).

Ian.

(null; is it possible to delete posts here?)

username2
You said you did max out at your work, so probably in the IT industry it would be great but for home users does it make a big difference?

Depends on the home user. For most 4 threads is plenty but for anyone running home VM farm experiments, large compile jobs, video encoding, bulk encryption or any heavily threaded workload then 20 threads isn't much.

Damn, a reason to upgrade

Will this mean more cores heading to I5s…

Mchotpoon
Will this mean more cores heading to I5s…

No. There are no core I5 Broadwell-Es.

Nice, but expensive …

It would be better if power would be like 14W.. I am waiting Intel.. Waiting…
you can do it INTEL. I believe in 2-3 years I can see that happening..

AGTDenton
I'll hang on for Skylake-E - hopefully by then we'll see 12cores+ so that I'll actually get a doubling from my Westmere, otherwise I can't see the point in upgrading. But finally we're moving on from 8…

6 cores will already give you double the performance of a Westmere

zaph0d
I remember back when a flagship product launched about the same time as the mainstream, not over a year later and it's getting longer.
I think Nehelem was the last in fact. Since then intel have been tech that's a generation old with the same naming nomenclature as the current mainstream ie SB-EX was 2xxx gen tech but released as 3xxx.

The -E and -EP/EN platforms are bigger, more advanced and more complex chips so it's absolutely natural for them to take more development time. the -EX platform is the same again, with even more advanced features, and requires a further year of testing and development. The tech is most certainly not a generation old. It's the absolute latest there is in that platform. And that's a high end enterprise platform that requires considerable testing and validation.

Would you rather they pointlessly delayed the mainstream product for two years then, just to satisfy your pickyness? I wouldn't. (Given the ignorance reeking from your post it's unsurprising you've completely overlooked the EX series which comes out a year after the E series).

SciFi
PCI lanes info would have been nice :-(

was going to ask the same.

mapesdhs
Needs more PCIe lanes. We had 40 with 6-cores back with SB-E. With the rise of M.2, etc., 40 isn't enough anymore.

The 8 core 5960 still had 40 lanes so I doubt the new 8 core will get any more, maybe the 10 core.

mud_z
It would be better if power would be like 14W.. I am waiting Intel.. Waiting…
you can do it INTEL. I believe in 2-3 years I can see that happening..

Would be nice if this was aimed at the server market and/or the HTPC crowd but it is quite the opposite.

DanceswithUnix
Depends on the home user. For most 4 threads is plenty but for anyone running home VM farm experiments, large compile jobs, video encoding, bulk encryption or any heavily threaded workload then 20 threads isn't much.

20 threads not much on a home VM farm - what the heck are they doing? I can run a Windows VM and three Linux VM's quite happily on a rinky-dink C2D and that's what … 4 threads? Similarly in a non-shared setup wouldn't you hit storage/memory limitations on compiles before you used up your 20 threads? Not posing this as criticism merely asking the question, especially as I'm planning to up my sights from running a mere 3VM's simultaneously.

So the US$64,000,000* question … is it worth holding off on a Haswell-E purchase on the basis of this “rumour”? Or, is it more sensible to get a “cheap” (stop-gap?) 5820K while waiting for that more capable Broadwell-E drop-in replacement? Speaking of drop-in, kudos to Intel (if the rumour is true) for allowing an upgrade path for X99 owners, rather than inventing yet another socket. Asking the purchasing question because I'm thinking of splurging on a 5930K for a VM/media-coding setup this Christmas.

(* probably the list price of a 6950K knowing Intel!)

PS, is it just me or does the stated naming scheme not make a lot of sense? If I'd been in charge then instead of 6950, 6900, 6850 and 6800, I would have chosen 6900, 6880, 6865 (or 6870) and 6860.

crossy
20 threads not much on a home VM farm - what the heck are they doing? I can run a Windows VM and three Linux VM's quite happily on a rinky-dink C2D and that's what … 4 threads? Similarly in a non-shared setup wouldn't you hit storage/memory limitations on compiles before you used up your 20 threads? Not posing this as criticism merely asking the question, especially as I'm planning to up my sights from running a mere 3VM's simultaneously.

So the US$64,000,000* question … is it worth holding off on a Haswell-E purchase on the basis of this “rumour”? Or, is it more sensible to get a “cheap” (stop-gap?) 5820K while waiting for that more capable Broadwell-E drop-in replacement? Speaking of drop-in, kudos to Intel (if the rumour is true) for allowing an upgrade path for X99 owners, rather than inventing yet another socket. Asking the purchasing question because I'm thinking of splurging on a 5930K for a VM/media-coding setup this Christmas.

(* probably the list price of a 6950K knowing Intel!)

PS, is it just me or does the stated naming scheme not make a lot of sense? If I'd been in charge then instead of 6950, 6900, 6850 and 6800, I would have chosen 6900, 6880, 6865 (or 6870) and 6860.

Compilers need megabytes per task, and that isn't much these days when 32GB of ram isn't crazy (even my home PC has 16GB). So, with enough ram to cache all your source code I find performance doesn't drop until I compile around 120 copies of gcc running at the same time so I think my single hard drive can cope with about a magnitude more threads than the Xeon at work can deliver. That is under Linux, last time I tried under Windows was in XP and I can only hope things have improved from that dire scaling.

Perhaps with the VMs you are right. I have seen people running big Java based systems on VMs which have a stupid number of threads going none of which seem to do much apart from consume ram and CPU. That probably isn't too common though.

So, anybody want to lend me a grand to drop on one of these? :P

In all seriousness, the 6900K could be interesting - similar specs to the 5960X, but a ~10% higher base clock and better IPC, and potentially cheaper too (unless they add the 6950X at a new $1500 tier…).

As people have mentioned, 40 lanes looks less generous by the time you've added a PCIe drive to two…

It's nice that more cores are added at the top end, but it won't really affect my choices due to budget, which will be more aimed at the bottom of the pile. I'm guessing the lowest CPU, the 6800K, will be slightly higher in price than the 5820K initially.

qasdfdsaq
6 cores will already give you double the performance of a Westmere

Not quite sure what you meant, but I've altered my original post as I have Gulftown which is a Westmere derivative with a max of 6 cores, as opposed to 10 with the Xeons (Westmere-EX).

DanceswithUnix
Compilers need megabytes per task, and that isn't much these days when 32GB of ram isn't crazy (even my home PC has 16GB). So, with enough ram to cache all your source code I find performance doesn't drop until I compile around 120 copies of gcc running at the same time so I think my single hard drive can cope with about a magnitude more threads than the Xeon at work can deliver.

120 compiles at the same time? :bowdown:
Think you're probably right about the caching setup - I'd assumed that you'd be hammering the disks which - unless you've got some fancy SAN or RAID'd SSD setup - could have been a problem. Always surprises me how “clever” the file caching algorithms are these days - AIX especially.

DanceswithUnix
Perhaps with the VMs you are right. I have seen people running big Java based systems on VMs which have a stupid number of threads going none of which seem to do much apart from consume ram and CPU. That probably isn't too common though.

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a (harried) Websphere support guy many moons ago over some abysmal JVM performance.
Websphere guy: “yep, we'll just increase realmem by 50% and see what happens”
Me: “okay and what then if that doesn't work”
Websphere guy: “In that case increase JVM heap”
Me: “and if that doesn't work then bitch to the app vendor?”
Websphere guy: “nahh, they'll just tell us to increase realmem by 50% again, then increase heap if that doesn't work.”
Me: :wallbash:

It's conversations like this one about your dev environment that bring it home how much compute power we have “on tap” these days. Especially the “it's no big deal” when someone casually talks about hosting a VM setup with half a dozen mixed *nix and Windows VM's on what essentially is a “home PC” rather than some monolithic datacentre-resident “server” unit.

Still wondering though whether to pick a 5820K (and save some money) or go 5830K for a bit more oomph in PCI-E lanes. Although in my case SLi/Crossfire wouldn't be the use - I'd want to use that extra capability for PCI-E based SSD. Plus that bit-tech review (and a couple of others) that suggest that the ‘30K can overclock higher than it’s cheaper brother - if your cooling can handle the extra load.

crossy
120 compiles at the same time? :bowdown:

lol.

make -j120

You need a *lot* of code to compile for that to work ofc. Linking tens of thousands of object files together at the end is what chugs :D

I'm fairly confident that # of lanes will remain at current level of 40. X99 boards don't offer much in terms of expandability anyway. There are no XL-ATX/HPTX boards with 8 slots or multiple SFF-8639 ports which is a bit puzzling considering that it is top of the line platform for pretty much everything. From browsing internet to nuclear decay computing/modeling.

120 compiles at once will just mean loads of cache and memory flapping. Much better to have parallelism in actual cpu and memory systems than it is just to thrown it all into the mix and let it thrash.

Was only 2 years ago that I bought a fairly decent (at the time) PC and now I already want a replacement but tech advances so fast nowadays it's hard to do it.

Still waiting on the E5 v4 SKUs.

Luke7
Will they run Crysis?

crysis 4 for sure :)

abaxas
120 compiles at once will just mean loads of cache and memory flapping. Much better to have parallelism in actual cpu and memory systems than it is just to thrown it all into the mix and let it thrash.

It really doesn't matter though, I measured it. Over 120 yeah the performance starts to tail off a little, otherwise I need at least -j20 to keep this 12 thread box busy and beyond that you are making sure that it can always find one job that is in memory that it can run and not blocking on I/O. Beyond 120, yes I think it must be hurting CPU cache or possibly the working set is so big it can't keep all the source code fs-cached in system ram.

So really you can just throw a ton of work at the CPU and let Linux sort it out, there isn't a noticeable drop off from too much work whereas not having enough work to keep the cores busy hurts throughput a lot so I err heavily on the side of giving it more than the cores can handle.

If I compile over NFS, then the extra filesystem latency means bigger job numbers are needed.

CPU tech has slowed down a lot since AMD went non-competitive (at least at the high end) so hopefully this will move things on a bit…

10 cores ??!!!

crossy
20 threads not much on a home VM farm - what the heck are they doing? I can run a Windows VM and three Linux VM's quite happily on a rinky-dink C2D and that's what … 4 threads? Similarly in a non-shared setup wouldn't you hit storage/memory limitations on compiles before you used up your 20 threads? Not posing this as criticism merely asking the question, especially as I'm planning to up my sights from running a mere 3VM's simultaneously.

Not sure if sarcasm or trolling but the average home user has zero VMs. The high-end power users I know with home VM “farms” have Xeon workstation/server platforms for them, which cost less than the overpriced overclockable gaming platform you are talking about. If you want an overclockable gaming PC to run “sites” and a “VM farm” you are looking in the wrong place.

So the US$64,000,000* question … is it worth holding off on a Haswell-E purchase on the basis of this “rumour”? Or, is it more sensible to get a “cheap” (stop-gap?) 5820K while waiting for that more capable Broadwell-E drop-in replacement? Speaking of drop-in, kudos to Intel (if the rumour is true) for allowing an upgrade path for X99 owners, rather than inventing yet another socket. Asking the purchasing question because I'm thinking of splurging on a 5930K for a VM/media-coding setup this Christmas.

Do you really think you'll benefit from 10 cores over 8? If so, then hold off. Otherwise, the performance improvement is miniscule. Frankly, I have corporate VM farms that have trouble loading up 8 cores simultaneously let alone 10.

AGTDenton
Not quite sure what you meant, but I've altered my original post as I have Gulftown which is a Westmere derivative with a max of 6 cores, as opposed to 10 with the Xeons (Westmere-EX).

I meant 6-cores of Skylake at ~4Ghz would give double the performance of 6-cores of Gulftown at ~3.2 Ghz. You wouldn't need 12 to get a doubling of performance (although, admittedly, you'd need 12 to get a doubling of cores)

ypsylon
I'm fairly confident that # of lanes will remain at current level of 40. X99 boards don't offer much in terms of expandability anyway. There are no XL-ATX/HPTX boards with 8 slots or multiple SFF-8639 ports which is a bit puzzling considering that it is top of the line platform for pretty much everything. From browsing internet to nuclear decay computing/modeling.

That's because X99 board are gaming boards and neither of those features are relevant to gamers. That's about as useful as saying there are no Xeon E7 boards with Iris graphics.

There are plenty of Haswell boards with 7+ slots or multiple SFF-8639 ports but they don't use X99.

D-T
Still waiting on the E5 v4 SKUs.

They'll be out around the same time. Seeing as they're the same platform.

qasdfdsaq
Not sure if sarcasm or trolling but the average home user has zero VMs.

Erm, neither sarcasm nor trolling - if you'd bothered to actually READ the post, rather than knee-jerking then you'd have seen I said "Not posing this as criticism". Strangely enough Danceswithunix (to whom the comment was addressed) knew exactly what I was getting at.

qasdfdsaq
The high-end power users I know with home VM “farms” have Xeon workstation/server platforms for them, which cost less than the overpriced overclockable gaming platform you are talking about. If you want an overclockable gaming PC to run “sites” and a “VM farm” you are looking in the wrong place.

Okay, so disregarding the flannel in your comment above what you're basically saying is "don't bother with i7 for VM, Xeon is better“. Which if that was your intention then I'd obviously agree. Unfortunately, all the b'marks I've seen show that Xeon's lower clock (lower IPC too??) make them not a good choice for gaming and some media work. Downside of Xeon is that the overall costs are higher than something based on the ”mainstream“ processors. Ideal setup would be to have a dedicated (Xeon-based) headless server (running a hypervisor) and a proper gaming setup. Unfortunately that's a lot of money and space - neither of which I have at the moment.

PS, merely saying ”you're wrong“ but not either saying why or - better still - suggesting a ”better" alternative isn't helpful. That's one of the things I like about Hexus - if you goof at least some friendly voice will usually point out your mistake and try to steer you right.

qasdfdsaq
Do you really think you'll benefit from 10 cores over 8? If so, then hold off. Otherwise, the performance improvement is miniscule. Frankly, I have corporate VM farms that have trouble loading up 8 cores simultaneously let alone 10.

:( I was assuming that B-E chips will also come with some architectural improvements too. Personally speaking hexacore is fine for me - and I've seen times with my home system when all six of those cores are being hammered, (80%+ utilisation). Oh, and sizing in a corporate environment is an “art” rather than a science - and it gets worse with the increasing number of cores, e.g. it's “fun” to have to size when you're talking about a potential of 128-256 processor cores. :pcpunch:

crossy
what you're basically saying is "don't bother with i7 for VM, Xeon is better“. Which if that was your intention then I'd obviously agree. Unfortunately, all the b'marks I've seen show that Xeon's lower clock (lower IPC too??) make them not a good choice for gaming and some media work. Downside of Xeon is that the overall costs are higher than something based on the ”mainstream" processors. Ideal setup would be to have a dedicated (Xeon-based) headless server (running a hypervisor) and a proper gaming setup. Unfortunately that's a lot of money and space - neither of which I have at the moment.

Xeons have the exact same IPC and are cheaper. The only thing you're paying for when buying an “Extreme Edition” i7 is the “Extreme” label. They fit in the exact same mainboards, the exact same sockets, and support the exact same peripherals as the HEDT platform, so the “overall costs” outside the processor are exactly the same. They're the same chip built of the same fab with the exact same architecture, just with less features disabled and programmed without an “i7 Extreme” string in their model number. The only reason you'd not buy a HEDT i7 is if you're a hobbyist overclocker or just want the label.

:( I was assuming that B-E chips will also come with some architectural improvements too. Personally speaking hexacore is fine for me - and I've seen times with my home system when all six of those cores are being hammered, (80%+ utilisation). Oh, and sizing in a corporate environment is an “art” rather than a science - and it gets worse with the increasing number of cores, e.g. it's “fun” to have to size when you're talking about a potential of 128-256 processor cores. :pcpunch:

The core architecture has always been identical. The peripheral support systems (i.e. “uncore”) often have improvements, necessitated by the need for coherent communication between multiple cores and/or sockets, but the core logic itself is not going to have any architectural improvements. The only time I've seen an “improvement” in the core itself was in the case of Haswell's broken TSX implementation in the earlier non-E editions but that's not so much an improvement as a bugfix also found in later steppings of the non-E.

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