Early Version of Intel's Nehalem Benchmarked, Much Faster than Penryn

[mmendoza27]

I think that Intel is wanting to phase out FB-DIMMs. It does smart a little if you planned on transferring memory to the new Mac Pro though.

I understand that Leopard scales quite well with more processors (16+), is this true?

I'm hoping that with 10.6, if it's Intel-only, they will be more dual-core optimized, actually removing the PPC code and making it smaller and cleaner. Hopefully, applications will be more optimized for multiple-cores since they won't be supporting G4's.

I don't think Leopard is extremely efficient with multiple-processors, but probably does it better than Vista. Leopard is great with RAM, especially by being 64-bit.

 

[morespce54]

For those asking whether they should wait or buy, this is worth waiting for!

Yep, but only if you have the luxury to wait... until (at least) Summer 2009

 

[Bad Paper]

In three or four years, you will buy another one. Then another one somewhere between six and eight years from now. And so on.

Holy crap! You're either crazy or filthy rich. Macs last long enough that you should wait a lot longer between upgrades. I only bought my Macbook because my iBook had finally started to crap out -- after seven years -- but it still works. There are people on here that wait ten years between upgrades for their desktops.

I'm hoping for a cheap Montevina (Mini? Please?) so that I can toss out the PC and have a couple of machines that I won't have to upgrade for a very. long. time.

 

[mmendoza27]

I was looking a buying my first Mac in Dec 07. I waited about 2 months for the Pen. MBP. but thats as long as I wanted to wait. Past few months i've learned alot and got alot done. If your looking for your first Mac, waiting till next yr is stupid. If your computer is fine for now, then yea, waiting till next yr might be ok. But in noway would I sell my Pen. MBP to get the Nehalem one next yr. Just not that big a deal to me.

I'm targeting 2010 for my next major Mac purchase. That will be the yr Then those that bought in 2009 will be kicking themselves in the ASS

Well with my first Mac purchase, I bought an iMac G5 in August 2005.... two months later, they released a new G5 with the iSight, updated graphics card, a faster processor, more RAM for cheaper!! Not that I hated my iMac, I loved it, still I could have gotten a better deal.

Next Mac purchase, in 2006 (because of the Intel dual-core processors) was a MacBook Pro. This was a major purchase, I know I didn't need it, so I waited. I didn't regret this one, I waited until Santa Rosa in November and purchased it first day.

That's my recommendation, wait until you need it and then buy when they first come out. I don't need one right now, and Nehalem is going to be a huge upgrade, and it'll be around 3 years since my last purchase. I figure I should probably pick up a new Mac every 2-3 years.

 

[dgdosen]

.. going to rock the Penryn MBP until there is a case redesign and internal components update like chipset, SSD and blu ray drive. That = year 2009

I thought the safe bet was to count on the re-design with the new chipset - which is Montevena - and we should see it soon.

 

[Vanarak19]

Nehalem will bring the new MBP case design, mark my words.

penryn was just a stepping stone update, Nehalem is a much bigger step. Concerned about the 10% more power usage though, thats the wrong way.

 

[diamond.g]

Concerned about the 10% more power usage though, thats the wrong way.

The hardware wasn't final hardware. Keep that in mind.

 

[kockgunner]

i voted negative because i need a laptop for university. i cant wait til january

 

[bigwig]

I think that Intel is wanting to phase out FB-DIMMs.

Why? As standard memory configurations get ever larger, ECC becomes more and more important, not less.

 

[diamond.g]

Why? As standard memory configurations get ever larger, ECC becomes more and more important, not less.

I am not honestly not sure. Although the Inquirer believes it has to do with TDP and bandwidth.

Honestly I wasn't really sure why Intel went with FB-DIMM when AMD was using ECC-DDR2. But after a little bit of reading it seems to have to do with not having a IMC. I guess with QP FB-DIMMS aren't as needed (from my understanding you actually become latency sensitive, and we all know FB-DIMM has horrible latency).



Of course I could be wrong, but with the Nehalem DP parts using ECC-DDR3 it seems not as likely.

 

[Nineteen88]

I am sorry if this question has been answered before, but does that mean that the latest high-end Penryn iMac model is considered inferior to the upcoming Nehalem Processor?

 

[i0Nic]

I am sorry if this question has been answered before, but does that mean that the latest high-end Penryn iMac model is considered inferior to the upcoming Nehalem Processor?

Are you asking if a current processor is inferior to a future update of that processor?

Yes, nehalem > penryn.

 

[mmendoza27]

I am sorry if this question has been answered before, but does that mean that the latest high-end Penryn iMac model is considered inferior to the upcoming Nehalem Processor?

Very much so. They benchmarked a 3.2 GHz Penryn, the iMac is only 3.06. Plus, it really seems that they will put in a Quad-Core Nehalem in the iMac, which would make it much faster than the Dual-Core Penryn, considering that Mac OS X starts to really take advantage of more cores.

 

[Dmac77]

Damn. I don't wanna wait till January, I want a MBP so bad, looks like i am going to have to buy that ibook G3 on ebay to hold me over. damn

Don

 

[mmendoza27]

Damn. I don't wanna wait till January, I want a MBP so bad, looks like i am going to have to buy that ibook G3 on ebay to hold me over. damn

Don

Well to be honest, I don't think that a Nehalem MacBook Pro is going to come out in January, you might be best buying the next revision of the MacBook Pro. I'm sure you will be just as happy.

 

[winterspan]

I'd go for a single NVidia 8800GTX and get a second one in a year or so if you need to upgrade it.

And by the way, a 8800GT will give you the best bang for the buck (from the 8xxx series). I would also consider a nice 9800GT with 512 GDDR3, albeit it's a little more expensive it's the next gen, and next gen is always good.

Why are you guys telling this PC gamer guy to go buy an 8/9-series right now?? For god sakes, Nvidia's next-gen GTX 280/260 will be released in the next few weeks. Even if he doesn't want to spend that much, obviously the 9800GTX and even the 9800GX2 will plummet in retail price.

 

[winterspan]

That's why I've been waiting for Nehalem, no matter how good these new MBP's are. Nehalem is just going to rock and IMC is going to make it blazingly fast!!

If you guys have a chance, check out the roadmap on Wiki, found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)#Variants

If you check it out, you can see three processors that would fit nice in the Macs because of the TDP. The one if the "Value Mobile", which has an integrated GPU and runs at 35/45 TDP. It'll come 2Q 2009 and will only have 2 cores (but 4 if you include the hyper-threading ability, mean 4 logical cores, but 2 physical). This screams MacBook to me.

Next, you can see the "Mainstream Mobile", which runs a little hotter at 45/55 TDP, but comes with 4 physical cores and comes 2Q 2009 as well. This sounds like MacBook Pro and iMac to me (I honestly think the iMac's will see quad core probably by year-end).

Finally, last but not least, at 130 TDP, you see the Nehalem-EX, which is a MP Server processor. This seems to fit in the MacPro, because it has FB-DIMM RAM and also uses QuickPath for the processors to talk to each other easier, it will come 4Q 2009 (sorry MacPro owners) BUT COMES WITH 8 PHYSICAL PROCESSORS. That means 16 processors on the MacPro come 2010 or so. YES, 16 PROCESSORS!!

You heard it hear first guys, I think this makes sense for Apple.

Lets first say, there is no point to wait. If u want to play a game, do it now, or else u will forever wait for the next upgrade.
But here are my 2 points on this occasion:
1. Typically modern (3D) games utilize the horsepower of the VGA way more than the CPU. There was an article on Tom's Hardware on this issue exactly a few days ago. The only part of the game the CPU exclusively does right now is the physics, but that's a minority on PC Games. 200 euros on a better VGA are better spent than 200euros on a better CPU....

Just a helpful note, assuming you are not a native english speaker. The word you are looking for is probably "GPU", although "graphic card", "video card", "graphics chip", "3d card" would work just as well. "VGA" is an acronym for a display standard. I'm never seen it used to refer to a graphics card, although I'm sure most if not everyone understands what you are talking about.

Holy crap! You're either crazy or filthy rich. Macs last long enough that you should wait a lot longer between upgrades. I only bought my Macbook because my iBook had finally started to crap out -- after seven years -- but it still works. There are people on here that wait ten years between upgrades for their desktops.

7-10 years for upgrades?? Are you kidding? 3-4 years is by no means "crazy" or indicative of someone "filthy rich". I would assume 3-4 years would be pretty average.

I am sorry if this question has been answered before, but does that mean that the latest high-end Penryn iMac model is considered inferior to the upcoming Nehalem Processor?

Well, new processors are usually faster than their older counterparts... That's why they are new. Nehalem is going to fly. A nice thing with Nehalem is that it is going to improve single-threaded performance as well as
multi-threaded, which means that applications that don't traditionally take advantage of quad-core processors are going to see a speed boost.

 

[jmnikricket]

Why are you guys telling this PC gamer guy to go buy an 8/9-series right now?? For god sakes, Nvidia's next-gen GTX 280/260 will be released in the next few weeks. Even if he doesn't want to spend that much, obviously the 9800GTX and even the 9800GX2 will plummet in retail price.

Very true. I tested out a Dual 2.8 Mac Pro for a few weeks and there were a few things I noticed: Even playing games like Crysis, I never saw the average of all 8 cores over 40%. These latest processors (including Penryn) are so much ahead of current GPUs, I'm much more interested to see what nVidia is going to be able to put out in the next 8 months before I would even consider going Montevina over Penryn, especially considering that Adobe CS4 is going to start using GPUs.

Another issue you guys seem concerned about is heat and noise. The current Mac Pros are ridiculously quiet. You can barely hear the fans and I almost never heard that processor "crunching" noise. In fact, they were so quiet that when I was using Windows in Bootcamp, many times I wasn't sure if I double-clicked an application correctly because there was no audible noise or bouncing dock icon that indicated that it was loading. I don't forsee the 10% additional power consumption making much of a difference (edit: it could make a huge difference in MBPs as they already run very hot).

So my take is that yes these processors are much faster, but without equivalent GPUs and application optimization (we'll see what the WWDC has to say about this), I think a lot of you will be disappointed with the actual benchmarks given the 8 month wait.

 

[Scottcop]

Wow, Intels new hardware is faster than their last lot of hardware.

 

[flopticalcube]

Wow, Intels new hardware is faster than their last lot of hardware.

I think its the scale of the speed improvement that's impressive. Merom was 10-15% faster than Yonah. Penryn was 10% faster than Merom. This is promising to be 30-50% faster. That's a big leap.

 

[Aztec]

Wow, Intels new hardware is faster than their last lot of hardware.

REAL TALK.

 

[edcrosay]

what kind of word is Nehalem??

For awhile, I don't know if it still holds true, but Intel based the names of their technology after rivers in the pacific northwest (Intel's largest operation is in Hillsboro, Or).

Nehalem is a river on the Oregon coast.

EDIT:
P1 w/ MMx - Tillamook
PII - Klamath, Deschutes
PIII - Tualatin
P4 - Willamette
Core - Cedar Mill (neigborhood in Portland)
Future tech - Sandy, Nehalem
All of these are rivers or places in Oregon.

 

[wakeborder556]

i voted negative because i need a laptop for university. i cant wait til january

Im in the same boat it sucks

 

[Manic Mouse]

I think its the scale of the speed improvement that's impressive. Merom was 10-15% faster than Yonah. Penryn was 10% faster than Merom. This is promising to be 30-50% faster. That's a big leap.

Nehalem is a really impressive new processor. These benchmarks are with an immature product too, so it will only get more stable and cooler before release. When the Nehalem MacBooks are released I'm going to upgrade (as I can then give my current machine to my girlfriend).

 

[flopticalcube]

When the Nehalem MacBooks are released I'm going to upgrade

Ditto.