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Confucius once wrote “The will to
win, the desire to succeed, the urge to
reach your full potential... these are
the keys that will unlock the door to
personal excellence.”
Today we have seen from within a
marvellous array of choice, superb
overclocking potential and finally a
solution that will suit the needs of
many a pocket looking for that all
important upgrade they have been holding
back on - just in time for Christmas.
On the arrival of new technology of this
magnitude, it is sometimes hard to sit
back and gather thoughts after
witnessing some pretty remarkable
performances being produced.
It’s not often that we are taken aback
here with performance increases in
hardware but today Intel most certainly
have achieved this. In many areas we
have seen superb uptakes in performance
across the board enhancing the
performance of the multimedia cards and
the professional graphic cards.
Simplistically put – WHOW. The “Need
for Speed” has shifted into hyperdrive –
overdrive is just not fast enough
phrase.
The mainboard has to offer plenty of
room for expansion in whichever way it
is utilised; as a home gamer, SoHo
Workstation. Or, and more probable
within the corporate market place as a
stand alone desktop unit as there is so
much power within. More probable the
studios, CAD/CAM and DCC market as the
system shown within fully combined and
once more reiterating, a sound solid
fast system. Onboard
Audio replay was very good producing a
crisp pleasant sound back to the ear.
The onboard LAN, fast and efficient as
we did not encounter any problems
whatsoever hooked up within our tasking
units here.
Within the multimedia results, the
uptakes are plain to see and within many
areas better than the actual guidance
figures. Obviously no overclocking has
been completed as the primary objective
here to show what can be achieved
easily at stock. Many other sites today
will have plenty of overclocked results
to show off. Taking a side step here
for a moment there has always been that
calm air of confidence around Intel
offices with new launches of this
magnitude. Its easily understood why.
2nd generation CPU’s and
mainboards all within easy reach of the
end user no matter what they do and
their budgets are. For those who can
afford the top bin – you will not be
disappointed at all as we uncovered
within. Many analysts today will be
scratching their heads – success yes
Intel have yet once more contributed
wholly to the community whether in the
consumer place or the pro-sumer place.
Notwithstanding the
Tier 1 and 2 OEM’s, System Integrators
and Value Added Resellers will have into
place many differing SKU’s that will
suit everyone.
Deviating slightly
within todays outing we saw that of
Akasa’s new Venom Strike Chassis and Heatsink
cooler, both items produced. Starting
with the chassis, this does come in two
differing styles depending upon choice
and the furnished position of the
system. We must not forget that today’s
chassis are furnishings and do have that
all important part to play on an office
look. The Venom chassis won’t look out
of place at all. It has abundant
storage capabilities in both 3 ½” and 2
½” disc space. Therefore those thinking
about a plush server chassis to make the
office look good but at no cost have the
thunderous roar of cooling fans, look no
further. We often had to peer down to
see if the system was running. The
Venom Heatsink fan. Fittings for just
about every conceivable socket from AMD
and Intel. Easy to assemble and pop into
place. However it’s significant cooling
array whilst running at load was once
more very difficult to hear. The
temperature’s whilst at idle and under
load spoke for themselves and this has
to be one item right at the top of the
new build shopping list. No wonder so
many system integrators are making good
use of this fine piece of engineering.
Last but not least and most important
near on silent, the “S” fan’s pushing
and pulling air about without any
noise. This will also be one heavily
used HSF within the overclockers remit
we estimate; as today we only just
scratched the surface of what it can do.
Briefly covering the
cooling once more, all the new CPU’s
supplied out by Intel®
do not come with any pre-supplied
heatsink fans. The
Tier 1 and 2 OEM’s,
System Integrators, Value Added
Resellers and finally consumers, all
have their own brand of choice now as
there is so many options out there now.
Therefore in order to cut back in
pricing and give these individuals their
own choices it can be perceived as a
good option as there can be huge volumes
of waste from those not using the
supplied stock coolers. Those wishing
to purchase Intel’s stock coolers can
buy them separately from resellers etc.
The base MRSP pricing of a basic 2011 HSF
from Intel starts at approximately $20
USD all the way up to the new Intel®
Liquid Cooling High Performance solution
at approximately $100 USD which is
competitive to other supplies of this
mode of cooling. Once more Intel has
given the very one the mode of choice
and freedom to make their own decisions
of what is best suited for each party.
Within the graphics
sectors both Multimedia and Professional
cards shone. Starting first with the
Multimedia tests both cards from
Sapphire and Nvidia ran flawlessly on
the system. The results on each page
from both companies speak very clearly for themselves
with the uptakes in performance and
the drivers coping tremendously with the
new hardware introduced from Intel.
In many sectors we see very significant
performance gains - which in turn means
there is more to follow. What has to be taken away is that these
are early drivers and more fine tuning
will be completed to further enhance the
overall performance seen today - which
has been extremely good.
In the professional
workspace we see results that have
totally left us in awe. Both cards from
AMD and Nvidia returning results as we
have never seen before in many areas.
POVRAY shaving more than a complete
minute off the previous times we had
achieved and to pull 1 minute and 11
seconds off the render shows how much
work has gone into the overall fine
tuning of both the CPU and Chipset. The initial synthetic tests showed
significant marked improvements and
moving onwards to both SPECviewperf and
the SPECapc’ s these just left us
sitting astonished. MAX and
SolidWorks results have never been so
fast with these two cards, they are
actually faster than the bigger brothers
in their respective ranges. A revisit is
required soon to see just how fast the
other superior cards from each company
will perform. For now, these figures
give the all important signal of what
can be achieved.
Therefore the happy PR Bunnies at both
AMD and Nvidia will have much to say
over the forth coming weeks.
Its crystal ball time
now and with the advent of PCI Express 3
lanes now standard and showing to the
achievable 8GT/s upon the X79 chipset
mainboards, the mass will be asking
“when are we going to see these next
generation cards”. This is a very
difficult question to answer though, if
we look at the cyclical run of
Professional and Multimedia cards then
sometime in the spring could be a good
starting point. It could be earlier,
and again it could be later. For now we
need to be patient and wait and see what
AMD and Nvidia surprise us all with.
Intel has made a
significant partnership with many of the
software ISV’s and todays latest
release’s Media and Productivity
Software which take advantage of 4 or
more processor threads amounts to some
53 packages. More are swiftly following
suit to uptake the added value advantage
of the multithreading high performance CPU
and chipset. For all
parties concerned this is added value
and added optimal performance.
Reiterating, "our need for speed".
There are of course the few who are
going to take the "soapbox stance" of
claiming it's too costly, though these
are but a few. The majority
will be left in awe when they see the
complete raw performance of the system
at work. Deadlines in todays cut
throat industry are extremely tight and
with the co-operation of the ISV's with
Intel they all have managed to achieve
the ultimate goal in making end-users
work schedules so much easier to
complete and comply. No more
should we hear that call for more
processing power - it's here.
Finally we return for one last
recount. We have just skimmed over the
tip of the iceberg of what really lays
underneath. Certain other
timescales shifted we had to work to
meet the new deadline therefore a more
in-depth article will follow soon
covering much more than today’s
appearance. We now have both fast and
affordable CPU's, Mainboards with a
whole remit of functionality which will
flummox many; and significantly a whole
new partnership with the ISV's.
Upgrades are easily achievable and, the
"need for speed" is there now for
everyone to enjoy. An exceptional piece
of Pre-Christmas marketing by Intel’s
public relations team.
Overall Intel has surpassed itself with
this technology upgrade allowing many to
have what they could only read about or
place on their wish lists. Sandy Bridge
E
is without doubt the fastest CPU on the
block within this sector of CPU's and
for a reasonably priced CPU you get that
superb performance we all dream about.
Putting your confidence in motherboard
auto-overclocking and the i7 3960X and
4GHz is easily reached.
As
Theodore Roosevelt
said “believe
you can and you're halfway there”.
For those who
want more it’s all within your grasp,
and yes on fresh air, without any fancy
cooling arrays.
To reiterate; it takes a very special
kind of magic to put all this together
and, we have witnessed within one of the
noblest demonstrations of complete raw
compute power from just one CPU. |
