Upcoming dual-processor Nehalem EP machine benchmarked -- yeah, it's fast

Intel's new Core i7 chip has been showing up in tons of silly-spec'd high-end gaming rigs for about three days now, so it's obviously time to get bored and move on -- and right on cue, TechRadar's got the first benchmarks we've seen of the upcoming dual-processor Nehalem EP platform. The secret test machine featured two 2.8GHz Nehalem EP chips (likely to hit retail in 2009 as the Xeon X5560) and 24GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 RAM controlled by the new Quick Path Interconnect and on-die memory controllers, which together cranked out a SPECfp base rate of 160 -- way above the 90 posted by current 3.4GHz Xeon setups, and higher than the 105 scored by a 2.7GHz dual-processor rig with AMD's new Shanghai chips. Yeah, that's silly fast, and it's bound to get even faster when these bad boys launch with a 3.2GHz part along for the ride. Now if Intel could just siphon some of that speed into these pokey Atoms we can actually afford, we'd be grins-a-plenty.

[ctbear @ Nov 20th 2008 2:52PM]

My 10 year old Dell Dimension chugs along quite smoothly with 1.2 Ghz P4 and 640mb of RAM.......

But this monstrosity has 24 GB of RAM?!? Holy Batman!

[Brett @ Nov 20th 2008 2:55PM]

Not just RAM, but DDR3! Can you say overkill?

[Alexandre Emond @ Nov 20th 2008 3:15PM]

Yes overkill.
I'm not after faster machine, I'm after better battery life.
I'm now waiting for more than 10 years for a small laptop with 10 real hours battery under 1000$.

[GingerFox @ Nov 20th 2008 3:31PM]

think its time for an upgrade :P

[anonymitee @ Nov 20th 2008 3:53PM]

Holy batman, Shit!

[Pip @ Nov 20th 2008 5:34PM]

Considering 99% of these servers will be running databases, it is probably still not enough.

But it's definitely a step in the right direction.

[Tim @ Nov 20th 2008 6:17PM]

@Alexandre

a company like intel caters to many different kinds of audiences. Servers, desktops, laptops.. This step forward is in the name of progressing computing...

And when Win95 came out, people joked that they put the 95 on there because "heavens, you'd need 95mb of ram to run the silly thing!!!"

In the near future, we'll be laughing that we ever got by with an operating system like WinXP on a single-core machine!

[Andrew Fong @ Nov 20th 2008 6:27PM]

@Alexandre : The Lenovo X200 and T400 are both about $1000 and can get you close to if not > 10 hours so long as you're just browsing online.

[KC @ Nov 20th 2008 8:09PM]

P4's are not 10 years old, a 10 year old computer would be a PII if you're lucky

[kjb434 @ Nov 20th 2008 2:59PM]

Can Crysis handle this power? (new twist, same stupid concept)

I don't play first person shooters and never will, but I had to just say it.

[pavlindrom @ Nov 20th 2008 3:59PM]

You could have wispered it, you know

[kjb434 @ Nov 20th 2008 4:04PM]

I would have, but don't know how to write this in really small text....LOL

[boe @ Nov 20th 2008 2:59PM]

Cool. I'll probably make my next upgrade when we see some USB 3.0 motherboards though.

[ubn2 @ Nov 20th 2008 7:03PM]

@keaton
thats what she said

[ubn2 @ Nov 20th 2008 7:18PM]

engadget hates me...

[PyRo1509 @ Nov 20th 2008 2:59PM]

24GB of ram...
but will it get me a date?

[Oli D @ Nov 20th 2008 3:10PM]

with me it would!

[PyRo1509 @ Nov 20th 2008 3:18PM]

I think I saw your ad on craigslist

"
Single male seeks like for cuddling and gaming.
Plz be drug free and if you have less than 20GB of ram don't bother
"

[Keaton @ Nov 20th 2008 6:03PM]

It may be BIG but it sure is FAST

[Andrei @ Nov 21st 2008 9:37AM]

Yeah. That's what she said.

[Randy @ Nov 20th 2008 3:01PM]

Awsome. Nuff Said.

Off-topic Question: I'm 2+yrs, overdue for a Mobo/CPU update. If I wanted to build a somewhat beefy new machine, but don't want to pay through nose, what would be good choice these days?

[steve @ Nov 20th 2008 3:49PM]

intel e8400 and recent mobo

[Krush @ Nov 20th 2008 3:53PM]

Phenom 9650 CPU - 95 W - $165
BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX Mobo - $100
SAPPHIRE 100256L Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 - $100
G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) - $120
380 W Antec Earthwatts PSU (yes - 380 W should be good enough if you dont have more than 2 HD drive and only 1 Optical Drive and a non fancy casing with 1 case fan)

[kjb434 @ Nov 20th 2008 4:07PM]

If you are going to do a self build, NewEgg.com and couple of other OEM part sellers are great start to lower costs.

Just make sure you have all your ducks in a row ensure all the parts play nicely together. It isn't as much of a problem these days as it was in the late 90s and just after 2000, but it can still happen.

Also, forums area great place to gauge how others experienced with the parts you want to use. I did plenty of research for my last build (Intel Quad Core) and it went the smoothest of all the computers I built.

[Dave Chappelle @ Nov 20th 2008 9:23PM]

"somewhat beefy new machine"

Get a Radeon HD4850 it will cost around $200, depending on ur definition of somewhat beefy you could even go for a HD4870 (sorry im not anti-nvidia just think this series ATI finally came back.... i still have not forgiven them for not putting Shader model 3 in my X800GTO)

oh and btw
4850 is better than 9800GTX+ (though pretty much the same at lower resolutions)
4870 outdoes the GTX 260, even the new stupid version
GTX280>4870 but 4870x2>GTX280

heck you can overclock a 4850 to compete with a GTX260.


oh ye and remember E8400 is good but pricey (even more than a Q6600) I think after a few months (when i7 is more commercial) the E8400 will go down considerably.

[boe @ Nov 20th 2008 3:02PM]

Crysis has unbelievable demands but it offers some really nice return on investment - a standard core 2 processor will handle Crysis - the real demand is in the video card(s) though.

But since I need a post today with a really really low ranking I'll say it.

Still won't make Vista seem fast :O

[Sam Zebian @ Nov 20th 2008 3:02PM]

seriously? 24GB? Who the hell will even be able to take advantage of that kind of potential nowadays?? Scientists and server uses will come to mind, but other than that, 24GB is RIDONKULOUS! I like he dual Nehalem though...

[melloncollie @ Nov 20th 2008 3:10PM]

Architects.

[Alexandre Emond @ Nov 20th 2008 3:11PM]

ERP server for more than 20 employees. (Dynamic AX, SAP, Siteline, etc.)
Dual Xeon + 16gb ram is a bear minimum if you put the database and the application server on the same machine.

Also:
Visualization: put many virtual server on the same hardware.

In boot case you save on hardware and maintenance.

[Oli D @ Nov 20th 2008 3:12PM]

Ram enthusiasts... duh?
Yeah i'm looking forwards to the first wave of Mini-ITX boards with these babies fitted, nice to get over 2Ghz every now and again...

(having said that i have a Mini-ITX pc with a AMD2+ quad core... but thats different)

[Ken @ Nov 20th 2008 3:23PM]

Reminds me of a comment by an IBM exec. He said the new 286 based systems had 1MB of memory and that was more than anyone would ever need.

[Sam Zebian @ Nov 20th 2008 3:28PM]

Hey ken, I said

"Who the hell will even be able to take advantage of that kind of potential nowadays?"

Key word being NOWADAYS. I know that the future will require massive amounts of Gigabytes (or terabytes) of RAM, but nowadays, most people won't need 24GB of Ram. I'd say about 8 is the peak most people will use nowadays.

[primetime4 @ Nov 20th 2008 3:41PM]

@ melloncollie

City Planners!

[Mike C @ Nov 20th 2008 3:54PM]

I could cripple this machine so fast it's not even funny.

Most of what I do is limited by what I can't do [Architectural Modelling and rendering]. Granted I would still need a lot of graphics horsepower, but both never hurt anyone.

[anonymitee @ Nov 20th 2008 3:55PM]

Batman

[kjb434 @ Nov 20th 2008 4:10PM]

Architects, graphic designers, CAD users at engineering firms, GIS users.

There are a lot of people that could fill up 24Gb of RAM by running their daily use software. Many of these users need massive hard drive space to write memory since current RAM setups aren't enough.

[Bergo @ Nov 20th 2008 10:17PM]

... or virtualization. My VMware servers have 128GB of RAM. woohoo for 32 core Opteron servers :)

[Mike F @ Nov 20th 2008 5:01PM]

Virtualization would be the easiest use of that memory.

We have a server that has 32GB of RAM and about 26 is used on Virtual Machines. One server instead of 27 physical machines is awesome. Takes up less space, power and money. With MS Hyper-V for the virtualization the machines run pretty damn fast. (Sorry, they won't let me play with VMWare on the servers yet.)

[Mikey @ Nov 20th 2008 6:21PM]

Sam:

This ain't for your standard personal computer. Its mainly for high end servers.

[Tony2X @ Nov 20th 2008 9:27PM]

I've got a ton of servers that run in my data centers with 128Gb of RAM and a large number of people reading this will use applications and services run off them day in day out. I know that my company isn't the only one that has servers with amounts well in excess of 24Gb.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that you need 24Gb of RAM in your desktop to do a bit of surfing and email but there are many applications that are RAM heavy.

Digital media editing.
Architecture.
3D Modelling.
Post processing.

To name but a few.

[dubya @ Nov 20th 2008 11:37PM]

Emacs! (Eighty-thousand Megabytes And Could use Some more) hahahahahahaha

[Wolfticket @ Nov 20th 2008 3:10PM]

Most software won't even nearly make the most of the 8 cores available to it (with hyper-threading) on a Core i7 system. I would imagine that in most cases a dual processer (sic) setup like this would just be expensive and pointless.

[Alexandre Emond @ Nov 20th 2008 3:12PM]

See below.

[dave @ Nov 20th 2008 3:38PM]

Bibble 5 image management and RAW conversion software will scale linearly to 16 cores ( http://bibblelabs.com/products/bibble5 ). Most consumer software doesn't scale well because it just isn't designed to.

[loosely_coupled @ Nov 20th 2008 5:14PM]

A DP machine is not for consumers... For media pros, researchers, scientists, etc there are plenty of applications that scale almost linearly with CPU cores..

[kal326 @ Nov 20th 2008 3:12PM]

"Yes. We're going to have to go right to...Ludicrous speed."

[scoop1565 @ Nov 20th 2008 3:19PM]

Wow...good call. Spaceballs reference......haven't seen one in a while

[Akio @ Nov 20th 2008 10:57PM]

I love you, I was feeling low, then I saw this, now I'm going to watch!

Use the schwartz! *sigh* they really dont make them like they used to....


in before I forget, oh intel! CPU...yay!

[Trigun @ Nov 20th 2008 3:16PM]

Anyone else notice that logo looks like a Terminator. The machines will begin their take over now. Go with this board if you want to live!

[Fara @ Nov 20th 2008 3:16PM]

For those not getting this: these are server CPU's. The 24 GB ram can and will, in fact, be used by servers, as well as all that power.