Page 1: Intro:, The DX58SO:, The Core i7 920:, Kingston's Triple Channel Memory:, The Rest:
Intro:
When Intel released their Core i7 CPU and the platform that enabled its use, it brought about a few new technologies that haven't been seen on the Intel side of things. One of them is the QPI or Quick Path Interconnect. Intel, being the king of "not invented here" syndrome, couldn't accept AMD's Hypertransport point to point high speed data bus. QPI is basically the same thing as Hypertransport and Intel has finally moved the memory controller onto the CPU die. No longer is there a FSB (sort of) that communicates with different components and the CPU.
The real interesting thing about the new Core i7 is the amount of memory bandwidth available to the CPU. Just how important is the speed of memory to overall system performance? While the synthetic tests prove that memory speed is faster, the real world tests show interesting results.
The DX58SO:
The motherboard being used is an Intel DX58SO known as the "Smackover." It doesn't have the same ring to it as the Bad Axe or Bonetrail/Skulltrail, but it is a new generation of product and this is the Intel extreme board. Other manufactures have taken the X58 chipset and made boards for all ends of the spectrum. The DX58SO represents a stable reference platform for use with the new Core i7 platform.
Since the northbridge no longer handles the CPU-Memory communication on Intel boards, each motherboard married to the same CPU should have similar performance for the memory subsystem unless the board manufacture added tweaks. Regardless, any board with the same CPU should give roughly the same performance.
The Core i7 920:
The CPU being used is the Core i7 920. It is a quad core processor running at 2.66GHz. Making a debut from the extreme series of CPUs is hyper-threading. Hyper-threading was very useful in the old P4 days when the CPU had resources not being used and dual core was not even on the cusp of coming out. These days, dual core CPUs are more than able to handle loads given by the majority of systems. No longer do systems freeze when doing a virus scan or other intensive process (if only they could do something about I/O transfers). On a quad core setup, hyper-threading seems to be overkill.
Kingston's Triple Channel Memory:
The memory being used will be the Kingston 3GB triple channel memory kit specifically designed for use with the Core i7 platform. The memory is rated for 1600MHz, but we opted to run it at the normal JEDEC speed of 1067MHz for this specific article. We are concerned with how the memory channel interleaving affects performance regardless of the speed and running it faster would hide the benefits. That is, if there are benefits at all. Triple channel memory kits are coming out in 3GB and 6GB kits. The 6GB kit will push you over the edge into 64-bit OS's. Linux and others like it have no problem and Windows seems to be puttering along with a few 64-bit versions as well. You'll find caveats when running 64-bit OS's. Some programs won't work and some drivers won't work. This goes for all OS's.
The Rest:
The OS being used will be Ubuntu 8.10 freshly installed with no updates on an Intel 80GB SSD (X25-M). A Radeon 4850 was used with the fglrx binary driver from the repositories. ASE Labs is proud to say it will start using the Phoronix Test Suite in aiding to write articles and reviews. Michael at Phoronix has always been a proponent of open source software and it is good to use software that is well written (and open source as well!). We will be doing our own graphing, of course. If you use a POSIX style OS, you should give the Phoronix Test Suite a shot. I'm sure there will be a GUI built for it some day. Right now it is command line only, but it more than gets the job done.
When Intel released their Core i7 CPU and the platform that enabled its use, it brought about a few new technologies that haven't been seen on the Intel side of things. One of them is the QPI or Quick Path Interconnect. Intel, being the king of "not invented here" syndrome, couldn't accept AMD's Hypertransport point to point high speed data bus. QPI is basically the same thing as Hypertransport and Intel has finally moved the memory controller onto the CPU die. No longer is there a FSB (sort of) that communicates with different components and the CPU.
The real interesting thing about the new Core i7 is the amount of memory bandwidth available to the CPU. Just how important is the speed of memory to overall system performance? While the synthetic tests prove that memory speed is faster, the real world tests show interesting results.
The DX58SO:
The motherboard being used is an Intel DX58SO known as the "Smackover." It doesn't have the same ring to it as the Bad Axe or Bonetrail/Skulltrail, but it is a new generation of product and this is the Intel extreme board. Other manufactures have taken the X58 chipset and made boards for all ends of the spectrum. The DX58SO represents a stable reference platform for use with the new Core i7 platform.
Since the northbridge no longer handles the CPU-Memory communication on Intel boards, each motherboard married to the same CPU should have similar performance for the memory subsystem unless the board manufacture added tweaks. Regardless, any board with the same CPU should give roughly the same performance.
The Core i7 920:
The CPU being used is the Core i7 920. It is a quad core processor running at 2.66GHz. Making a debut from the extreme series of CPUs is hyper-threading. Hyper-threading was very useful in the old P4 days when the CPU had resources not being used and dual core was not even on the cusp of coming out. These days, dual core CPUs are more than able to handle loads given by the majority of systems. No longer do systems freeze when doing a virus scan or other intensive process (if only they could do something about I/O transfers). On a quad core setup, hyper-threading seems to be overkill.
Kingston's Triple Channel Memory:
The memory being used will be the Kingston 3GB triple channel memory kit specifically designed for use with the Core i7 platform. The memory is rated for 1600MHz, but we opted to run it at the normal JEDEC speed of 1067MHz for this specific article. We are concerned with how the memory channel interleaving affects performance regardless of the speed and running it faster would hide the benefits. That is, if there are benefits at all. Triple channel memory kits are coming out in 3GB and 6GB kits. The 6GB kit will push you over the edge into 64-bit OS's. Linux and others like it have no problem and Windows seems to be puttering along with a few 64-bit versions as well. You'll find caveats when running 64-bit OS's. Some programs won't work and some drivers won't work. This goes for all OS's.
The Rest:
The OS being used will be Ubuntu 8.10 freshly installed with no updates on an Intel 80GB SSD (X25-M). A Radeon 4850 was used with the fglrx binary driver from the repositories. ASE Labs is proud to say it will start using the Phoronix Test Suite in aiding to write articles and reviews. Michael at Phoronix has always been a proponent of open source software and it is good to use software that is well written (and open source as well!). We will be doing our own graphing, of course. If you use a POSIX style OS, you should give the Phoronix Test Suite a shot. I'm sure there will be a GUI built for it some day. Right now it is command line only, but it more than gets the job done.