The Lynnfield Preview: Rumblings of Revenge
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 29, 2009 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Power Consumption
I had to overvolt the sample to reach 2.66GHz and I didn't want to compare power of an overclocked CPU to other standard CPUs, so the table below uses the Lynnfield 2.13GHz chip with HT enabled. I also noticed some odd power readings which may be due to the early nature of the platform I was testing so I posted a range of power consumption values for the load.
| Processor | Idle Power | Load Power (x264 1st pass) |
| Intel Lynnfield 2.13GHz | 94.0W | 160W - 173W |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 (2.66GHz) | 126.3W | 170.9W |
In my limited amount of time with the test setups I didn't have any other lower clocked quad-core chips to compare to but these early results look promising. The idle power in particular is most impressive.
Thanks to Nehalem's ability to completely power down idle cores the Lynnfield sample delivers the lowest idle power of any quad-core CPU I've ever tested. I didn't have time to investigate it here but I suspect that in scenarios where only two cores are busy, Lynnfield will offer significant power savings compared to all older (non-Nehalem) quad-core CPUs.
Final Words
It really took me until I reached the very end of writing this article to understand Lynnfield and where it fits into Intel's lineup, but I think I finally get it.
The $284 Lynnfield 2.80GHz chip should be very powerful. If I'm guessing right, it'll be faster than any dual core Core 2 Duo in applications that spawn one or two CPU intensive threads, while being faster than a Core i7-920 in even heavily threaded applications.
The $196 Lynnfield 2.66GHz processor stops from being absolutely perfect by not having Hyper Threading enabled. While it performs very i7-920-like in many cases, highly threaded workloads favor the rest of the LGA-1156/1366 lineup. That being said, not having HT isn't the end of the world; in many cases it's just as fast as it would be with HT enabled.
What Intel has done with the entry level Lynnfield is piece together a Nehalem that's just good enough to compete with the high end Phenom IIs and give you more bang for your buck than the existing Core 2 Quads, while not being too good as to ruin the point of the midrange Lynnfield.
There's also a lot of flexibility in Intel's strategy. Intel could deliver lower clocked Lynnfields and enable HT to be competitive at lower price points. I suspect that the real strength of Lynnfield is in its turbo modes; they will give it the advantage of delivering maximum performance regardless of how threaded your workload is.
Why would anyone want a LGA-1366 system then? I believe there are three major advantages to the LGA-1366 platform for single-socket desktops:
1) Support for Gulftown. You can only get 6-cores from the LGA-1366 platform in 1H 2010, Intel currently doesn't have any 6-core LGA-1156 parts planned.
2) More overclockable CPUs. The best yielding Nehalems (and highest clocked Nehalems) will be LGA-1366 processors. I wouldn't expect any 1GHz+ overclocks from LGA-1156 CPUs.
3) More bandwidth to PCIe slots. I don't see this as a huge advantage today, but there may come a time when having as much bandwidth to your GPUs as possible is important. I'm thinking general purpose GPU computing, DX11, OpenCL sort of stuff. But we're not there yet.
Ultimately I'm going to stick with what I first said on the whole LGA-1156 vs. LGA-1366 topic last November:
"The breakdown seems pretty simple: if you’re the type of person who bought the Q6600/Q9300, then Lynnfield may be the Nehalem for you. If you spent a bit more on your CPU or are more of an enthusiast overclocker, the current Core i7 seems like the path Intel wants you to take."
Lynnfield, today, looks very good. Enable all of its turbo modes and I believe Intel has another winner on its hands. When Nehalem first launched I complained that the move to a smaller L2 cache kept it from significantly outperforming Penryn in some applications and games. With Lynnfield's turbo modes I believe my complaints will be addressed; need better performance in games? Turbo mode solves that. In many ways, Lynnfield could end up being even more significant than Core i7 ever was.
Penryn was always good, Bloomfield was nice to talk about but Lynnfield may end up being the one you marry.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
P55 essentially has the same ICH feature set as P45. You get support for six SATA 3.0Gb/s ports, 12 USB 2.0 and PCIe 2.0.Intel's chipsets are actually what I use for all of my SSD tests and they work quite well. I wouldn't expect any different out of P55.
Remember that P55 is only the first Lynnfield chipsets, next year we'll see more. This chart speculates on some of the features of those (it also lists 14 USB instead of 12, I'm not sure which one is right):
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/74/hkepcibexpea...">http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/74/hkepcibexpea...
Take care,
Anand
Drazick - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
I thought so...I hope someone will adopt the changes quickly.
It's about time to get rid of the BIOS and make room for speed improvements int the Flash chips (Both via the SATA 3 and USB 3).
Do you see in the horizon how long will it take before will see those features?
Thank you for the response.
Krogoth255 - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
I find it very funny when people make a huge fuss over a 2-10% difference in performance (i5 versus i7). It is sad that even budget CPUs are bloody overkill for majority of computer users.The bottom line is that i5 is going to be Intel's next big winner. It is the perfect Phenom II killer and an excellent successor to the Core 2 parts that it is replacing. I7 makes very little sense unless time is $$$$$.
PrinceGaz - Sunday, May 31, 2009 - link
Exactly. My nearly four-year old S939 Athlon 64 X2 still performs everything I do (with one exception) more than fast enough so the difference between the i5 and i7 would be irrelevant. I still think I'm at least a year or two from doing a new build (the only thing of any value at all in my current box I could reuse would be the graphics-card, a 640MB 8800GTS; most of the drives are parallel ATA, and the memory is of course DDR).Given that the one app where my current rig struggles is PCSX2 (a Playstation 2 emulator), it seems kind of silly to spend upwards of £500 for a new box simply to play PS2 console games, when I could probably buy a new PS2 console for under £100. Therefore debates over the relative merits of i5 and i7 which are both much faster are rather moot for me at the moment, and the vast majority of the PC buying public. It is nice to know how they compare though, and what their pros and cons are (the main con I see being the price of X58 mobos), so I'm thankful for this informative article on AT.
just4U - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
I don't quite understand why X58 boards are so expensive. At first we were complaining about ddr3 prices.. but they've come down to a managable point. While cheaper X58 solutions are starting to crop up it's still extremely high and I don't quite get why that is.With the memory controller integrated into the chip you'd think that the cost of the boards would be cheaper overall. That was one of Amd's main selling points (if I remember right) but for the i7 not the case.. the boards are priced incredibly high.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
It's artificial. The boards are priced so high because Intel charges quite a bit of money for the X58 chipset. It's the cost of competition; if AMD had a true answer to i7 we'd have much more affordable i7 platforms all of the sudden :)Take care,
Anand
jmurbank - Sunday, May 31, 2009 - link
Chipset and processor prices are two different things. Neither are related to each other. Like all products, prices of chipsets is related to other chipsets competing at the same level. Since the X58 does not have any competitor, people have to pay a high premium for a complete i7 system. If nVidia is allowed to make a chipset for the i7 processor, we will see these high premium prices decrease. Since the i7 processor is designated as enthusiast setup, prices will still be at enthusiast pricing.just4U - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
You've had them on your test beds so you'd know better then I. Hell I haven't even gotten any hands on with the i7 since people here keep opting for the PII. Not that that's a bad thing, I am rather impressed with those overall just..Im beginning to realize the only way Im going to get my grubby little paws on a I7 is if I go out and build it for myself. Even I balk a little bit at the price tag of some of those boards but there are a few coming down the pipeline that look a little bit more reasonably priced.
Jabbernyx - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
EX58-UD3R = $150 from eWiz ;)goinginstyle - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
It is $185.99 at eWiz with a $15 rebate that will take two months to get for an end price of $170.99.