The Real Conroe Successor: Clarkdale & All You Need to Know about Westmere
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 24, 2009 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Bitstreaming TrueHD/DTS-HD MA: Yep, Here too
The Radeon HD 5870 was the first graphics card to properly support bitstreaming of high definition Blu-ray audio codecs. Clarkdale/Arrandale is the second.
These CPUs come with an on-package GPU and that GPU supports the appropriate protected audio path to enable bitstreaming of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA. Of course 8-channel LPCM output is also still an option.
If you remember the G45 launch, Intel had serious issues enabling 8-channel LPCM output, HDCP and H.264 decode acceleration in general. I grilled Intel on what was going to make this round different and they are much more confident in their abilities.
They've increased the number of receivers they test with (originally it was at a whopping two, now they're up to…7). They've also expanded their test scenarios as well. The combination of the two, Intel believes, will result in a fully functional set of HTPC features at launch.
The first time I went by Intel's Clarkdale demo, Intel couldn't get bitstreaming working. A day later I got an email telling me to drop by again - they fixed it.
I got to see TrueHD bitstreaming from a Clarkdale system to a Sony receiver. I also confirmed that full two stream decode acceleration was working:
Intel had it working with Arcsoft's player, but is working with all of the major software vendors to hopefully enable full support on everything. Intel does seem to be taking this much more seriously than with G45.
The Clarkdale launch is still a couple of months away so there is definitely time for Intel to work out the kinks.
This is a serious feature. The fact is that in a couple of years every single PC shipped will have the ability to bitstream these audio codecs without any additional hardware. We're finally getting there folks.
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strikeback03 - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Remember, there was initially supposed to be a 45nm low end, it was axed and 32nm pulled up. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a 32nm Sandy Bridge, but probably a while after the higher-end versions launch, same as we saw with Nehalem.sunefred - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Thats a perfectly sized and nice looking case that the Clarkdale is housed in. Is that comercially available yet?MadAd - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
yeah third on that, what itx case is it?MadAd - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
nvr mind, its one of the travla serieshttp://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10314">http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10314
cdalgard - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
does anyone know what case is used for the mini-itx system that is shown in this article?KompuKare - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
"Why not give all chipsets video out support? Intel is big on differentiation. The P55 chipset is a bit more overclocking friendly, a set of optimizations that you won't see in H57. Both types of motherboards will take Clarkdale processors."I do wish reviewers would be a bit harder on Intel with their artificial market segmentation.
My personal pet hate is the game of which CPUs have Intel-VT and which do not. I see a lot of people being disappointed trying to run XP-mode in Windows 7 not to mention trying to run VirtualBox and VMWare properly.
gstrickler - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
50%-60% faster than the lousy IGP in G45 when running 3DMark Vantage. The G45 had the X4500HD, so a 50%-60% improvement still puts it at about half the performance of the Nvidia 9400M (G) chipset IGP. Fast enough for daily tasks and maybe games from 4+ years ago. That makes it adequate for HTPC and the casual desktop PC or business PC, but it's still way behind the IGP in Nvidia or AMD chipsets.The whole idea of putting an IGP on the CPU just sounds like a bad idea to me. It's great for embedded SoC systems, but for a GP CPU, I think it's the wrong place for it. Don't want the Intel IGP? Too bad, since they moved the memory controller off the CPU die and onto the die with the IGP, you get it whether you want it or not. Intel is going to force their less lousy IGP into your machine. Hopefully the IGP is fully power gated so that if you're not using it, it at least doesn't cost you power.
I'll wait for some independent tests before I bless or condemn it. 3.33GHz Clarksdale with Turbo Boost and HT enabled is estimated to be almost as fast as a 2.66GHz C2Q on SPEC*Int_rate2006. Let's see, that's 2 cores running at perhaps 3.66GHz + about 33% (for the HT threads) = 7.33GHz * 1.33 = 9.75GHz vs 10.66GHz (4 x 2.66GHz). Allowing a little extra for the IMC and other CPU improvements. Sounds about right on performance, and the power consumption should be down quite a bit.
Aside from the IGP, it sounds pretty good if the price is right.
Inkie - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
So, what you find wrong with the IGP is that it isn't very good for gaming? It's just a question of degree. No IGP out there is very good, from anyone. Serious (3D graphics) gamers buy graphics cards anyway.gstrickler - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
No, what I find wrong with the IGP is that it still sucks compared to the IGPs from Nvidia and ATI/AMD. With OpenCL (and maybe DirectCompute), the OS and some applications are starting to use the GPU to accelerate non graphics functions. Given that, putting in an IGP that is significantly lower performance is a performance impediment, even for non gamers.While I have no doubt that Intel will support OpenCL and/or DirectCompute on Larrabee, I don't remember seeing any indication of whether they will support it on this GPU. Even if they do, the performance is likely to be far lower than the performance you would get from an IGP from Nvidia or ATI/AMD.
Like I said, it's "less lousy" than Intel's previous IGPs, and it should actually be adequate for most uses up to low end gaming, but it doesn't have the power to provide many of the benefits that an IGP can provide and there is no reason to build it into the CPU. It should be in the chipset, and like previous generations, you should be able to choose a chipset with it or without it.
Inkie - Saturday, October 3, 2009 - link
Anybody serious about OpenCL or DX 'Compute Shaders' will also buy a discrete GPU, for now.