BASED ON THE BRAND NEW MICRO ARCHITECTURE THAT UNLEASHES THE POWER OF POWER OF FOUR CORES THE NEW FAMILY OF INTEL PROCESSORS DELIVER DOUBLE THE PERFORMANCE OF ITS CLOSET PREDECESSOR
This new family of processors from Intel , called Core i7 is hit the market due to there performance.The new Intel micro architecture incorporates a number of features in its design , resulting in what till now Intel claims , better performing and more efficient processors.
Native Quad-core Design
One of the most important reason why Nehalem is a radically new design for Intel is that is that for the first time, the chip manufacturer is producing a 'native' quad-core processor,where all four cores sit on the same piece of silicon ,similar to AMD's phenom X4 CPUs. Whereas the earlier Core 2 Quad processors were designed as multi-chip module where two dual core processors sitting together used to form four cores.
The advantages of having a native quad-core over an MCM are significant in term of processors energy efficiency, performance ,and dynamic scalability.
Inclusive Level 3 Cache
First showcased on the earlier Xeon server chips. The Core i7 family of desktop CPUs feature up to a massive 8MB of level 3 cache ( shared between all four cores ) as compared to the 2MB of phenom X4 . The cache is also described as an inclusive level 3 cache .Intel claims , an inclusive cache more efficient than an 'exclusive ' cache design , even if it does means that 1 MB of Nehalem's 8MB level 3 cache is taken up by storing a copy of the 256 KB level 2 cache inside each processing core.
Integrated Memory controller
By modularizing the design of the CPU and the Northbridge, the memory controller has been brought to the Nehalem CPU die.The separate processing cores and caches are linked to the on board memory controller via a new bus standard called the "Quick Path" interconnect replacing the conventional front side bus (FSB) , it also takes over the role of allowing the CPU to connect to other system components, buses and controllers such as the PCI Express controller and DDR3 memory , reducing latency and improving performance considerably.
Hyper-threading
Another features worth mentioning is Hyper-threading . Using spare resources of a core to execute a second process thread , Hyper-threading enables a quad-core Nehalem processor to accept and process eight threads simultaneously , making it even more massively parallel and powerful than the current Core 2 Quad CPUs.
New Sockets
As the Nehalem CPU communicates directly with memory , an additional bank of connection to the motherboard is needed . The current Sockets LGA775 doesn't have enough pin to accommodate the memory controller , so Nehalem CPUs require the new Socket LGA1366 which has 1366 connection to the motherboard rather than just 775. The only drawback here is that two sockets are not compatible in any way , so along with a new motherboard , you'll need a new bigger CPU cooler for Nehalem-based processors.
Grilling CORE i7
Core 2 Quad v/s Core i7 v/s Core i7 Overclocked
The processors we tested was the 3.32 GHz Intel Core i7 965 Extreme edition . This one of the fastest in the i7 family.
We take Intel 2.66 GHz Core 2 quad 6700 for testing and also i7 overclocking.
All test first carries on the older Quad core to set a benchmark. Then the core i7 was grilled by the same procedure . And finally , after overclocking was over , the act was repeated again number of times.
The test bed
the bigger new chip was run on the Intel Extreme DX58s0 motherboard with 4GB DDR3 RAM , a sapphire Radeon 1950 XTX graphics card and a 400GB HDD at 7200 rpm spindle speed.
A similar setup was used to run the older quad core processor.The motherboard used for the Core 2 quad was the Gigabytes EP 45 UD3P with 4GB DDR 2 RAM and the same Graphics card and HDD . In both case 32 bit Windows Vista Ultimate edition is used.
PC MARK 2005
The synthetic benchmark was used to start the testing process.A set of tests were chosen that required the CPU to flex its muscles to the extreme.Core 2 Quad was the first to take a shot at the benchmark . After tests like file ,audio and image compression and other multi-thread ones.the processors CPU score came out to be a decent 6415 . Next , we tested the new Core i7 Extreme , which we had high hopes from . With all new features and native quad core , the i7 didn't just surpass the benchmark set by the older cousin:it literally smashed it with a CPU score of 10995 . If the wasn't enough, the 'overlocked' i7 battered the older CPU completely by reaching a CPU score of 13118 when running at 4.12 GHz.
POV RAY
Another industry benchmark,which tests the CPU's capability by rendering high definition image with intricate details of light and shadow reflections and refractions.After the beating received during the PC Mark test,the Core 2 quad was again put to the test first . The render average for this CPU came out to be 45010 PPS in a total of 4.37 second . The Core 2 quad being a powerful desktop class processors ,the score is well , more than decent . When the same test was run on the Core i7 the outcome managed to amaze us again .In a total time of 2.06 second the render average came out to be 95,325 PPS . It means in less than half the time , we got twice the performance . When overclocked and running at 4.12 GHz , it took only 1.81 seconds to render at an overwhelming 1,13,359 PPS.
CINEBENCH Release 10
The benchmark that also checks the multi-threading capability of a processor was no exception . The core i7 again came out to be the winner by a huge margin. When using one CPU , Core 2 Quad scored 2163 ,whereas the core i7 was at 3809 , and when overclocked even a higher 4439.When using all four , the Core 2 quad scored 6375 whereas the core i7 leaped to 15,533 and when running at 4.0 GHz an even higher 16,596 .The multiprocessor speed of the Core 2 Quad was 2.95 x as compared to 4.08 x of the i7 . Also on the open GL standard the CPU was left behind at 101 with Core i7 scoring 172 , and 203 when overclocked.
VIRTUALIZATION
What might seem like an odd thing to test is actually quite important and relevant for people who
implement it.Because desktop level virtualization is being used in the real world we couldn't ignore this area.
To get the idea of the processor's performance when running several virtual machine.we used the CPU test of PC Mark 05 again.Using Windows Virtual PC we made three virtual desktop system running Windows Vista Ultimate edition . And if that wasn't a load enough in itself ,we also ran the benchmark simultaneously on all three .The average of the three result was considered to compare the two and as expected . The Core i7 took the cake away. The average CPU score of the three virtual machines running on the older Core 2 Quad was 1288 as compared to a staggering 4255 on the Core i7. Apart from score the system running on the Core i7 was much more responsive and lag free . We spared overclocking the processor in this case as the load seemed overwhelming and could lead to permanent damage to the chip.Labels: Micro-Processors