HardOCP's LGA775 CPU and 925/915 Review

Great article, I just wish there would have been some benchies pertaining to PCIe, since we already knew DDR2 was going to be disappointing, at least initially. :p. I don't mean PEG, I mean something that might actually be useful, like performance of a PCIe RAID adapter, possibly while the system is also busy with a gigabit ethernet connection. I know it'd be difficult, and that the PCIe hardware just isn't there, but it would be nice to see. Maybe later..?

I guess we can also expect more of a review of the other features (HD Audio, Firewire, integrated RAID controllers) once all the major vendors have there boards out the door?
 
Yet another excellent review. And as so many have said before, thanks for keeping it to the point. The only thing I kinda wish you would have included would have been some reference temp readings. But I'm sure we'll see those as more reviews hit the net. And Intel's launch on this is rather paltry to say the least, but I do see the reasoning behind it. I think the main reason behind LGA is to get the infrastructure in place for the dual cores that I'm currently planning on waiting for before even thinking about upgrading. Only time will tell though. At least until Q3 and the 925XE's and their planned 1066 FSB.
 
psyno said:
I just wish there would have been some benchies pertaining to PCIe...

I guess we can also expect more of a review of the other features (HD Audio, Firewire, integrated RAID controllers) once all the major vendors have there boards out the door?
Click to expand...

Let me know when you find the "benchies" that show what you want to know and we will run them.

Yes, we will cover features on retail mainboards.
 
It pretty much sums it up, I'll get an AGP board one last time unless AMD releases PCI-E boards in July which is when I plan to upgrade. By then I hopefully will have decided between a 6800GT or 800XT. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 and Far Cry in SM 3.0 will hopefully be the ticket to finalizing the decision.
 
Great review,
when I got on the site today i got a rather dry taste in my mouth when i saw that intel was comming out w/ some new CPUs but your conculsion silenced any doubts as to my purchising of an AMD 64 3800+ You addressed this in the review but im still unsure if PCI Express stuff is it worth waiting for or should i can it and buy a 939 mobo w/ AGP now.

Thanks a kid from Quakecon.org refered me here and its been my goto source for info, since im a first time biulder.
 
Great review as always...

Glad to see my ordering an AGP 6800U to stick on my AMD64 754 board wasn't a bad thing.

I upgrade every 6 to 12 months so, hopefully, by then this new tech (PCIe, DDR2) will actually show some performance gains.
 
great article, I will be using it for purchasing decisions when hl2 and doom3 finally make it out.

I have a request for an additional CPU to be added. I am glad you are putting in the xp2400 scores, but for me (and I am betting many others here) I am running a mobile chip in the 2200-2400 range. I would like to see some inclusion of what the "amd enthusiast who blows 100-300 dollars" every 6 months to see where our current hardware is stacking up. You mentioned an up and coming CPU scaling article and think that those of us who have to make a choice on going with new CPU/motherboard or new videocard would appreciate the inclusion.

I think there are a lot of us enthusiasts here that need to keep a balance of computer purchasing/keeping the significant other from freaking about it at a happy medium.
 
Well I am happy at least one review site tells it like it is. Unimpressive to say the least. Makes me even more happy that I switched to the A64 back in January! :D
 
When I read there would be a few AMD chips in the review, I knew what the results would be, and sure enough, the FX53 came out on top.
I mean, the only gaming benchmark I care about right now is UT2K4, so knocking yourself out with all the other benchmarks may not be necessary.

Intel has been great, and I recently built a P4 3.4c (Northwood), but I'm done with them now. Next machine is an AMD FX53.
The only thing I'm waiting, is to see reviews on the Abit AV8 versus the Asus AV8. Isn't that funny, they both have the same name. On paper, it looks like the Asus board has more features, but I bet the Abit board will cost less. So it depends on whether the user wants the wireless on the Asus, or if they want to save money.
 
The review and the information in it was well done. It provided a look at the new platform and showed how much or how little the new technologies of PCIx, and DDR2 are bringing to the table. That's important because with both the release of the newer AMD based platforms 939 pin and from Intel in 775 pin it gives me the buyer the information I was looking for to help make some future platform upgrade decisions and whether or not current tech will be sufficent to hold me for another couple of years and continue further investment in. Such as buying an AGP based card. The article provided most of those answers and helped to cement the opinion I was already forming on the matter.
 
[amdfanboyflameproofsuiton]

Well, Seems Intel still trying to draw the heat off their poor performance (yes pun intended).

So far, since the laundh of the opteron / A64 / FX Intel has had two major changes to their line up (granted AMD has thrown a new socket to the mix, but not to the discust of their OEM partners) and yet the A64 still shines on top at the top end even with a 1.2Ghz speed deficit.

I dont know about you, but is intel clutching at straws, or buying time for something new (dual core)?

Just my fan boy view (not one of those my milkshake is better than yours fan boys though!)

[/amdfanboyflameproofsuiton]
 
Kyle,

Are the new cores running hotter than the prescotts? Or are they back to around northwood levels?

Great review by the way,
 
Garage81 said:
Kyle,

Are the new cores running hotter than the prescotts? Or are they back to around northwood levels?

Great review by the way,
Click to expand...

it's not a new core, just the prescott core in a different pin package (or socket, as the case may be)
 
Fry's here in Phoenx has both of those motherboards on the shelf. (AA8 and AG8) I was playing with them Friday in the store. I did not see any DDR2 or LGA processors though.

==>lazn
 
Kyle,

This is the best part of the review.... the Q & A afterwards.

Some of the Q's other people asked & you answered were informative.

I have a few questions about OC'ing

What were the tightest timings that you could run the DDR533 at?
It looks like most people are running 4-4-4-12

Were there any barriers at 10% OC, like overclockers.com was talking about?
 
Kyle - kudos for a great review. Enough detail to let me / us know what you found, not so much as to cause my eyes to roll back in my head....... :rolleyes:

I think one of your last statements pretty much says it all:
There is some great technology in Intel’s new platforms; that greatness is just not going to be realized today.
Click to expand...
...guess the system in my sig will live until the next round of hardware releases.... :cool:

Thanks - B.B.S.
 
Short and sweet, the way a review should be. Well done.

Now that Intel has shown me it will only be introducing old chips with "new" technologies and features, I am absolutely sure that I will be buying an AMD 939 when I build my next system later this year.

And although there is little performance difference with DDR2, I am hoping the technology will mature by year's end and we will see tighter timings on the high speed modules.

My big worry is PCI-E. When I build, should I spring for the newest PCI-E gpu or stick with AGP? It's all going to depend on the availability, I think, but I really hope I can go with PCI-E...
 
just give it some time people. thats why this stuff is called BLEEDING edge tech. im not about to go sell an arm or a leg for any of these yet. i want to see some software that will push these machines to the limit.
 
Looking through all this, I think back on an article back when the 875/865 was released. It talked about Intel's new policy of keeping the platforms stable for 18 month cycles. They had dual channel RAM and Hyper-Threading to help them with the transition last time. This time they have more architectural changes instead of performance changes. I see this as laying some foundation for the next year and 1/2. However, for right now, my money's on Abit's AV8 and an A64 3500+.
 
PCI Express will be great for HD editing. Thats assuming of course you're only editing things that do not have the protection flag on. Gotta love how japan is reacting to that flag. As for the other things Intel released, i think its about time that the audio got updated though I'd like to hear some samples as well as some programming specs for it. Do we really need everything else?

My next upgrade will be whenever dual-core comes out... unless the athlon64 3500 comes down in price in the next year...

Just my 2 cents.
 
Great Review.
I love people who complain about the new stuff and how underwhelming it is.
Stop whining. Stop upgrading.
You current computer will probably be fine for another 3 years.
Don't buy hardware now in anticipation of Doom3 or HL2.
Buy the hardware when (if) those games come out.
prices will have dropped by then.

Like others have stated, when this new platform has had time to mature and there is software that can harness that power, it will be a big deal.
History repeats itself over and over and over and over.
-Later.
 
chrisf6969 said:
Kyle,

This is the best part of the review.... the Q & A afterwards.

Some of the Q's other people asked & you answered were informative.

I have a few questions about OC'ing

What were the tightest timings that you could run the DDR533 at?
It looks like most people are running 4-4-4-12

Were there any barriers at 10% OC, like overclockers.com was talking about?
Click to expand...

4,4,4,12 Was as good as it got with our sticks....

No 10% OC barriers on these ABIT boards. These are engineering sample CPUs as well, which is EXACTLY the reason we don't go into OCing them. Need to buy a couple of 2.8s soon.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
Well, the pentium side of things was clear (the review seemed focused on pentium for some reason), but 3500+ isnt too discriptive as ShePearl pointed out, and I agreed with.
Click to expand...


Well, it was a PENTIUM REVIEW, therefore the focus on the Pentium. What more do you need to know about the 3500+? I did not mention this earlier, but if you READ the specs of the systems, you will see that 3500+ was used on a 939 K8T800 motherboard.
 
I was being sarcastic about the pentium sided review (wasnt that obvious?)

Anyway, Im just saying putting a 939 by 3500+ would have helped me out, and those who like to look at the graphs first.

Sorry if I made you mad somehow, it's hard to read emotion and caps give me that feeling. Just trying to give constructive criticism, take it or leave it, surprised Kyle himself replied to a mere "n00bie" as this fourm puts it. Im ending this debacle with my hand open, I like this forum.

If you arent mad then forget it! ;o)

Dont ban me =*(
 
That said, we have been looking far and wide for the killer gaming app that can show some of the advantages of PCI-Express video, but as of yet, we have not found one...

Of course you can look back and see that there is still very little difference between AGP4X and AGP8X scores that give a real gaming advantage.
Click to expand...
That doesn't suprise me at all. After all, what exactly is the video card - to - system bandwidth used for during gaming?

1) Transferring textures to the video card.

2) Allowing system RAM to be utilized as video card RAM.

For the first, a faster AGP/PCI-e bus can allow for faster game loading. For the second, a faster bus can allow for better in-game performance. However, is the second used that much?

Let's call it virtual memory for the video card. Kinda like the Windows swap file (or paging file). That's for use when Windows needs more RAM than your system has. Since it uses your hard drive, having a faster hard drive (with a faster HDD interface) will increase performance, right? However, isn't it better to have enough RAM to begin with? After all, accessing the swap file slows down other system accesses to the hard drive as well as slowing down the system, just as accessing system RAM for use as video RAM slows down video performance as well as system performance.

What's the solution? More video RAM. I think gamers have been aware of that for a while now and video card manufacturers have responded with 256MB versions of popular cards. If this were not the case, then card manufacturers would be making cards with just enough RAM for a frame buffer and all the game textures would be accessed from system RAM. Hmmm, kinda like the Intel i740 and chipset variants.

As long as video cards have enough RAM to hold all textures and the video card - to - system interface is enough for loading textures fast and transferring instructions fast, then there will be no incredibly large performance gain from a faster video card - to - system interface/bus.

After all, RAM is like sex, it is better if you do not have to fake it.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
I was being sarcastic about the pentium sided review (wasnt that obvious?)

Anyway, Im just saying putting a 939 by 3500+ would have helped me out, and those who like to look at the graphs first.

Sorry if I made you mad somehow, it's hard to read emotion and caps give me that feeling. Just trying to give constructive criticism, take it or leave it, surprised Kyle himself replied to a mere "n00bie" as this fourm puts it. Im ending this debacle with my hand open, I like this forum.

If you arent mad then forget it! ;o)

Dont ban me =*(
Click to expand...

LoL. Heres a tip: Dont' be sarcastic around Kyle, it'll come back to bite you in the ass.
 
Zap said:
What's the solution? More video RAM. I think gamers have been aware of that for a while now and video card manufacturers have responded with 256MB versions of popular cards.
Click to expand...

I gotta call BS on this one man. If the card is not built to address all 256MB, then there won't be an increase in performance. Take a look at the 9600XT's out there and compare the 128MB ones to 256MB. The same is true with the PCI-X bus. The cards these days are barely filling the 8X AGP, so the new bus won't help out anything. Take a look at the last couple of mobo reveiws and you can see that the CPU's are the limiting factor right now. 256MB video cards are a marketing scam for anything under a X800.
 
As I have said elsewhere, Intel has not really released anything faster than what they gave us 10 months ago, the P 3.2C/875 combo. I am quite disappointed. I am getting pissed that I have had this system since March 03 and still there isn't really anything much faster that has a decent price. The P4C/875 are a little faster but they are old. I would have bought one a year ago if I could justify a marginal speed gain. My only option is, the A64 which are pretty damn expensive still because Intel can't get anything out to compete with them. Seems I might be going on two years before I upgrade this system.
 
Gargoyle_Hunter said:
I gotta call BS on this one man. 256MB video cards are a marketing scam for anything under a X800.
Click to expand...

Ditto, They always add memory about a generation too early.
Ex:'s

GF4 64MB vs 128Mb, slight advantage with 1600x1200 with 4xAA, etc. BUT the frames rates are way under 30 fps.

Next
9800XT, 5900U - both have 128 & 256, but the only reason the 256MB's are faster is they put faster memory on the 256MB cards. And then charge out the ass. And anything that actually used the 256 would be in a slideshow (under 30fps)

This generation will be the 1st to have enough power to use 256MB with out slowing down to a slide show. But soon they will be pimping 512MB cards on PCIe which no doubt will be marketing BS.
 
Good review

I like how you add the 2400+ and 2.4C in there. Helps see the full spectrum of preformance better.
 
First things first, another good review which opened my eyes to different upgrade path.... again :)

I'm now even more tempted to go AMD (need a kick ass machine for the big D :)) but i'm concerned from what was said in the conclusion comments of the 939 review. I suppose what i'm trying to say is.... How painful are A64's running XP compared to P4's in general?

Knowing Carmack he'll probably stick some 64bit tweaks in the code, but i'll have the PC a little longer than I play D3 and i'd rather not have have to suffer (gawd, i'm such a whiner) the feeling that XP now runs less fluidly than before.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
I was being sarcastic about the pentium sided review (wasnt that obvious?)

Anyway, Im just saying putting a 939 by 3500+ would have helped me out, and those who like to look at the graphs first.

Sorry if I made you mad somehow, it's hard to read emotion and caps give me that feeling. Just trying to give constructive criticism, take it or leave it, surprised Kyle himself replied to a mere "n00bie" as this fourm puts it. Im ending this debacle with my hand open, I like this forum.

If you arent mad then forget it! ;o)

Dont ban me =*(
Click to expand...

No I am not mad, I am simply trying to get you to make specific comments on what you did not like so we could present our information in a more clear and concise manner. You were throwing out blanket criticism, but nothing specific. I need specifics to make things better.

And no I never assume people are being sarcastic in our forum unless they of course use the little sarcastic smiley or say so.
 
Kyle look at the Gigabyte 8GPNXP. I know it's not released yet but at least it makes a DDR2 vs. DDR comparison much more apples to apples. DDR2's latency really makes it suck at gaming...

All this hoopla over nothing. Intel really needs to move on to implementing dual-core Pentium M tech and ditching NetBurst already.

Kyle, how big and heavy is the Intel stock hsf? Does it come close to the 1 kg speculated size for Intel BTX hsf's?

The oc lock seems real...but it seems those crafty Taiwanese mainboard manufacturers always find a way around all the things Intel implements.

lock on FSB oc
Asus and Gigabyte find work-a-round for FSB oc lock

Kyle, any thoughts on the integrated HD sound on the 925X chipset?

With the Socket 775 3.6GHz Prescott not even appearing for sale until after August and the Socket 775 3.4GHz not appearing for sale until August...and the 2.8, 3.0, and 3.2GHz Socket 775 Prescotts in very limited quantities it seems like it is a paper launch for a very underwhelming product.


/offtopic

BillA nice to see you here...haven't seen you at OCForums w/c section in awhile either. No doubt cooking up the successor to the MCW6000A? I love my Swiftech MCP600 rev2 pump
stay cool :)
 
Got some pimpage in The ScreenSavers today. Congrats!

But they have always been w[H]ores for the [H]ord! :p
 
Intel has never had a problem selling anything, they have a marketing machine that just doesnt stop...They will have some buzz words...or some pink women drumming some tubing....whatever.

Kroz
 
I just hope Intel had this platform planned out to be something just to introduce new features. Overall, there is nothing here that will blow your skirt up performance wise.

To me, it's nothing but a proof of concept platform. Just there to show that these things can be done. If that was the intention, then the launch is a success as far as Intel boards go. Once third party board manufacturers come out with their boards, I think we'll see where the problems are. Getting everything implemented correctly will probably be a bitch and it should be interesting to see who has problems and how long it takes to fix them or work around them.

I applaud Intel for being able to get everything to work as they have and to get the tech out there so it can finally be utilized. I never expected anything great out of PCI Express vid cards or DDR2 from the get go, at least from the enthusiast standpoint. What I want to see are PCI Express add in cards like gigabit ethernet, SCSI and so forth. I believe that is where the future and value of PCI Express is.
 
Kroz said:
Got some pimpage in The ScreenSavers today. Congrats!

But they have always been w[H]ores for the [H]ord! :p
Click to expand...

Damn, I missed that. :\
 
It seems like everyone is focusing on PCI-E just being for the graphic bus. While I agree that this is a huge focus, and rightly so, for the [H] minded (being gamers and all), PCI-E is across the bus. Are there anything in the works for, say, SCSI cards, raid cards, etc. in PCI-E in the works? If so, how would a move to PCI-E benefit? As someone else said, how was the new audio solution?
It was an outstanding review, imho. Always refreshing to see a gamer/power user perspective by [H] reviews without fumbling through 30+ pages of redundancy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top