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Tuesday December 2, 2008 12:30 PM AEST
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Should you upgrade now, or wait for Nehalem?

Should you upgrade now, or wait for Nehalem?
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Aug 26, 2008
 | 8 Comments 
Tags: Nehalem | Core | i7
You’ve been asking us for more info about what Intel’s new CPU will mean for those upgrading in the next 12 months. Here’s what you need to know.
As always, predicting Nehalem's performance is not as simple as saying "will it be faster?" We've seen Intel demos involving photo and video rendering that blew away Yorkfield machines, but these (obviously) played to Nehalem's strengths.

It's difficult to give in depth analysis without more solid benchmark figures to go on, but we can at least make an effort at summarising the Nehalem architecture, and where the performance gains might be expected to take place.

What Nehalem promises
Intel summarises Nehalem this way: the big performance increases will come from big chunks of work that can be distributed across Nehalem's multi-core, 8-thread, architecture. Think video rendering, or multi-threaded games with complex environments/explosions.

The parallel promise
As many have already explained, there is some contention as to what extent Nehalem is a completely new platform, and how much is built on current Penryn platform.

For all the discussion, the main point is that Nehalem is all about parallelism - splitting workloads across multiple cores, using multi-threading to slice and dice processing tasks (for software that takes advantage of this). Servers will make big use of this, but there are also gains to be had in desktop video rendering and, yes, games.

As Intel puts it, smaller day-to-day processing tasks that won't benefit from being split down this way, won't have the same performance increase. But there are still gains to be had.

The numbers
This is played out in the Intel benchmarks we've seen (under nondisclosure agreements). While Intel's (admittedly biased) numbers aren't public yet, there are big jumps in performance in two areas - 3D benchmarks, and threaded apps such as video rendering.

Some sites aren't waiting for Nehalem's launch, including the team at Hexus, who have managed to get some numbers of their own here. Overall, Hexus reports a 33% increase over Core 2 Extreme QX9770, depending on whether or not the software is optimised for multi-threads.

The big gains were had in tasks like DivX Lame encoding, where Hexus recorded a 15% improvement compared with the Core 2 Extreme QX9770, and a 72% jump on AMD's Phenom X4 9950.

The picture is less straightforward when it comes to games. Be sure, there is huge potential for games performance with Nehalem, though it doesn't seem like we'll be seeing the silicon punching in its full weight division in every situation yet.

Mr Carmack jumps on the bandwagon
We saw ID's John Carmack speak briefly about this at IDF, where he demoed Rage running on a multi-core, multi-threaded Nehalem system. No benchmarks, but the message was that the extra threads available on Nehalem will be utilised by ID.

Carmack's buzzword is "mega texturing" - meaning entire worlds get individually textured, rather than using the same textures over and over. As he puts it, the rendering system can be moved onto a separate core to the game engine. Additional threads get used for specific tasks like AI and physics.

For today's games that aren't optimised this way, benchmarks we've seen don't show the same performance jump. Still, there should be an improvement over Intel's Core 2 Quad CPUs.

Several factors will come into play, including Nehalem's Turbo Mode and the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI).

The QPI factor
Instead of replying on the Front Side Bus, Nehalem chips no longer have to compete for a single path to access memory resources, using the QPI instead. There is also an integrated memory controller for each chip. QPI and the addition of tri-channel memory, means that the performance bottleneck now should move from memory to I/O.

click to view full size image
Current Intel architecture: Two processors share the pool of memory and memory controller. [Source: Intel, http://www.intel.com/technology/quickpath/index.htm]

click to view full size image
Nehalem QuickPath Architecture: Processors access dedicated memory through their own memory controllers. QuickPath connects processors in case they need to access each other's memory. [Source: Intel, http://www.intel.com/technology/quickpath/index.htm]


Why SSD will be your friend
The upshot is that you should now also get bigger than ever performance gains from solid state drives (SSD). Intel has 80GB and 160GB SSD drives on the way, though prices should be interesting to say the least.

When should I upgrade?
With Nehalem systems not expected till later this year (by Christmas we're told), there are some decisions to be made if you're considering an upgrade in the meantime.

Given that Nehalem won't be compatible with current motherboards, some of you have asked whether it's worth waiting for the new chip, or biting the bullet now and upgrading to a current Core 2 Quad system.

Given what we know now about Nehalem's architecture, there is something to be said for waiting for the first chips to arrive (called Core i7). Nehalem offers significant performance potential for intensive, multi-threaded tasks like video encoding.

The gaming and performance crowd
For enthusiasts/gamers, Intel is recommending you wait until Nehalem arrives, though from what we can see, you'll be future-proofing yourself for full performance increases to come in the future, if and when more games are optimised for the chip.

The "mainstream" crowd
Intel has by no means written-off current-gen systems, telling us Yorkfield is still a very capable platform for the "mainstream" (ie. non gaming, non-performance) crowd.

It's hard to recommend an upgrade mere months before a new platform arrives. That said, if you're on an older platform, and simply can't wait, and don’t anticipate your usage changing in the next 12 months, then current systems should be adequate, for now.
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Comments: 8
bbjai
Aug 26, 2008 4:53 PM
 Thanks heaps Will
thats what I was looking for. I'm stuck in two minds then I suppose, I mainly play RTS games like Warcraft and probably the upcoming Starcraft 2. I think it depends on how they are going to make those multi threaded I guess. I imagine physics would take a big part of it given the application of physics in the latest RTS games.
But the gains from multi threaded applications, games and SSDs seem too good to be true. Does QPI merely shift the performance bottleneck to a new component (IO) or does it mean potentially more decent over clocks? (im a noob at overclocking) maybe Cyber can englighten me on this subject.

Did they mention that the clock speeds for the new CPU's will stay relatively similar to the Core 2 Duo Will?


Comment made about the PC Authority article:
Should you upgrade now, or wait for Nehalem??
You’ve been asking us for more info about what Intel’s new CPU will mean for those upgrading in the next 12 months. Here’s what you need to know.

What do you think? Join the discussion.
William Maher
Aug 27, 2008 9:29 AM
 bbjai, we'll be speaking to Intel about this and get back with more info for you as soon as we can. Stay tuned.
bbjai
Aug 27, 2008 6:37 PM
 I've actually been thinking apart from graphical applications and game applications what actual day to day major tasks require multithreading anyway? I don't think I can really think of any future developments that would significantly benefit from multi threaded programming and hence multiple core processors as such. As it stands a Dual Core right now is better value to me then say a quad core.
scott
Sep 12, 2008 10:57 PM
 bbjai,

I saw an admittedly imperfect test of the nehalem chip on anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3326 The reason it was imperfect was that the motherboards were more like prototypes. In any case, it looks like the new chips will perform much better for many tasks that don't require multithreading, as well. I'm just starting my research because I'm going to be doing AVCHD (a type of HD video) editing, so I'm definitely going to wait. Good luck, scott
infra-greg
Oct 10, 2008 12:36 AM
 hi guys. I know the new chip will require a new motherboard, etc. But will the new motherboard/chip require a new type of DD3 memory, or could i use my existing DD3 memory sticks?
.:Cyb3rGlitch:.
Oct 10, 2008 12:37 AM
 Existing DDR3 sticks are fine.
RAC Gump
Oct 10, 2008 8:51 PM
 If im not mistaken, core speeds wont change much with any new chips, for now anyway, as the laws of physic's prevent it (too much HEAT!). So multi-core is the way things are going... doing more at once.

Having a "spare" core available to run a game on while your O/S runs on another (with your speed killing Anti-Virus suite running on yet another) is a good thing for sure :)

And having twice (or thrice or four) times the processing power available when encoding video's or mixing music tracks will be a god send (software multi threading)....... not forgetting defraging, virus scans could all utilise extra cores to speed up their processing..... remembering 1Tb HDD's will be common soon.......

More is good in this case.... just wish ALL components had the same transfers speeds now....

Cheers, Gump
khanbm
Oct 18, 2008 2:25 PM
 Nehalem is expensive, Mwave.com.au have prices for them. The cheapest one is $928 while the most expensive, the extreme, is $2,500
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