I finally broke down and ordered a new system: i7 it is!

[toupeiro]

After months of veering back and forth on the Nehalem, or the bang/buck value of the Phenom II, I decided to go performance over price and get the i7 940. This will be the first intel chip I've ran since a P-133. I'm pretty excited. This AMD x2 I am running now got me 3 years of good performance and the only real motivation I had to upgrade was the cost and availability of DDR-400 RAM, a falling apart case, and brittle solder points from 24/7 operation...

The system is as follows:

Intel Core i7 940
Asus p6t Deluxe v2
Maxtor 15K 300GB SAS drive
6GB Kingston DDR1333
Geforce GTX 260-OC
Lian-Li Lancool PC-k7b black aluminum case. w/ 700W Raidmax PSU

Can't wait to see how this thing performs!

Any other ubuntu i7 runners out there with any testimonies?

[billgoldberg]

Aaaah.

I want an i7 too.

--

There are a lot of benchmarks for the i7 cpu's floating around the internet, if you are curious about performance.

[sim-value]

Phenon II actually is the same and in some Benchmarks better than Intel ...

[natedawg]

Sweet deal you will love the i7 for sure. I just built my i7 running on a P6T deluxe v2 with 6gigs of OCZ ram and a regular gtx 260 card yesterday and it rocks. Its dual booting Jaunty and Windows 7 beta :) My system was about $2000 total including my HD 24" acer monitor. It was well worth the money especially when upgrading from a five year old laptop.


Looking at your specs I see your have a SAS hard drive. The p6t Deluxe v2 does NOT support SAS drives! That is the reason it costs less.

[toupeiro]

Phenon II actually is the same and in some Benchmarks better than Intel ...

I haven't actually seen any benchmarks where the Phenom II ever outperformed a Nehalem, but I have seen that the skew of difference in performance is much closer than the price. The AMD will be a better value for performance, but the Intel is 8 cores (4 physical, 4 hyper-threaded) and no hyper transport to its triple memory channel. As an avid AMD fan, it was hard to choose an intel, but as I typically run a computer into the ground, I plan to get quite a bit of mileage out of this, and I would prefer to invest in emerging standards like DDR3 and the new memory channel architecture in the Intel. AMD has the financial numbers, but Intel's chip is a better mathematician this time around...

[toupeiro]

Looking at your specs I see your have a SAS hard drive. The p6t Deluxe v2 does NOT support SAS drives! That is the reason it costs less.

AHHH!! thank you for pointing this out. I had looked at both of them and obviously made a very critical error! I am correcting this now!

[3rdalbum]

Good choice to get an i7, just make sure you get a good CPU cooler too so you can overclock it! While the Phenom 2 is a good CPU compared to the Core 2 Quad, there's no way it can touch an i7.

[jimi_hendrix]

i didnt have a problem with my i7 desktop, but my wifi usb stick was another story

[kamitsukai]

Phenon II actually is the same and in some Benchmarks better than Intel ...

I disagree, from what little of the benchmarks I could find online the Intel i7 core's beat the AMD's Phenom II hands down although as you can see from my sig I bought a Phenom II anyway which is mainly because I went for bang for buck over performance although I have recently seen an AMD Penom II 940 overclocked to 4.2ghz beat an i7 940 although I cant remember where:confused:

Overall I think AMD had the right idea staying backwards compatible:)

[Skripka]

Good choice to get an i7, just make sure you get a good CPU cooler too so you can overclock it! While the Phenom 2 is a good CPU compared to the Core 2 Quad, there's no way it can touch an i7.

Well, in price/performance :)

I just got a PhenomIIx3 720--and currently have it at 3.5 gHz (stock 2.8 ). Being an AM3 socket processor-it also works with my DDRII. I spent $200 for motherboard and CPU.

i7's main advantage over AMD is the insane bandwidth with the triple channel memory controller.

[KCG102282]

I haven't actually seen any benchmarks where the Phenom II ever outperformed a Nehalem, but I have seen that the skew of difference in performance is much closer than the price. The AMD will be a better value for performance, but the Intel is 8 cores (4 physical, 4 hyper-threaded) and no hyper transport to its triple memory channel. As an avid AMD fan, it was hard to choose an intel, but as I typically run a computer into the ground, I plan to get quite a bit of mileage out of this, and I would prefer to invest in emerging standards like DDR3 and the new memory channel architecture in the Intel. AMD has the financial numbers, but Intel's chip is a better mathematician this time around...

I wouldn't call 3 years running a computer into the ground.

[HavocXphere]

Good hardware choices. I would have swapped the 940 for a 920+small boot SSD, but thats just me.;)


I have recently seen an AMD Penom II 940 overclocked to 4.2ghz beat an i7 940 although I cant remember where
Not sure what that proves. I'm pretty sure a VW citigolf with a jet engine strapped to the roof will be faster than a stock Ferrari.


the Intel is 8 cores (4 physical, 4 hyper-threaded)
That is a slightly optimistic interpretation on "cores". Hyperthreading increases the efficiency with which existing cores are used. (15-30%) It does not add phantom cores.

The benefit of Hyperthreading also decreases as the number of cores increase. i.e. to guarantee fully efficient use of the CPU's resources you need 8 threads that are utilising the CPU heavily. Few modern games/apps manage to split the work 4 ways, nevermind 8. Luckily for you, this is likely to change rapidly.:)


I wouldn't call 3 years running a computer into the ground.
It is for some parts if running flat out 24/7. e.g. The google study...they had an average of 3-4 years on their HDDs running 24/7.

[toupeiro]

The benefit of Hyperthreading also decreases as the number of cores increase. i.e. to guarantee fully efficient use of the CPU's resources you need 8 threads that are utilising the CPU heavily. Few modern games/apps manage to split the work 4 ways, nevermind 8. Luckily for you, this is likely to change rapidly.:)


It is for some parts if running flat out 24/7. e.g. The google study...they had an average of 3-4 years on their HDDs running 24/7.


Most of where I hope to see the benefits of hyperthreading is in a few PostGRES databases I run on my machine, not so much for gaming. I went with the NVidia card because I am more interested in learning CUDA programming than I am in playing games. The only game I play is WoW, and my current 7950GTX would handle that just fine.

As far as 3 years not running a computer into the ground ... Do it for 24 hours a day for three years. Its a much different story. You quickly learn which products to buy and which ones not to when you run systems like this. My NVidia card was the first to feel the effects of operating like this, and I had to re-solder a small capacitor onto the card. I've always believed ATi hardware was superior to NVidia, and I still do. I've run All-in-Wonder cards much longer than I've run this 7950 before anything started to fail. However, being a linux user, I can't take the performance hit in the driver department with ATi. CUDA could change the game even more in NVidia's favor, even cut a bit more into where ATi has more of a stronghold in the windows high-end graphics world..

ASUS boards can take the heat, quite literally. My current A8N-SLI Deluxe had its FSB fan freeze up on it quite some time ago. Unfortunately, this was one of those proprietary fans that are of a custom size and you cannot buy anywhere else. So, for about 1.5 years of that three years, this board ran with a seized fan and no problems whatsoever. Needless to say, an Asus board was very easy to pick.

I am bummed about losing the SAS support on my board, as I typically run SAS in my servers at work and have had the opportunity to do various real world I/O tests with SAS v/s SATA v/s FC v/s SDD-SATA and even in the areas SAS was edged out, it was the clear winner in overall performance and value. I would have just shifted back to the standard v1 p6t but I did hit my budget for this system. Oh well, I'll read the specs closer next time.

I can see where some of you are coming from with the AMD backwards compatability. For me, this was a prime reason not to at this time. When I bought my A8N-SLi Deluxe, DDR-2 was out for a little longer than DDR3 has been out now. It wasn't any time at all before DDR became obscure and very expensive to get your hands on in comparison to what DDR2 cost at the time. While I love AMD's stance on CPU-Socket backwards compatability, Memory architecture changes isn't something I'm willing to sacrifice again, especially if time wise we are basically at the beginning of DDR3's lifecycle. I know there are AMD DDR-3 boards out now but quite frankly, and this coming from an AMD fan, Intel's i7 still outclasses it from an architecture standpoint. I decided this time (which is contrary to what I usually do) to spend a little more money on intel because right now I believe they have a better product. Lots of good reviews on it so far, hopefully its not something I end up regretting! :)

[wolfen69]

in real world usage, one is better off saving money and using a phenom2. intel is overpriced, overhyped hardware. i will never again buy intel.

the money i save by going amd is enough to build a second computer. if you're rich and don't care, go ahead and waste your money. or if all you want to do is benchmarking and bragging, go ahead and waste your money.

[Bart_D]

After months of veering back and forth on the Nehalem, or the bang/buck value of the Phenom II, I decided to go performance over price and get the i7 940. This will be the first intel chip I've ran since a P-133. I'm pretty excited. This AMD x2 I am running now got me 3 years of good performance and the only real motivation I had to upgrade was the cost and availability of DDR-400 RAM, a falling apart case, and brittle solder points from 24/7 operation...

The system is as follows:

Intel Core i7 940
Asus p6t Deluxe v2
Maxtor 15K 300GB SAS drive
6GB Kingston DDR1333
Geforce GTX 260-OC
Lian-Li Lancool PC-k7b black aluminum case. w/ 700W Raidmax PSU

Can't wait to see how this thing performs!

Any other ubuntu i7 runners out there with any testimonies?

How long does it take you to boot into Ubuntu(from the instant you press the power button to the point that everything has loaded and you can begin using apps)?

[JackieChan]

You should have bought a i15 for just a couple hundred more.

[toupeiro]

in real world usage, one is better off saving money and using a phenom2. intel is overpriced, overhyped hardware. i will never again buy intel.

the money i save by going amd is enough to build a second computer. if you're rich and don't care, go ahead and waste your money. or if all you want to do is benchmarking and bragging, go ahead and waste your money.

Please.. I hope you don't really believe you could build a second computer with the cost difference between my i7 system and a similarly configured phenom II because it makes you sound ridiculous... Yes its cheaper, but its not THAT much cheaper... I know because I put two similarly configured systems side by side from three different sources. In all cases, the AMD was cheaper, but only enough to justify maybe another memory kit and a 32GB SSD. This, does not a whole other computer make..

Secondly, I am hardly what you would call rich, but I work with and support high-end enterprise class technology, so I hardly see investing in high end technology for myself every 3-4 years as a waste of money.

Finally, Unlike the types of people who build PC's for bragging rights, I actually use my computer. Rarely ever does it idle. It seems to me the only bragging I am hearing is that of someone thinking they're smarter by getting a cheaper system, but if you were doing the computations, database work, and compiling I typically do, while playing your favorite game, you'll spend little extra money (in contrast to the cost required to build a ground up system) to get the better system if it makes sense. Read the benchmarks of the i7 940 versus any of the phenom II chips.. There is a drastic difference. Going from the 920 to the 940 yielded much more of a performance increase than the 940 to the 965 yields. Even the 920 stomps a mudhole in the Phenom II performance wise... The average person who surfs the web, listens to music, and plays the occasional game isn't going to notice the difference. For those that will notice the difference, There's your i7 market. If you don't need the power, then get the AMD. I still believe its a solid chip, but telling people they are wasting their money on the intel when there is an OBVIOUS performance reason to go there by every benchmark published thus far is a little narrow-visioned. I've ran 100% AMD chips over the last decade and never had a complaint, but this is the first time, in my opinion, Intel offered anything worth considering again. By the time I upgrade again, who knows, AMD might have completely changed the CPU market again as they have done in the past, and if it makes sense, I'll run them again.


I will post bootup times once everything is in. I'm interested to see what they yield as well.

P.S. for those interested, I cancelled the SAS disk and got this instead:

https://www.serversdirect.com/product.asp?pf_id=HD0210

This is the best SSD I've seen for its size and price so far. The rw I/O begins to approach that of a SAS disk.

[super.rad]

Just ordered myself a Phenom II system, cost me £300, if I had the money I would have gone i7 though :twisted:

[joffeloff]

Sorry for bumping..

OP, have you tried running OpenSolaris on this machine? If you did, did you get networking up and running? ](*,)

[toupeiro]

Well, I got to run the system for all of 15 minutes. The A channel DIMM banks on the motherboard were bad, so I had to file a RMA with Newegg on the board. I was, however, able to install the OS and experience a few bootup times.

64-bit Jaunty beta and ext4 on 60GB SSD
from first POST beep to desktop = 34 seconds.
From GRUB to desktop = 4 seconds!

As expected, massive writes to SSD really puts an anvil on its back. Copying my 12GB World of Warcraft Directory and trying to run an initial winecfg caused some strange kernel timeout errors which I have never seen before. Reads, however, are despicably fast. I was getting about 75FPS fighting in northhrend on the GTX260 O.C. where the 8800 OC was getting less than 30FPS.

I'm still debating if I want to worry about DB Maintenance on a SSD with the write hit over traditional spinning disk. This, of course, was not taking advantage of the triple channel memory configuration as the motherboards first channel was faulty. I do expect better I/O with the replacement Motherboard, so we'll see what happens.

When I get the replacement board back, I will do some more benchmarks, but the first impressions are mind-blowing!

I have not tried OpenSolaris on this system yet, but I might test it out in a VM with some of the new Intel VT settings enabled.

[inigomontoya]

Just wondering about your kernel timeout issues. What I/O scheduler are you using?

[toupeiro]

Just wondering about your kernel timeout issues. What I/O scheduler are you using?

It has to be whatever is default in the 9.04 beta.. This happened on the first reboot after the OS install.

[oobuntoo]

I haven't actually seen any benchmarks where the Phenom II ever outperformed a Nehalem, but I have seen that the skew of difference in performance is much closer than the price. The AMD will be a better value for performance, but the Intel is 8 cores (4 physical, 4 hyper-threaded) and no hyper transport to its triple memory channel. As an avid AMD fan, it was hard to choose an intel, but as I typically run a computer into the ground, I plan to get quite a bit of mileage out of this, and I would prefer to invest in emerging standards like DDR3 and the new memory channel architecture in the Intel. AMD has the financial numbers, but Intel's chip is a better mathematician this time around...

My local computer store sells Phenom II 940 and Core i7 at the same price; $229. Even though I'm a fan of AMD, I couldn't pick Phenom II over Core i7 at this price.

[kamitsukai]

My local computer store sells Phenom II 940 and Core i7 at the same price; $229. Even though I'm a fan of AMD, I couldn't pick Phenom II over Core i7 at this price.

That's not where your saving the money, Phenom II CPU's are backwards compatible unlike the i7 so you don't have to buy a new motherboard and triple channel ram

[toupeiro]

That's not where your saving the money, Phenom II CPU's are backwards compatible unlike the i7 so you don't have to buy a new motherboard and triple channel ram

you don't HAVE to buy triple-channel RAM kits, but you get optimal IO occupying all three channels. and again.. old board, old everything on board. Why would I want the hottest processor out, installed on yesterdays board that will be more expensive to maintain in the long run? If I upgrade every six months to a year, I can see where this is a good thing. But I tend to upgrade every three - four years, so I shoot for upper-mid range next-generation hardware and pay a bit more of a premium to not have to upgrade for a while, and not feel the antiquation.

[toupeiro]

My local computer store sells Phenom II 940 and Core i7 at the same price; $229. Even though I'm a fan of AMD, I couldn't pick Phenom II over Core i7 at this price.

Nice!

[oobuntoo]

That's not where your saving the money, Phenom II CPU's are backwards compatible unlike the i7 so you don't have to buy a new motherboard and triple channel ram

That maybe true for people who already owned AM2/AM2+ systems, but I wasn't one of them; I had AMD Athlon X2 939 socket and DDR RAM. The prices of DDR2 and DDR3 memory are not that much different. the only thing expensive about Core i7 system is the motherboard. The cheapest X58 motherboards are around $200~$250 and the mid-ranged ones are around $260~$300.

Anyway, with everything else being almost the same in price, the difference in the motherboard prices is worth it if you built a system from scratch, given performance gain Core i7 920 has over Phenom II 940.

[inigomontoya]

It has to be whatever is default in the 9.04 beta.. This happened on the first reboot after the OS install.

That would be the completely fair scheduler (CFQ). If you're using a SSD you should use deadline or noop. I use noop. Add this parameter to your GRUB menu.lst "elevator=noop" and see what happens.

[joffeloff]

Well, I got it working anyway, so in case you run across the same issue (not likely unless you're as nooby as me) here's the thread on the issue. http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=99003&tstart=30

[toupeiro]

Got the new motherboard in and now registering all 6GB of RAM. Hyperthreading is working as advertised. See screenshot. I will try the noop scheduler as suggested and let you know the results! Thank you for the recommendation.

I will say this about ASUS board. I didn't properly hinge all the standoffs on the heatsink, and it registered a CPU temperature near shutoff, but even letting the processor sit for 2 hours, it still registered it at that temperature. I had to pull the chip and reseat it in order to have the board properly register the correct CPU temperature. the CPU itself was cool to touch during all this.

Something to keep in mind.

[toupeiro]

on a side note of quirks, wine seems to have a hellacious with the onboard sound. I've got some posts going with appdb in hopes to get some help troubleshooting, but what it basically boils down to is with World of Warcraft that at the login screen, I get no audio at all, but in game, I will get music and voices, but no sound FX of any kind (e.g. walking, gunfire, ambient noises etc etc.) It's really a very strange problem, and I've done all the usual things like rewrite the winecfg, and even rewrite wow's config.wtf. I can't say for sure that this problem affects anything else because this is the only wine based application I use that has sound.

Anyhow, growing pains with new technology. Its not unexpected at all, just sharing. :) Audio just about anywhere else thats OS related is fine. I can play flashplayer audio and mp3 audio simultaneously without issue.

[toupeiro]

update, after much beating my head against a wall, I limited my choices down to "corrupted world of warcraft install", and sure enough, this is what it was. Wine and ubuntu handle the onboard sound of this fine.