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@ 2008/08/19We managed to benchmark the single-socket, quad-core, eight-threaded, 2.93GHz monster and compare it against Intel's very own Core 2 Extreme QX9770, QX6800, and AMD's Phenom 9950 Black Edition.
HEXUS' PiFast test calculates the constant Pi to 10m places, using a brute-strength approach. What's interesting is that the single-threaded test is almost as fast on the 2.93GHz Nehalem as on the 3.2GHz QX9770, suggesting that memory bandwidth is coming into serious play.
Nehalem's performance is born from taking the Core 2 architecture as a base and adding sensible, performance-enhancing additions such as an integrated memory controller, QuickPath interconnect, tiered cache, and tri-channel memory. Last but not least, SMT (simultaneous multithreading) provides a healthy boost, too.
Looking back through the numbers, the 2.93GHz Nehalem naturally comes into its own when the cores, be they physical or virtual, are pushed by the software. When this happens, it's up to 33 per cent faster than a 3.2GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770, and some 50 per cent quicker than an equivalently-clocked (Kentsfield-based) Core 2 Quad CPU.
HEXUS' PiFast test calculates the constant Pi to 10m places, using a brute-strength approach. What's interesting is that the single-threaded test is almost as fast on the 2.93GHz Nehalem as on the 3.2GHz QX9770, suggesting that memory bandwidth is coming into serious play.
Nehalem's performance is born from taking the Core 2 architecture as a base and adding sensible, performance-enhancing additions such as an integrated memory controller, QuickPath interconnect, tiered cache, and tri-channel memory. Last but not least, SMT (simultaneous multithreading) provides a healthy boost, too.
Looking back through the numbers, the 2.93GHz Nehalem naturally comes into its own when the cores, be they physical or virtual, are pushed by the software. When this happens, it's up to 33 per cent faster than a 3.2GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770, and some 50 per cent quicker than an equivalently-clocked (Kentsfield-based) Core 2 Quad CPU.
