Intel Core i7 Mobile CPU reviews
The launches really are coming thick and fast today, and the latest product family to be unveiled today comes, predictably, from Intel during today's Intel Developer Forum.آ The launch in question finally brings Intel's latest Core i7 architecture, and more specifically a derivative of the Lynnfield parts which use that name, to the mobile sector, under the guise of the Core i7 Mobile.آ A couple of sites have spent some time benchmarking the new flagship CPU of this range, the Core i7 Mobile 920XM.
Initially, Clarksfield is launching in three variants: i7-920XM, i7-820QM, and i7-720QM. The i7-920XM is an Extreme Edition processor, designed to replace the Core 2 Extreme QX9300. Like all Extreme processors, the i7-920XM carries a price tag of around $1000. If you want the latest and greatest, it's going to cost you. The i7-820QM drops performance slightly and cuts the price in half, with the i7-720QM as the "affordable" alternative. Unlike Lynnfield, all of the current Clarksfield parts have Hyper-Threading enabled. The Turbo modes are also aggressive on all of the models, but multi-core performance will definitely favor the i7-920XM.
Since the Core i7 Mobile processor integrates the memory controller and PCI Express interconnects onto the processor, there is no need for a traditional Northbridge chip. This means that the PM55 chipset acts primarily as a Southbridge chip, handling most of the device I/O. With no Northbridge chip to communicate with, the Core i7 Mobile processor doesn't need the Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) that the Core i7-900 series ("Bloomfield") processors use to communicate with the chipset. Instead, the Core i7 Mobile uses the slower Direct Media Interface (DMI) interconnect to communicate with the PM55 chipset. Another major difference between the Core i7 Mobile and the Core i7 900-series, is that unlike the Core i7 900-series support for triple-channel DDR3 memory, the Core i7 Mobile instead supports just dual-channel DDR3. The Core i7 Mobile processor supports configurations of 16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes per GPU or two sets of 8 PCI Express 2.0 lanes.
Meanwhile, Driver Heaven have taken a look at an Alienware notebook which will be employing one of these new CPUs at its heart.
That changed in June when Alienware/Dell launched the M17x, their first co-developed machine. On launch day we provided a world-exclusive preview of the new machine and today it is time to take a more in-depth look at the features and performance of the latest model in the family, the M15x.
This isn’t just a more compact version of the M17x though; with the M15x Alienware is one of the first companies to introduce Intel’s Core-i7 architecture in the mobile marketplace. Back that up with an impressive graphics processor from Nvidia and the new Intel PM55 chipset and we have a very interesting and theoretically capable product.
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Intel demonstrates Larrabee performing real-time ray tracing
We've been hearing lots of talk and seeing lots of presentations about Intel's Larrabee GPU architecture for what feels like an eternity now, but one thing we haven't seen is some actual silicon running code... Until now.آ Intel have taken the current IDF as an opportunity to show off some early Larrabee silicon strutting its stuff via some real-time ray tracing - What's more, you can see it in action too, courtesy of a YouTube video which shows the highlights of the Larrabee update keynote speech given out in San Francisco.
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Left 4 Dead - Crash Course DLC available September 29th
If you're hungry for some more Left 4 Dead action, then mark next Tuesday on your calendars, as Valve gears up to release a new additional campaign for the game which will be free for PC owners.
September 23, 2009 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced that Crash Course -- the second downloadable content (DLC) update for its co-operative zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead (L4D) -- will be made available worldwide on September 29 on Xbox 360 and PC.
Crash Course delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms, and bridges the gap between the end of the "No Mercy" campaign and the beginning of "Death Toll" in the original game.
While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of Crash Course is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes, resulting in a streamlined version of the game's existing Versus campaigns. A recharge timer for infected teammates has also been added, and item spawn behavior has changed for more balanced gameplay.
Left 4 Dead is an action horror game from Valve that blends the social entertainment experience of multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress with the dramatic, narrative experience made popular in single player action game classics such as the Half-Life series of games. Released in November of 2008, L4D has earned over 50 industry awards from outlets around the world and sold almost 3 million copies worldwide.
Meanwhile, Valve have also confirmed that they'll be releasing a demo of Left 4 Dead 2 on October 27th, although there aren't any more details available about that particular plan at present.
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Lucid's Hydra 200 multi-GPU technology coming soon to motherboards
Away from all of the excitement of AMD's Radeon HD 5800 series launch, there's also the small matter of the Intel Developer Forum which is going on at the moment, which of course is also bringing us plenty of interesting launches and bits of information.آ Continuing with today's graphics-obsessed bent however, arguably one of the more exciting items to come out of IDF is the announcement that Lucid's Hydra 200 chip for handling 3D rendering across multiple GPUs regardless of IHV and model considerations is nearly ready for prime time, with the company expecting to see it launch of high-end motherboards around a month from now.آ A number of sites have coverage of the news:
Coupled with a Windows driver, the Hydra 200 is meant to deliver near-linear performance scaling with any combination of graphics processors. Wanna couple your new GeForce GTX 260 with an old 8800 GT? The Hydra 200 will let you do it—and not only that, but you won't have to dig around for a physical connector to bridge the two cards, and Lucid claims superior game compatibility over Nvidia's and AMD's own multi-GPU schemes.
Initially, Lucid's driver will only support multiple GPUs from a single vendor. However, the firm plans to introduce multi-vendor capability in a driver update early in the first quarter of 2010. (A beta version of that driver will roll out before then.) At that point, folks running Windows 7 will be able to pair up Radeons and GeForces to their heart's content.
At a high level what Lucid's technology does is intercept OpenGL/DirectX commands from the CPU to the GPU and load balance them across any number of GPUs. The final buffers are read back by the Lucid chip and sent to primary GPU for display.
The technology sounds flawless. You don't need to worry about game profiles or driver support, you just add more GPUs and they should be perfectly load balanced. Even more impressive is Lucid's claim that you can mix and match GPUs of different performance levels. For example you could put a GeForce GTX 285 and a GeForce 9800 GTX in parallel and the two would be perfectly load balanced by Lucid's hardware; you'd get a real speedup. Eventually, Lucid will also enable multi-GPU configurations from different vendors (e.g. one NVIDIA GPU + one AMD GPU).
So, at a glance, what is new and being announced this year at IDF?آ In short - the actual product you can buy.آ Lucid and MSI are teaming to announce the "Big Bang" motherboard that sports the HYDRA 200 chip and three fully functional PCIe slots for multi-GPU gaming.آ We are told this board will be available sometime in the next 30 days though pricing is still in the air.
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