Intel "Haswell"

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

IB-E is being released with a new chipset:

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/28808/...x99/index.html

[kompukare]

It only looks strange from the enthusiast's point-of-view. SB-E, IB-E are just server chips sold to enthusiast / workstation user. Which sort of explains the long delays since they Xeon versions need far more validation. But judging from bugs in SB-E (broken VT-d in the first stepping), I do wonder what they do during that long validation. After all, it's not like Intel is cash strapped and unable to afford proper testing.

I would have though it would make to release the extreme editions first, iron out any bugs then release the server parts but looking at the dates in the Wiki it seem Intel don't really do that. The LGA2011 Xeons followed SB-E by only a few weeks.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TH says TSX is disabled on K series CPUs.

Also,Haswell will ship in small volumes initially due to the USB3.0 issue:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...s_Analyst.html

[dfour]

TH says TSX is disabled on K series CPUs.

Also,Haswell will ship in small volumes initially due to the USB3.0 issue:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...s_Analyst.html

With all the money and resources Intel hav why bother even releasing a faulty chip?? Get it sorted first and then release even if its a bit later especially with a stagnant pc market.

[Bonebreaker777]

TH says TSX is disabled on K series CPUs.

Also,Haswell will ship in small volumes initially due to the USB3.0 issue:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...s_Analyst.html

Weren't the USB 3.0 issues chipset related? If so then just new revision chipsets/Mobos could cure the issue, while they can keep happily selling the CPUs. Or do I see it wrong?

[scaryjim]

Even if it is chipset related, there's only one chipset option for Haswell: an Intel 8-series. There's no point trying to sell more CPUs if people can't buy (properly) working motherboards for them to go in. Wonder if they'll fund a recall and replace system, like they did last time.

This is the second Intel launch in 3 years that's been horribly marred by chipset problems ... what on earth are they doing in testing and validation?

[Agent]

what on earth are they doing in testing and validation?

I don't know, but it's not just their chipsets. There is a major HDMI issue on some of their CPU/Chipset combos which causes the port to simply die. There is a huge thread about it on the Intel forums. You can kinda get it working, but you need to reinstall the driver every single time. It looks like a weird hardware + software bug, with no fix available.

We have a laptop that has the issue, workstations at work that have (had - replaced them) and Andeh on this forum also has a thread with the same problem.

Oh, and what about the SSD data loss issue they had last year on the 320 series? Drive drops, says it's 8MB big, data gone. Don't even get me started on the Sandforce based ones that apparently had additional validation, only for their support forums to still have plenty of people suffering BSOD issues.

Intel are really starting to slip. It's not just one product, it's happening across various things.

[kompukare]

Intel are really starting to slip. It's not just one product, it's happening across various things.

Interesting I had only heard a bit about the SSD issue and nothing about HDMI. (Although regardless of those kind of issues, Intel HD3000/4000/etc. seems to have rather poor drivers with missing features and seems to cheat a lot too. Very stable for Windows though, but...)

Looking at other forums, Intel seem to be considered infallible but that probably has more to do with the entry price for a K CPU + mobo being well above £200. That is, bragging rights

Still, unlike Nvidia Intel do actually pay for recalls if they make mistakes. There was an article about GPU baking / hair drying on AT and even years after bumbgate it seems AT is still very reluctant to blame Nvidia. "Still, five years out of a $1300 gaming notebook isn’t too bad,", yes a classic tip toeing there Jarred, mustn't get Nvidia PR upset!

[Agent]

Looking at other forums, Intel seem to be considered infallible...

I know what you mean. Don't get me wrong, my main rig is an Intel one and I have no issues with it, but there have been some nasty issues over the last few years with their products. If you're hit by them, it's a real pain.

If this was AMD, people would be screaming from the rooftops. A chipset without proper working USB3? HOW DARE THEY! RECALL, RECALL! I'LL NEVER BUY AMD!

I wonder how much of it is down to complacency? Intel is seriously big, with strong product lines across different areas. We get used to thinking of AMD as the underdog, but it's only for a small market segment really. AMD system penetration in the workplace is tiny (thanks HP and Dell!), I don't know a single person who has a AMD based server in our production environment, and their penetration in other area's is also quite small.

I often wonder how much this influences peoples perception of brand reliability.

[badass]

I don't know a single person who has a AMD based server in our production environment,

I've got a DL385 G7 at work. It's pretty anorexic to be honest. it's using about 12GB of its 70 odd GB RAM and cannot use more than half its 24 cores at once.
We'll probably give it more RAM once further consolidation removes the VM's it's running and use it as the front end to a test lab with an old Netapp NAS/SAN.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Interesting I had only heard a bit about the SSD issue and nothing about HDMI. (Although regardless of those kind of issues, Intel HD3000/4000/etc. seems to have rather poor drivers with missing features and seems to cheat a lot too. Very stable for Windows though, but...)

Looking at other forums, Intel seem to be considered infallible but that probably has more to do with the entry price for a K CPU + mobo being well above £200. That is, bragging rights

Still, unlike Nvidia Intel do actually pay for recalls if they make mistakes. There was an article about GPU baking / hair drying on AT and even years after bumbgate it seems AT is still very reluctant to blame Nvidia. "Still, five years out of a $1300 gaming notebook isn’t too bad,", yes a classic tip toeing there Jarred, mustn't get Nvidia PR upset!

Look at the Anandtech forums and you will see why,with their constant adulation of Intel and the constant belittlement of any of their competitors like AMD,ARM,Qualcomm,etc who will die a death and has no chance. One of their mods was a Nvidia Focus Group member,and one of their senior mods only recently disclosed he worked for Intel.

I saw one thread on their forums which was noted "Why does AMD suck?" which was basically a troll thread. So someone made a pisstake thread called "Why does Intel suck" and that person was banned. Another person,made a complaint thread about the first one and was threatened with a ban. After days and days the first thread was closed,after people complained why such a troll thread was being kept open.

Edit!!

Also,one of the main performance benchmarks Anandtech uses TouchXPRT 2013 ,like SYSMark has Intel involvement.

Look at this post:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=1#post5150663

The new Intel multimedia benchmark used by AnandTech: TouchXPRT 2013 is another brainchild
of dr Who's boss Shervin Kheradpir, General Manager of Intel's Performance Benchmarking and Analysis
Group and founding President of Bapco (via HDXPRT/Principled Technologies)

Bapco is behind Sysmark.

BTW,the chap who started that thread is an Intel employee.

[richw]

I'm actually in the market for a new system at the moment, was thinking of AMD FX-6300 or forking out the extra for the i5 and then realising Haswell is around the corner.

It's a shame to hear about the USB3 problems, when I got my C2D (that i'm using right now), the p965 chipset had a few bugs too, kinda puts me off now.

re: AMD in servers: The last 7 servers I've brought for work all had Intel chips, I'm spending > £3000 a time and it's all Intel, AMD are top end it seems.

[scaryjim]

AFAIK AMD are price equivalent, but it's difficult to find OEMs that are putting them in boxes. I used to buy servers at work and we pretty much had to go through Dell Premier, which meant Intel or nothing.

To be fair, though, that worked for me 'cause it meant I could get some nice low-power boxes for web-serving, which really doesn't need much grunt (at one point in that job I had my test server running on a 633Mhz Celeron!) ... the 45W Xeon L3426 I specced was probably overkill, to be fair

[DanceswithUnix]

No Intel advertising money for BSN:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...rformance.aspx

[kompukare]

Advertising revenue and invites to press conferences are very important for favourable opinions and no probing questions. (Note AT sent three people to Nvidia's press conference.) This has been the case for ages and at this stage Intel now have decades of experience with 'official' benchmarks (SysMark, BABCo etc), but it seems it's getting worse.

Then in generally there are far more 'news' stories which are just company PR statements in just about all media these days - it sadly not exclusive to the computer press. Guess that's why SA went subscription because with strong opinions advertising dries up very quickly.

Thing is, the kind of articles which Guy Kewney used to write for PCW would probably not get published any more because some corporate PR lackey would complain.