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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: Out of Copenhagen Test Configurations Memory Subsystem Power Consumption 3D Rendering Energy Efficiency Cinebench AV Encoding: DVD-Shrink, DrDivX, MainConcept AV Encoding: Virtualdub / DivX and SSE4 Gaming: 3DMark '06 FarCry F.E.A.R. Overclocking Final Words Give Us Some Feedback on this Review
Intel's Penryn Core Turns Yorkfield at 3.0 GHz P1266 at 45nm, 12 MB L2 Cache, and SSE4 Instruction Set
(Review by MS, October 28, 2007)

Final Thoughts

Another day, another processor! In this case, this statement is not quite true, aside from an evolutionary tweak of the core logic, there are the larger L2 cache and the new 45nm process that are setting milestones in desktop computing. Environmental correctness nowadays goes way beyond materials and even though the lead-free build of the Penryn core and package are benchmarks in the fight for a cleaner environment, it is the energy efficiency that truly hits the spot. Arguably, isolated CPU power alone does not make an energy-efficient system but it is a start – or rather a quantum leap. On average, the Yorkfield draws only 1/3 the power of its Kentsfield equivalent at idle and about ½ of the older design under full load. In the past, we have always seen a strong correlation between leakage current and idle power consumption, meaning that our measurements well fit the claims made by Intel at the first unveiling of the P1266 process technology.

Given this efficiency of power usage, it is not overly surprising to see how high we could clock the first sample without going overboard with the core voltage, moreover, the temperatures reported by the on-die diodes never went into dangerous readings. We are still in the process of pushing the Yorkfield to its limits, so stay tuned for a follow-up. However, it appears save to say that there is enough headroom for the release of at least a 3.6 GHz version, or else, the 3 GHz version could become the reincarnation of the old Celeron 300 …. only at 10x the speed.

The 50 Nehalem New Instructions also known as SSE4 may or may not be something to brag about. There is some evidence in our benchmarks that they will boost performance in some applications, however, especially the show and tell workload, that is Virtualdub / DivX gave us more or less the impression that SSE4 is more a band-aid for the earlier shot in the foot with the SSE2 emulation of SSE4. We are still trying to figure out what happened but one thing is for certain, and that is that our results with SSE4 disabled beat Intel’s fastest publicized results with SSE4 using the same workload. In other words, even if there was something wrong with our settings for SSE4, we were still faster than anything else out there once we disabled the feature altogether.

This little blemish aside, Intel has another winner at their hands, and there is no way to deny Intel another exceptional hardware award even though the pricing has not yet been disclosed. And nobody told us that it will be comparable with Intel's standard pricing scheme for the Extreme Edition or that there will be less expensive versions available. But it is still true....

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