Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad-Core Performance Preview

Introduction

Up until a few years ago, clock speed was the number one barometer used by many to judge a CPU?s performance. It was a pretty simple formula: higher CPU clock speeds means better performance. With their Netburst Pentium 4 architecture, Intel in particular was shooting for breakthrough clock speeds. Intel had hoped to eventually hit 10GHz with Netburst. As you all certainly know by now though, Intel?s plans for Netburst were never fully realized; ultimately the Pentium 4 never hit 4GHz.

While clock speed is certainly still important today, both AMD and Intel have realized that clock speed isn?t everything. After all, both companies have hit brick walls in frequency scaling with their CPU architectures in the past. This dilemma presents an interesting challenge to both companies ? how do you dramatically improve CPU performance without relying on hitting higher clock speeds? The answer both have come up with is simple: integrate more processing cores into the CPU?s die. With two CPUs built into the same CPU die, the CPU can perform twice the amount of work as a conventional single-core CPU.

That?s the theory at least. Of course by now we all know that you?ve got to have software that?s capable of taking advantage of that second processing core, or else it ends up spending most of its time idling.

In 2005, dual-core processing was all the rage. Both AMD and Intel introduced CPUs with two processing cores built-in to the CPU. Initially there was a dearth of software capable of taking advantage of dual-core, but over the course of the past 12 months slowly but surely dual-core software has been steadily trickling in, particularly when it comes to audio/video encoding and 3D rendering.

Kentsfield: Two cores inside


Now in 2006 we see the debut of the first quad-core CPUs. Intel?s first out of the gate with today?s launch of the Core 2 Extreme QX6700, previously known by its codename ?Kentsfield?. Intel had originally planned to release the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 in the first quarter of next year, but decided to move the release up by a few months to make it in time for the holidays.

By the end of the first half of next year, AMD plans to release their first quad-core CPU codenamed ?Barcelona? (it has also been referred to previously as K8L), but until then they plan on relying their upcoming 4x4 platform. AMD?s 4x4 technology is expected to be released later this month, but it isn?t a quad-core CPU. Instead 4x4 is composed of two dual-core processors.

Ultimately with a 4x4 system you?ve still got four processing cores, but its spread across two processors and thus you?ll need a two-socket motherboard. (AMD can?t affordably integrate four processing cores into one CPU die until their smaller 65-nm manufacturing process is ready.) With Intel?s Core 2 Extreme QX6700, you?ve got four processing cores inside a single socket, in fact the QX6700 is compatible with most of today?s existing Core 2 motherboards?

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Rogue Warrior Preview

Introduction

Bethesda Softworks is best known for its series of RPGs in the Elder Scrolls series that it developed in-house, but the company is also a publisher of a number of other third party titles, including this year?s Pirates of the Caribbean movie game and the upcoming Star Trek: Legacy. Next year Bethesda re-enters the first person shooter genre with an all new title called Rogue Warrior. At a press event earlier this month FiringSquad got to see a brief glimpse of the PC-Xbox 360-PS3 game in action which is being developed by Zombie Studios (Shadow Ops: Red Mercury).

If the name of the game is a little familiar, it should be. Rogue Warrior is the name of the best selling non-fiction book written in 1992 by Richard ?Dick? Marcinko where he recounts his former military life of 30 years as founder of the counter-terrorist SEAL Team Six where he and his team were sent into missions around the world, from Africa to the Middle East to Central America and more. Later he was a leader of Navy SEAL team Red Cell, which was designed to test out the security of military bases by staging simulated raids on them. Marcinko is a very controversial military figure and in fact was sentenced to federal prison in 1990 for 21 months on charges of defrauding the US government over the price of military weapons contracts for hand grenades (Marcinko maintains in his book he was set up as part of a witch hunt by a number of senior military officers who he claims were embarrassed by the raids on their bases as part of his time leading Red Cell). After writing Rogue Warrior Marcinko co-wrote a number of fictional novels under the Rogue Warrior series, and served as an advisor for moves like The Rock, GI Jane, and TV shows like 24. He is currently the chairman of Red Cell International, a private security firm

Bethesda Softworks wanted to get back into making action games (its last entry in first person shooters were a series of games based on the Terminator movies 10 years ago) and got together with Marcinko to secure the video and PC game rights for the Rogue Warrior series. They then enlisted Marcinko and other former and current Navy SEALs to work as active consultants. Zombie got the heads-up to develop the game itself. Marcinko attended the Rogue Warrior game press event and he comes across as a person who doesn?t quite fit your normal assumption of a Navy SEAL. He?s clearly strong but not the silent type with a full beard, long hair and wearing beach shorts in a room of game journalists wearing jeans. However it?s clear that he knows his stuff and while he admitted to FiringSquad he doesn?t play video or PC games himself he will be a major source of info for the Rogue Warrior dev team

The game itself takes place a few years in the future and has a storyline that?s about as topical as you can get these days; the rise of a very hostile North Korea. In the brief but live game demo (we were not allowed to actually play the game) we got to see an opening in-game cinematic where a fictional version of Marcinko and three other Navy SEALs are being transported via a mini-sub to a mission inside North Korea, specifically a shipbreaker yard where old hulks of ships are being torn apart for scrap. It doesn?t take long for the mission to turn sour for the SEAL team, as their plans for a swift extraction go haywire due to a firefight. The demo ended with another in-game cinematic showing the full scale invasion of South Korea by North Korea. The bulk of the game will showcase the fictional Marcinko and his team trying to find a way to get out of the war-torn country to get back home. Naturally, the North Korean military has other ideas.

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E3 2010: Jumpgate Evolution Preview

Leave a Comment Posted 2 hours 52 mins ago - By Jake Gaskill

Exclusive Jumpgate Evolution Octavius Faction Trailer »

Who doesn’t love exploring the vastness and harsh splendor of space and along the way blasting the living hell out of massive space stations and hundreds of squirrely spacecrafts in intense galactic dogfights? I’ll tell you who: no one! But actually doing it is pretty impractical, not to mention impossible, and that’s why we love video games. Case in point, Net Devil’s long awaited space MMO Jumpgate Evolution
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480/GTX 470 Performance Preview

s been six months since ATI ushered in the DirectX 11 era of gaming with the launch of the Radeon 5870 last September. Since then, the red team has methodically introduced a top to bottom range of DX11 parts spanning price points from as little as $50 all the way up to $700. Meanwhile NVIDIA

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