Intel V8 Media Creation Platform - Dual Sockets - Dual Xeons
Our Summary and Conclusion
Performance Summary: The V8 Media Creation Platform's performance varied depending on the type of application being run. In our synthetic tests and in the video rendering benchmarks, nothing came close to the V8 rig. It's 8 cores, higher core clock speeds, and 1333MHz front side bus paid huge dividends in the fully multithreaded applications that exploit these features. In more common desktop application and games, however, the power of the V8 platform is not fully utilized and it occasionally fell behind its lower clocked, quad-core desktop counterpart.
After spending a number of weeks experimenting with Intel's V8 Media Creation Platform, it is abundantly clear that it is an immensely powerful proposition. Yes, it is overkill for the vast majority of people reading this. It's very expensive, and it consumes large amounts of power (relatively speaking), but even now in an era where true multi-threaded applications aren't very widespread, there are instances where having 8 cores increases performance dramatically. And although no one in their right mind would purchase a pair of Xeon X5365 processors for high single-threaded performance, the processor's 3GHz clock speed and 1333MHz FSB make is very fast on that front as well.
Ultimately, if you ask us, Intel's V8 isn't about promoting a platform as much as it is a show of strength and a glimpse of things to come. What V8 and QuadFX show is that both Intel and AMD are on a path to offering true, enthusiast-class, dual-socket platforms. And that's a good thing. Perhaps AMD is a little further down the path thanks to a more tweaker-friendly motherboard in the QuadFX-comaptible Asus L1N64-SLI WS, but until consumers have more motherboards to choose from and perhaps quad-core processors from AMD, we can't very well declare that the time for QuadFX has arrived. One motherboard does not a platform make.
V8 in its current incarnation does have deficiencies and the idea of spending upwards of $3800 on two processors, a motherboard, and memory isn't exactly enticing, but this doesn't detract from the Intel V8 Media Creation Platform's immense power. It would be virtually impossible to build something similar to V8 that can match its multi-threaded performance.
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