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Intel Xeon 'Haswell' E5 v3 review

S

scottrichardson

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 10, 2007
718
297
Ulladulla, NSW Australia
Hey all. Anandtech has a review of the new Xeons. Not all models, only covering the 2600 series. Apple uses these for the high core count models of the Mac Pro. They use the 1800 series for the lower core count models. Interesting to note there is now an 18 core model with a base clock of 2.3GHz, which seems low, but the turbo is so good that when using less cores it is still very competitive with models clocked a full GHz quicker when using less cores.

See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8423/intel-xeon-e5-version-3-up-to-18-haswell-ep-cores-

Scott
 
Ah, had seen that in another thread but not really had a chance to digest it. Good stuff in there, especially with regards to Turbo Boost improvements.
 
Hoping this is implemented into the Mac Pro soon, I've gone and bought myself an X99 PC that I'm looking forward to Hackintoshing...
 
fuchsdh said:
Doubt they'd announce it early, and I'm not sure if they'd actually have an event for spec updates rather than redesigns, etc.
Click to expand...

Rumor is there will be a Yosemite/iPad/Mac event around that time.

I don't think that would be an early announcement. A month or two after the release of new Xeons used to be pretty normal for the Mac Pros. But Yosemite is going to be the target OS for the next Mac Pro, and it has the drivers they need, so we'll be waiting.

They're going to want to release new Macs aside Yosemite to make a splash, and Broadwell has been delayed... so...
 
goMac said:
Rumor is there will be a Yosemite/iPad/Mac event around that time.

I don't think that would be an early announcement. A month or two after the release of new Xeons used to be pretty normal for the Mac Pros. But Yosemite is going to be the target OS for the next Mac Pro, and it has the drivers they need, so we'll be waiting.

They're going to want to release new Macs aside Yosemite to make a splash, and Broadwell has been delayed... so...
Click to expand...

I got the money in my account for the 6-core with some updated storage, just waiting for them to do it. Can't wait to pull the trigger, so I hope you're right about October
 
goMac said:
Rumor is there will be a Yosemite/iPad/Mac event around that time.

I don't think that would be an early announcement. A month or two after the release of new Xeons used to be pretty normal for the Mac Pros. But Yosemite is going to be the target OS for the next Mac Pro, and it has the drivers they need, so we'll be waiting.

They're going to want to release new Macs aside Yosemite to make a splash, and Broadwell has been delayed... so...
Click to expand...

The Mac Mini also needs an update, but I wonder if the plan has always been to skip Haswell for the Mac Mini and they aren’t going to abandon that even with Broadwell being delayed. So yeah, the Mac Pro is the only other one that might be updated soon.
 
goMac said:
Rumor is there will be a Yosemite/iPad/Mac event around that time.

I don't think that would be an early announcement. A month or two after the release of new Xeons used to be pretty normal for the Mac Pros.
Click to expand...

What is also pretty normal over last several years is for Apple/Nvidia/AMD to trail GPU updates by several months. Given the "Pro" GPU updates of late Summer, early 2015 would be about the time they typically got things polished up enough to ship with tolerable set of bugs.


But Yosemite is going to be the target OS for the next Mac Pro, and it has the drivers they need, so we'll be waiting.
Click to expand...

The initial release may have them but will it be debugged at that point. Again 'par for the course' the major OS X releases aren't ready to critical production work on first release. x.y.2 or x.y.3 is usually when things get right.


They're going to want to release new Macs aside Yosemite to make a splash, and Broadwell has been delayed... so...
Click to expand...

Not all of Broadwell.

http://anandtech.com/show/8515/quick-look-at-core-m-5y70-and-llama-mountain

The rumored fanless Macbook probably do nicely with a Core-M option. Apple's relentless quest for "smaller and thinner" has Core-M systems written all over it. In article, they have Core-M system board versus Surface 3. Look at the gap and think Apple's "ooh it is thinner" crowd not go orgasmic over that kind of difference?


Even without Broadwell Apple could drop X9 chipset design updates that are Broadwell capabile with just Haswell Refresh . Desktop Broadwell is soo delayed ( Q2-Q3 '15 timeframe ) that waiting on it is more than kind of goofy. iMacs are missing TBv2 and 4K ( general PC market isn't going to wait http://anandtech.com/show/8521/idf-2014-affordable-4k-panels-and-aios ) , Mini's are missing the last 2 years of updates. There is a spectrum of Mac updates that Apple could drop in October besides the Mac Pro. There is no "have to" release Mac Pro to make a splash here.
 
scottrichardson said:
Hey all. Anandtech has a review of the new Xeons. Not all models, only covering the 2600 series. Apple uses these for the high core count models of the Mac Pro. They use the 1800 series for the lower core count models.
Click to expand...

No. Intel's Xeon naming methodology is very simple.


http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers-data-center.html

the second digit is the socket type. Processors with the same digit and some generation are compatible. 2600 v3 is socket compatible with 1600 v3.

Interesting to note there is now an 18 core model with a base clock of
Click to expand...

18 core base clock isn't likely as critical as the 18 core being a NUMA implementation. From the article.

HaswellEP_DieConfig_575px.png


The memory is on different side of a switch depending upon which core bus sitting on. That is going to give non uniform access. There was a thread about a year ago about Apple might be walking away from 2 socket set ups to avoid not dealing well with NUMA in the OS. Well, you don't need 2 sockets to have NUMA. If Apple puts slacker effort into the OS ... over time it is going to show.

The 4 columns of 4 cores is going to be more symetric/balanced. That 18 offering coupled to non NUMA OS and applications isn't going to be as effective. You'd be buying hardware never were going to fully leverage completely. Apple would be more than goofy to stick that into one of their configs. Nevermind the ridiculous stratospheric high price Intel is likely to slap on those.

The bigger deal is that the E5 1600 v3 series call all basically use minor adjustments to the same die. 4-8 off of one design. The 8 core option for the Mac Pro should come down substantially in price. The current 8 core 1680v2 offering is really a highly tweaked 10 core 2600 variant that is priced at 10 core 2600 model level (largely because it is internally... ).

If there is a workable E5 2600 v2 12 core model ( high enough Turbo mode) that also would lead to a price drop on the 12 core offering. Apple could pass on the 14-18 range since the pricing is going to be stretch even higher that last iteration's top most range. The 12 core model is also NUMA but 2/3 of the cores are on the same bus... so the slacker effort probably won't show as much.
 
AidenShaw said:
But half the memory could be on the bus with 1/3 of the cores....
Click to expand...

Yeah, it is a "sucks less" context. That 1/3 will have a higher ratio of 'local' memory which will help offset problems on core wide workloads. The switch is also relatively low latency so it isn't as if the sky is falling bad. Just not getting full money's work (which at $3-4000 a pop for CPUs is a problem).
 
scottrichardson said:
Hey all. Anandtech has a review of the new Xeons. Not all models, only covering the 2600 series. Apple uses these for the high core count models of the Mac Pro. They use the 1800 series for the lower core count models. Interesting to note there is now an 18 core model with a base clock of 2.3GHz, which seems low, but the turbo is so good that when using less cores it is still very competitive with models clocked a full GHz quicker when using less cores.

See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8423/intel-xeon-e5-version-3-up-to-18-haswell-ep-cores-

Scott
Click to expand...

Did you notice the price of that CPU? $4100 :eek: (which means it would probably be a $5000 BTO option!)
 
The guys over at TonyMacx86 have a patched kernel for the Haswell-E i7s. Can't wait to see how it runs, might give a window into Mac Pro future.
 
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