Intel Core i7 and X58 experience?

[mahuyar]

2) The linux-2.6.28-x kernels do not have a Core i7 module so i set
it to Core2.

I was also wondering about the same thing. I took a look at their git summaries; Core i7 was not mentioned at all.

BTW, you mentioned you were on water cooling and achieved 3.6 GHz stable. How much do you think I could squeeze out of it from the stock air without compromising the stability?

[Jupiter]

Guys i just caught up with this thread. I compiled Gentoo ~arch on my
Core i7 920/Asus P6T/Patriot 1600 6GB on here this past week. Sound
works perfectly fine 'hda-intel' and, network 'sky2' worked perfectly
from my boot disc. I have not had any show stopper problems yet but
there are some issues that need to be addressed.

1) GCC-4.3.2 thinks this is a nocona chip so when i compiled i used
'-march=native -msse4'. I also have 'native' set in the kernel.

2) The linux-2.6.28-x kernels do not have a Core i7 module so i set
it to Core2.

3) There is no W83667HG sensor module and let me tell you this chip
runs WAY HOT. So am forcing the W83627ehf module with 'modprobe
w83627ehf force_id=0x8860' and fine tuning the sensors3.conf file to
compensate. I did enable the coretemp module in the kernel but
sensors-detect of course doesn't see such sensor so it won't pick it
up. However if you modprobe coretemp it does work and appears perfectly
accurate on all EIGHT CORES...LOL I spoke to a lm_sensors dev today and
he updated sensors-detect to see the sensor so now he is working on a
module.

Needless to say this thing hauls arse. In comparison it used to take me
an hour and 19 minutes to compile gcc with my AMD X2 4800@2700Mhz.
Using the same everything but hardware it took 32 minutes with my Core
i7 [email protected]. I have been able to get stable 4.2Ghz but temps climbed
to the high 80's low 90's so i backed off and changed my OC strategy as
far as using a lower multi with a higher Bclk which enables me to use
lower cpu volts. Currently at 3.6Ghz am using 1.21875 cpu volts with a
1.20000 QPI volts idling at 34C and 100% load reaching into the low
70C's which from all accounts is perfectly fine on these chips. They
run hot but they can also take it. The temps are a little under control
with water cooling now. Otherwise i would be idling at about 48C-50C.

If anyone has any questions/recommendations or would like me to try
something just let me know. I am more then happy to do some testing
within reason or to the extent of my abilities as a linux n00b.

P.S. i forgot to mention there isn't as far as i know/read any support
for Quickpath. I am sure once there is then, benchmarks will be drastically
improved.

[joffe]

Very cool indeed.

I notice something in the picture. In the CPU History, it is showing up to 8 CPUs. I thought Core i7 965 (Extreme Edition) is only supposed to have the Hyper Threading support? Those 4 additional logical cores should not be present in the other Core i7 variants.

As for the sound, I guess Ubuntu 8.10 defaults to ALSA. Anyhow we now know that the sound works right out of the box, thanks to you.

Yes, they should, all Nehalem variants have Hyper-Threading and all Nehalem variants that are to come out will have it as well (even low-end dual cores). Seems you've been misinformed by someone, probably someone who bought the eXpensive Edition and wanted to justify it somehow..

[mahuyar]

How people continue to recommend Windows and Mac over this for anything but games, baffles me..

It says 'alsamixer' here though - does Ubuntu 8.10 use pulseaudio?

Very cool indeed.

I notice something in the picture. In the CPU History, it is showing up to 8 CPUs. I thought Core i7 965 (Extreme Edition) is only supposed to have the Hyper Threading support? Those 4 additional logical cores should not be present in the other Core i7 variants.

As for the sound, I guess Ubuntu 8.10 defaults to ALSA. Anyhow we now know that the sound works right out of the box, thanks to you.

[Kano]

I would not expect boot problems, but often new boards/laptops are not directly working with ALSA. Especially for laptops this is annoying.

[Starclopsofish]

Wow that's nifty, I never noticed that. Apparently I've never moused over one of those boxes before.

[rbmorse]

He could change the colors for the CPU graph, but it's hardly worth the effort.

Nice to see 8 cpu's shown, though. On a desktop. Who'd a thunk it?

[Starclopsofish]

Oh I can just plug in the other drive, I installed it on a spare one so I wouldn't have to worry about partioning and stuff..

It plays that ongo bongo start up thingy at least (oh and NTFS-3G works just like that - not really relevant but I've never tried it before!) Yep, music plays fine as well. This, too, is better than the Windows out-of-the-box experience, as I had to install drivers from the bundled CD for that as well for the sound chip to work at all.

How people continue to recommend Windows and Mac over this for anything but games, baffles me..

It says 'alsamixer' here though - does Ubuntu 8.10 use pulseaudio?

Lol what a mess....! (@ the CPU monitor) Hopefully they'll come up with some more colors! :P

[joffe]

If you are still at it, does sound work properly too?

With Pulseaudio, it might not work straight out though.

Oh I can just plug in the other drive, I installed it on a spare one so I wouldn't have to worry about partioning and stuff..

It plays that ongo bongo start up thingy at least (oh and NTFS-3G works just like that - not really relevant but I've never tried it before!) Yep, music plays fine as well. This, too, is better than the Windows out-of-the-box experience, as I had to install drivers from the bundled CD for that as well for the sound chip to work at all.

How people continue to recommend Windows and Mac over this for anything but games, baffles me..

It says 'alsamixer' here though - does Ubuntu 8.10 use pulseaudio?

[mahuyar]

Anything you want me to try to run?

If you are still at it, does sound work properly too?

With Pulseaudio, it might not work straight out though.