The X99 – All’s Well That’s Haswell

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Rounding off the list of noteworthy spoils was the fervently anticipated support for DDR4 modules, whose introductory speeds of 2133mhz  were handsomely complemented by a recurring quad channel memory interface.

The continued omission of of Quicksync technology was a major disappointment.  Many argued it remained a mainstream exclusive due to the Enthusiast’s perpetual penchant for a pixel macerating monolith over any integrated alternative, and that the Sandy, Ivy and Hawell E’s greater core tally and PCI-E bandwidth far better served the needs of a voracious videographer.

Nevertheless, as an ardent Edius user, it was posts akin to the one on this forum that persistently invoked my curiosity and aroused suspicions of falsehoods originating  from the loudest and most bitter.

But why shroud ourselves in doubt and negativity.  On paper the x99 expunged every weakness that provoked the x79’s most vociferous critics.

It was time for high stakes in the real world.  In multi-threaded, memory intensive applications a regular Haswell 4770k sprinting at 4.5ghz and close to his OC limit, would still fail to haul in an ageing  Sandy Bridge-E 3970X on his casual 3.5ghz training ride, hence, to envisage a walkover would be naive indeed.

With Intel soon to insist we broaden our vision…had the tyrannical yet indispensable Sage of Silicone perfected and exploited all he could with this, his 22nm swansong?  Could the Haswell-Es,  with their indisputable clock for clock superiority and, in the case of the I7-5690x, extra cores and whack of cache, negate the handicap of their lower frequencies and tear the Ivy Es from their turrets?

Mindlessly optimistic bandwidth junkies might have predicted a quantum leap.

But what the sagely and the smart foresaw was an incremental increase steep enough to satisfy those whose wallets swelled most, afford a dwindling contingent of disgruntled enthusiasts the same native luxuries as their over privileged and increasingly smug mainstream contemporaries and all without compromising professor Intel’s militantly choreographed roadmap.

As results surged from one weary server to the next, reality could have scarcely been defined as a wild deviation from their cynical but wise prophecy.

Let the folks who get things free sweat it out.

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