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Reviews Of AMD Duron 'Morgan' 1GHz
Anonymouse writes: "AMD today released their 1GHz Duron, based on the morgan core, which was mentioned briefly in your earlier Athlon article. It adds hardware pre-fetch, an internal thermal diode for accurate temperature sensing on boards that can read it, and SSE instructions. It is also the same core that will become the DuronMP for ultra cheap low-end SMP system. NewsForge has a review of it under Linux, and FiringSquad and Hexus.net have reviews for it under Windows." Nice complement to the new Athlons. 1GHz in a low end processor -- sheesh!
Why is it written "Assembled in Malaysia"? Does that mean the silicon is made in Japan and then they put the ceramics on it in Malaysia?
"All your Intel market share are belong to AMD"
I try to build very quiet computers. I hate computer noise, and the cooling fans are the worst.
This new Duron dissipates 41 Watts typical, 46 Watts maximum; a 1.4 GHz Thunderbird dissipates 65 Watts typical, 72 Watts maximum, or about 60% more heat. (Numbers from the AMD web site.)
Less heat means a better chance of making the computer really quiet. Instead of a noisy high-volume cooling fan for the heat sink, I can use a quieter low-volume cooling fan.
The mobile version is even tastier: only about 24 Watts for the 900 MHz version. I would drool for a MicroATX board with a couple of mobile Durons on it running SMP!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Check out http://www.tomhardware.com as well...
You know, as happy as I should be that notebooks will be faster, and the prices will drop on slower models, I'm strangely a bit disappointed really. As mobile processors get faster and more energy effecient, the less and less likely it is that we'll be seeing any Crusoe-based systems at all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Technical specs aside, and interesting they are, it would be nice to see a list of vendors for those feebleminded souls (e.g., moi) who don't plan on building a machine by molding their own tower and smithing the wires. IBM just dropped AMD chips and Dell doesn't sell them. That leaves Compaq (ick) and, I think, HP in the heavyweight category. Also Gateway and Micron. AMD maintains what looks like an outdated list of where to buy AMD systems here: http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/bguide.html
Everyone is talking major CPU price war in the upcoming months, so I'm thinking October for my monster-mega-dual-mp3 player. ("2GHz, because Word just doesn't open fast enough on a P3.") Cheap dual Athlon 1.4 by then?
Saludos, Mig
http://www.kasparovchess.com
If you like to built quiet computers, probably you can recommend us a quiet fun! :)
Which one is your choice?
Thanks in advance
www.courier-mta.org
Whilst not a hardcore gamer, I am an occassional gamer, and noise is very important.
If you are listening in (say) Half-Life/Counterstrike or Quake for the sounds made by your opponents, having several fans generating 80dB by your ear is not conducive to hearing the sounds made by your enemy slowly creeping up to a good shooting position.
Therefore boxes which generate little extraneous noise are a good thing to gamers, and your frag ratio!! What you really want is a killer box with no fan noise.
Also gamers want low heat as well, a sweaty gamer fragging in just his/her underwear is not a pretty sight (and may get him/her arrested)!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The comments against INTEL for being a big company aside (AMD Is a big company as well) i have a few things that i like about AMD processors (and some i dont)
The SD Ram advantage and improved cooling should make this the budget buyers choice - the simple fact that it is a flipchip pro as well means you dont neccesarily have to buy a new board - owners of most compatible boards can simply swap chips.
The new core is a good move - the celeron crippling has bugged me a lot - i have sold a few but im not happy totally with their performance and the morgan does get around that ( i find cache comaprisons irrelevant for most users)
In australia you can pick up a Duron and Board with Ram for under $500 (approx $250US) - this is a great price - the Celerons are neck and neck but generally a little dearer - the price gets better when you go to the Tbird - the difference is up to $100 on some models of P4.
The only concern i have about Athlons (as stated in a post on todays other AMD story) is heat - i have found that the AMD processors need good cooling and this means lots of fans - which are noisy, this is a disadvantage to many of the home user (non enthusiast) market who dont want the noise of 3 or 4 fans.
If the new processors do show the claimed lower heat buildups then they will help in making the AMD accepeted in the mass (home - mums and dads) market.
As for vendor support - well the reasons arent hard to work out - IBM make their own processors and they have an already unwieldy product range so they made a decision to drop AMD - Dell are one of Intel's largest customers and i can only guess at the discounts - and Ditto Compaq. I think we will see them move towards AMD (all but Dell - thats not going to happen trust me) slowly - REMEBER THIS - most of these companies rely on their Major corporate customers for cash flow and sales (corporates buy more and are not as price concious as home and enthusiasts) and those corporates by and large Buy INTEL machines running MICROSOFT software (with 3COM nic's, HP Printers, etc etc) The coporate market is the area AMD need to win over - they have had huge success with Gamers and budget buyers but not in the corporates (they have long memories and AMD have had some spectaculat screw ups in the mid/late 1990's with chip problems - this gave them the unreliable tag in many corporate minds - they stick with what they know)
I hope this chip does all it looks like - i want one at any rate.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Oh wait - my monitor is not good enough for 119.5 and my network connection is the limiting factor for "real gamming"
It's ok anyway - at least i will know that those extra dolars give me the possibility of getting those extra 11fps
Hmm, doesn't all AMD chips before the T-bird suck? That was my impression... atleast the people I know that bought Durons said they sucked and are slower than Intel chips when running at the same MHz. And unusable for graphics too.
many celerons and durons have been good for 1GHz since celeron 667's at least, so im suprised it took this long for the official 1GHz.
the die size of an X86 processor from either AMD or intel are Huge
AMD = 106mm^2
while a 32bit system should only take up about 2.93 mm^2 to ~10 mm^2
(this is on a 0.18 process)
no wonder transmeta reckoned that they could pull off low power
honestly where does it all go because dont tell me its logic ?
regards
john jones
The Duron is a great low-cost CPU. In fact, we replaced all our old 486s in the factory with Duron-based PCs. The low cost, upgradability, and performance ment that the time was right.
Now I have 30 486 PCs. Now the question is, what do I do with them?
As one who has been out of the hardware market lately I have a few questions. What does it take to setup an AMD MP system? The newsforge article mentions that AMD has MP certified processors but goes on to suggest that you could take 2 of these new Durons and throw them in an MP board together. Does this work with older Durons and what models of Ahtlons does it work with? Who makes good MP motherboards for AMD chips? I have seen that Tyan makes a couple. Are they any good? Thanks for the enlightenment!
In Republican America phones tap you.
AMD does not offer the performance of intel. They cost less because they are inferior. The company that produces them is no more warm-hearted and morally upright than intel, unless you think exploiting mexican workers is morally supportable. Why is AMD the hackers choice?
AMD have been trailing for years in the chip wars, always a year or so behind intel with advancements and extensions to the architecture. It's always been clear that intel does the hacking, while AMD runs to keep up. Intel's new chips offer a drastic alteration in the way caching is used to improve execution speed. AMD's chips offer what intel's offered last year.
If slashdotters were really interested in performance, they would have placed more support behind the now-defunct alpha architecture. Even Sun's chips offer more bang per mhz. I've seen many derisive statements made on this site about pushing mhz over performance, but if people really believed these claims, they would abandon the x86 architecture in droves. If linux runs on any processor, why are we still running it on the bottom of the barrel?
x86 is a hacked together, patched up, overextended, overheated, underdesigned chip that should have been put out to pasture in '89. That it has persisted for 10 years past it's obseletion is a credit to intel's PR. AMD has reaped the benefits of this as well.
AMD have never made a move to befriend the hacker community, despite the levels of support they gain here. Indeed, their recent advertising stresses their compatibility with Windows XP. No mention whatsoever is made of linux. Yet they are still considered the geeks chip of choice!
AMD is a faceless multinational company, as globalist as Nike and as ruthless as intel. Their product is an obselete chip that is a consistent runner-up in it's division. Why, if we be geeks, do we choose the worse performer?
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
"Gosh, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these..."
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
Will this prevent it from burning up if you accidently power up without the heat sink? (Article says these run cooler... is that a problem with these?) I lost a 1.2ghz Athlon that way the other day. Dumb, I know. You'd think they would print a warning as a reminder on the top of the CPU. Well, live and learn.
Now let's see if AMD can make something that doesn't suck! 2 choices for processors, and they both currently suck ass. Now there's free-market for ya!
"Intel Corp. will introduce its 2 GHz Pentium 4 processor next week, the latest salvo in its ongoing chip war with archrival Advanced Micro Devices."
3 7_ 1.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nf/20010820/tc/129
-Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
And if you bought an OEM chip, to save your cheap ass 20 bucks, then it's your own damn fault for being a moron.
NEXT TIME, buy a retail box! You get a heat sink, and a fancy sticker that should everyone just how 1337 you really are!
The good thing about WindowsXP Lite is, that it supports dual-processors. So we will hopefully see cheap dual-processor boards mid-next year.
I would love to have two of these Durons.
I have a contact inside AMD, and one of his production servers is a Dual Athlon Server.
"My next computer will be an AMD."
I've said that ever since the Athlon was released, but as it turns out, my next computer will be Intel. Why? I'm buying a laptop. As a matter of fact, it will be my sole machine as I'm getting rid of my three desktops, so I needed something powerful with a good screen. The biggest screen with the highest resolution I could find was on a Dell Inspiron 8100 or an IBM A22P. Both of these are available with Intel only. HP doesn't make a 15" UXGA laptop, but they do make AMD laptops.
I would have gone with the AMD solution if I had the choice, but for now, my needs dictate an Intel.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
1 GHz for the low-end...sheesh...
I thought my system was low end - now it might as well be "destined for the scrap pile"...
I have a Celeron 366 - my board can only go up to a 667. Last night I just maxed out my ram at 768 meg (hey, when you are running KDE and Netscrape, every bit counts - someday, I will make the switch to Konq, or Moz). I still have yet to upgrade my hard drive - I have only a couple of 4.3 gig drives in the box. Perhaps I'll get one of them new-fangled 40 (60? 80?) gig drives someday - though I am saving up for a house, so it will take a while.
I guess I should feel good that most of my system is made up of stuff no one else wanted - and it does what I need, which is all that matters...
It feels almost...retro (though if I really wanted that, I would break out my TRS-80 CoCo 3 with 512K of RAM, at a blazing 1 MHz (2 MHz with high speed poke!), and 160K floppy drive - yehaw!)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Notice that current motherboards are not able to handle the thermal diode because they didn't exist at the time the boards were manufactured. Instead, one will have to rely on the onboard external sensor until new mobos are released.
Now I see why my Hexus benchmark post on the Athlon article didn't get modded up.. it was because it was important enough to get on the benchmarks article...
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I hope noone fell for that....
Good try though!
Take a look at a picture of any modern processor 90% or so is taken up by the various caches and buffers.. leaving 10% or for the control.
There's also a review of it at Tech Report, right here.
since Pentium II. What's the big deal with that? It's upto the motherboard vendors to impliment the circuitry.. it always has been.
And hardware pre-fetch? Ummm hi welcome to the last year? These aren't major new innovations at all.
Oh wait.. but it's AMD and not Intel in the news.. by default it's gotta be a great-new-better-thing.
but since you need enough power to DVD generation this is probably not an option.
;) But then again, noise isn't a big deal at all while watching DVD's, since I have the Digital Out plugged into a Dolby Digital Receiver, connected to 6 nice JBL speakers, and two nice subwoofers with their own Amp/X-over, and my wife loves to crank the volume up on the thing :p
:D So she heard no arguments from me :) Now I just gotta save up for a nice LCD Projector, and I'm set...
Really? I play DVD's on a lowly P-II 450, and it works fine. Then again, its going through a Hollywood Hardware Decoder board
Surprisingly, dropping all that cash on the "Home Entertainment" system was my wife's idea
Did anyone else think the title said AMD Duron 'Moron' at first glance?
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
I about creamed my pants reading that.. since my budget is restricted by my own personal bank account manager (read...my wife..) its tough to get a "loan" approval to build some badly needed servers. Currently I could only muster up a dual ppro 200 and a sketchy p200.. The ppro does fine for now, but I need something with a little more power. Dual proc durons would be a great, cheap alternative to dual proc pIII's or the athalon mps! Yea!
Aliens? Magnetic Rings?! Bah! Who needs that when we have
I was under the impression the Athlon MP was really a Athlon 4 (Palomino), which Morgan is based on, so if i'm correct does this mean this chip can be used in the MP motherboards without any tweaking? If not, when are the "offical" Duron MPs due?
i know that my next system will be a duron. I've been using AMD since the k6-2 300 and now have a k6-2 500 (that does rather nicely) but the system is showing signs of age where games are concerned. but i hadn't even thought about a duronMP system. I think that would just be k-rad. reminds me of the websites that showed you how to solder on your celery stick so you could use them in a dualie.
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I have two Desktop systems (both Athlon) and they have turned out great, I haven't had one problem yet and the performance has been fantastic. The reason the Duron only accounts for a small percentage of AMD's sales is because the price difference between an Athlon and Duron is down to the single digits. A few months ago Durons were a good value when the high end Athlons were over $500 dollars, but now there isn't a big enough price gap to justify purchasing a Duron over an Athlon.
Its always amazed me that ever since a heatsink was wacked on a CPU, that an internal temperature shutdown circuit was not implemented. I use sub $1.00 chips in designs that have this feature, yet a $400 CPU doesn't.... and now all AMD is giving is a crummy diode junction!! I 'spose in the end, a thermally destroyed CPU means one more sale!!
46137
64 watts of typical power usage for a "low-end" chip? 24 watts for the mobile version (heat dissipated most also be supplied [law of physics that energy is neither created or destroyed] so these chips will DRAIN the battery)? 106sq-mm die? x86 chips are BULKY, HOT, and SLOW. Note that this 106mm is just the cpu core and probably not L2 cache (which itself is probably equally as large as the entire core).
The only reason they are cheaper than risc chips is the economies of scale. In terms of raw cost, x86 are probably not the cheapest to make. For example, G3s had a 47sq-mm die and G4s (pre-733MHz) had a die of 67sq-mm? Not to mention much lower power consumption (5 watts typical for some of the slower G4s?). Smaller dies = lower costs. And you can see how oversized and overheating AMD/Intel are by looking at Samuel (next generation winchip+cyrix): FANLESS heat sinks possible, smaller dies (76sq-mm on a 0.18 process), only about 10 watts dissipated heat. Yes, they are slower in terms of raw megahertz and mhz-for-mhz performance, but I think what one person was trying to point out about 32-bit cpus is that the complexity is about the same, so why are intel/amd chips becoming outrageous?
The types of power requirements mentioned by other posts remind me of alpha processors. Such cpus are designed with raw performance in mind only. And no one needs a GHz "low end" cpu. 400Mhz is enough even. Note: low end means LOW END, not ultimate quake machine or whatever.
hey ... i got a dreamcast recently ... and it's cheaper than the duron.
... it comes with a processor, is 3d capable, and a 56k modem and it's just $79 (i paid $99 :( )
... most of you want a hotter (ahem ... better) processor so that you can play games ... but i figure ... playing games on a pc is not all that smart.
... it cost's more to set up a pc ... and just when you get the drivers loaded properly, there's a faster chip on the market ... and within a year, the new games that are released are gonna run rater slow on your pc. now, consoles are more resestant to this sort of phenomenon.
... that's just my $79!
lemme see
thing is
hear me out first
well
BC