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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!
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
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....
That said, I agree with you wholeheartedly; the x86 architecture is like the painting of Dorian Gray, and should have died long ago...but thanks to IBM's unfortunate choice in the early 1980s, the x86 has the advantages of economy of scale--enough people are buying them to make it worthwhile for several companies to flog the dead horse repeatedly. (Even they agree with us; the way they've come up with to keep it alive is to set up a Potemkin CPU, with a decent internal architecture that we, alas, can't get to.) Yes, we're geeks, and if I weren't in a situation in which I got more money for singing at Renaissance fairs than I did for stock options (true story!), I might go for an Alpha. But the hardware of the masses is inexpensive and improving steadily. (Did the Alpha's speed increase as quickly as that of x86oid CPUs?) If we geeks can take advantage of it, why shouldn't we?