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Athlon 64 Pushed Back to September

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hold-your-breath dept.

Orion writes "AMD confirmed today that their new Athlon 64 will indeed be pushed back to September. Originally planned to be released in April or May, AMD has decided to put all of its brainpower into the launch of the 64-bit Opteron, which is still scheduled to be released on April 22. This article explains that AMD is still going to try to get a few more Athlon XP processors out before the Athlon 64 hits stores. The 3000+ has a planned February 10 release date, and the 3200+ should be out by the middle of the year according to the article."

6 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Another... by Dastardly · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also that AMD will not release until M$ is ready. The should release for Linux, but want to keep us hanging on as Intel's grip on the market tightens.

    Did you even read the article?? Opteron is still scheduled for April 22. It is the release for Linux.

  2. Re:Why rush for a 64 bit processor? by binaryDigit · · Score: 4, Informative

    For AMD it's simple, product differentation and market prestige. AMD is in a position that they always look like they are feeding off of Intels table scraps. This is an opportunity for them to establish themselves as a tech. leader and not simply a me-too company.

    That and the fact that the margins on the new processors will be significantly higher than existing chips, a much needed boost in revenues.

  3. Re:Why rush for a 64 bit processor? by SWPadnos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, there are several applications, albeit specialized ones:

    1) Databases - a lot of databases are too big for a pointer offset to fit into 32 bits. Ever notice that the 120Gig hard drive you just bought has more than 2^32 bytes on it? (yes - I know that the hard drive is split into 512-byte sectors, and that you won't overflow 32 bits until you get drives larger than 2 TB, but how long will that take :)

    2) Video (editing, encoding, etc) - a single layer of a single side of a DVD is more than can be addressed by a 32-bit pointer. The amount of source data used to create the highly compressed DVD data is mind-boggling. (A high quality transfer from film is about 100M per frame. A 2-hour film has 172800 frames [assuming it's not IMax - that's higer resolution and more frames per second] - that's 17 terabytes of raw data!)

    3) High dynamic range images (including photographs and extrme high color video games) - the data types being used by the GeForce FX (similar to the EXR format released by ILM) have 16 bits of data per channel - this totals 64 bits for each RGBA pixel.

    I'm sure there are more - these few just jumped into mind quickly.

    Of course, for those who use Windows, you'll need 64-bit CPU's to be able to load those Word XP-2004.Net documents :)

    --
    - The Sigless Wonder
  4. Athlon64 != Opteron by asv108 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Judging by the current posts, there seems to be a lot of confusion. The Athlon64 is AMD's 64 bit desktop offering, which will now be coming out in the early fall instead late spring.

    The Opteron's debut is set for April 22nd .

  5. AMD says... by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to AMD:

    Q:What are the differences between the AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron processors?

    A:The upcoming AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon 64 processors are designed for different markets. For the server/workstation market, the AMD Opteron processor will undergo more stringent validation and reliability testing. Another difference will be in the number of HyperTransport links embedded on the chip. The AMD Athlon 64 processor will contain one HyperTransport link offering 6.4 GB/s data transfer while the AMD Opteron processor will offer three links. The processors will also contain different amounts of cache.
  6. Re:Why rush for a 64 bit processor? by Zathrus · · Score: 4, Informative

    So, in other words, right now a 64 bit CPU is not needed for this. Why did you list it?

    Uh... sure it is. Right now you can't easily address a file >2 GB on a 32-bit CPU. Doing so requires a file pointer larger than 32 bits in size (most vendors go to a 64-bit unsigned int, but implementations do vary) and that causes a pretty dramatic slow down on a 32-bit CPU. A 2 GB DB may have been large once upon a time, but it's trivial nowadays. Medium sized databases are in the hundreds of gigs, large in the terabyte range, and some of the biggest are pushing a petabyte.

    Moving a database (or any other large file I/O heavy operation) to a 64-bit CPU can dramatically improve performance for this reason alone.

    I believe the original poster said common applications

    I believe watching a DVD on a PC is becoming increasingly common. HDTV on PCs isn't too uncommon, and HDTV dumps make DVDs look puny - even when compressed. Video editing is becoming more common as well, which utilizes both large files and can take advantage of the larger operations on a 64-bit CPU.

    probably done on a unix system with a 64 bit cpu already

    Yes, as are all of the applications... and it only costs 100x as much for a slower CPU. The point is that x86-64 will bring 64-bit computing to an entirely new price point - you'll be able to build a fast 64-bit PC for less than the price of a single 64-bit chip from Sun, IBM, Intel, or HP. That's pretty significant.

    Honestly, there isn't much need for a 64-bit desktop CPU. But there isn't much need for a 2 GHz desktop CPU either. For those that can take advantage of the higher bit width, or speed, or both, the improvements are indeed massive.