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Athlon 64 Pushed Back to September
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."
Don't bother wasting your time with release dates, okay? Because quite frankly, I and many others don't believe a word you say any more. Not a word. So you go ahead and do whatever you do to make that cpu, and pass me an announcement when they're in a shop for me to buy, okay? And if it's worth buying then i'll do so.
A story in the inquirer
says AMD is "waiting for the introduction of a suitable 64-bit operating
system. This, The INQUIRER believes, is the Windows 64 bit version specifically
for the Athlon64."
How many companies have died while waiting for Microsoft
to do something? (Note to AMD: Microsoft is *not* your friend.)
Other than for encryption, there are not many common desktop application that needs a 64 bit processor. Why this rush for 64 bit processor?
Heh.. talk about a major troll! But I'll bite.
You don't need more hertz (or in this case, GHz). If all you do on a system is play solitaire and MS word, you'll be ok with a 333MHz, providing you have sufficiently fast memory and disk space.
However a good deal of us actually *use* our computers. Ever try to compile XFree86 on a 333MHz CPU? I doubt it. When people use their systems for games, development, or much more than posting trolls, they can use as many GHz as AMD and Intel can crank out.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
this isn't going to make your desktop much snappier, or make you FPS much better. or watch the pr0n dvd's any crisper.
this allows for addressing more memory and HDD space and all that stuff. you're dvd ripping might notice a slight increase in speed.
to make a system better with today's software and give the user what they expect (a computer to respond to their requests, not to sit there and think about it for a while) you need to increase the number of processors. you get your self a dual Athlon MP system with 512MB Ram or more and you'll be saying "Ho-ly Shit!, freaking schweeet".
those 64 bit processors will let your EJB applications sweat a little less
How is this any different from when AMD adopted the "performance rating" vs the clock speed to begin with? If the increase in performance makes it perform like a 3ghz P4, then thats how it should be marked. After all, isn't that what the name represents? Intel still uses the raw ghz number, and for them to change now wouldn't make any sense (that and the fact that it's hard to pin down "performance" increases with HT esp if you're using most of the common benchmarks which are not MT).
Which brings up an interesting marketing difference, by sticking with just ghz #'s, it's harder for Intel to easily communicate/quantify architecture gains (vs simple clock increases) vs the "relative performance" rating that AMD uses. People blasted AMD at first for confusing matters, but they may be reaping at least some the benefits of divorcing raw clock rate from performance.
SiS and VIA have already shopped around engineering sample motherboards for all the manufacturers, so this indicates the Athlon64 delay is a complete disaster.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Amd said that the clawhammers would be released in q3 2003 some time ago. Last time I checked September was Q3...
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
he press release *seemed* to indicate that only the Athlon64 (single-processer desktop version) would be delayed, and perhaps not the Opteron (multi-CPU server version). However, it wasn't entirely clear.
So when the posted article said in the second paragraph:
Opteron, in keeping with the company's original launch date, is set to officially debut on April 22 in New York City.
That wasn't clear enough for you? Only the desktop and mobile versions are being delayed. Which makes sense. The market for a 64-bit laptop right now is pretty slim. But I think AMD will probably make the April release date. Opteron servers are actually shipping now in limited quantities to beta evaluators. And I actually touched a Linux-running, working, Opteron server at a conference last November. These things are a long way from being vapor. I'm betting that AMD just wants to be super careful since the server market is not very tolerant of crappy hardware.
Actually, to make systems respond better, increasing processors isn't going to help. Increasing cache hits and reducing time for disk reads is really the only reason to make systems snappier. As an example, in my poor laptop with 256K of cache, if I'm using a boatload of apps (MSDev, Explorer, Outlook, vi, etc) I'm going to be replacing pages in my poor cache nearly every second. I get a maybe 25% cache hit rate on my machine (from performance testing). With slow disk drives, that drives my performance down even more. When it comes to compiling, I can pin the CPU. But when it comes to working with Word and or Excel, CPU is hardly the problem for me anymore. Then it becomes the software going out and loading up wizards, and attempting to do things for me that I don't necessarily want it to do (MSdev with auto-indent, etc.).
:-)
I've LONG been a fan of software with two flags. New [l]user mode.
Super [l]user mode.
So if I set Super luser mode, the software doesn't do SQUAT. No clippy, no autocomplete, no nothing. I hate it very much when my typing stream gets interrupted because Word or MSDev or Excel goes off and tries to autocomplete something (so I spend several hours every time I get a new machine turning said features off, and every new release turns them back on.. <sigh>).
Happy weekend, all.
-Chris
Programmers expect "Super users" to be able to find the preferences and disable things like "clippy" and "autocomplete" without having to do it all at once.
Fine grain control, not coarse "all on, all off" switches, are what real "super users" need.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Maybe it was the rumor-mongering of TheInquirer.net and The Register and all those other sites that had our hopes up, but this just seems like more bad news from a company that is losing further ground to Intel.
The way I see it, AMD has been the weasel ever since adopting the XP rating format. Suddenly a 2800+ is a 2083 MHz part instead of a 2250 MHz part?..because of 256K more L2? Where is that 2800+ anyway? I tried to get one at NewEgg and they didn't have any...
Now Athlon 64 gets delayed...and they still think they can compete with Intel, who has a huge headstart in the 64-bit race. AMD's put all their eggs in one basket and it's looking more and more like IA-64 will win by a TKO.
Hopefully AMD will miraculously survive. I hope good things come with IBM's desktop POWER4 derivative as well.
Up against PowerPC 970...