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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."
they Opteron to delay-IT-orn...
At least this will give me more time to save more money...
(must have new CPU.... drool =P~)
cheers
will work for Karma
Just another delay in the release of the next cpu. The only news of item is that M$ is late with there 64bit OS for AMD. 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.
The server market needs the 64bit cpus before consumers do anyway. I am looking forward to the barton cores with their better cache performance. It's still impressive to see what their doing with a look less cycles than Intel. I hope they get a good share in the server market with the Opteron as it will build confidence in AMD across the board.
Man i can't wait to play Duke Nukem Forever on my new Opteron system. I'm saving a penny a day and by the time i have enough money, i should be able to buy all i need.
WOOT!@#
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
AMD's decision to delay it's Athlon64 CPU series release date until September (possibly timed to the release of a 64bit version of Windows) is pretty smart, actually. By delaying, AMD loses in the highend desktop arena, but is now able to spend those resources on the potentially far more lucrative Opteron systems. Why release a fast, inexpensive processor for the desktop market when you can release a slightly slower one, for a different market, for much, much more? By concentrating on the big iron of Opteron, AMD might be able to halt their financial bloodletting, and get back in the black in time for Athlon64...
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Looks like somebody pissed off the AMD fan boy moderator =)
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.)
The current MS desktop is XP, the current AMD desktop ship series is the XP. The next big MS release keeps getting put back. The next big AMD release just got put back. There is, however, no link between these facts and you'd be a fool and a communist to think so ;)
The XP lines "model number" indicates the equivalent Intel P4 processor speed (because, as well know, the Athlon, like the P3, achiees more per cycle than the P4 does. A 3Ghz P3 would absolutely stomp a 3Ghz P4), so if they effectively upped the speed by adding more cache, then it's entirely the right thing to do given the philosophy of the model number.
One thing I really respect AMD for is how conservative they actually are with their "model numbers" : The XP 2800 actually trounces the P4 2.8 on most benchmarks, and slaps the 3.0Ghz around on several. If they took the Cyrix tact they would have called in the XP 8200+.
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!
The XP lines "model number" indicates the equivalent Intel P4 processor speed (because, as well know, the Athlon, like the P3, achiees more per cycle than the P4 does. A 3Ghz P3 would absolutely stomp a 3Ghz P4), so if they effectively upped the speed by adding more cache, then it's entirely the right thing to do given the philosophy of the model number.
a tant-dupes is bad enough, but these technical issues are just astoundingly amateur for what is one of the larger websites out there.
One thing I really respect AMD for is how conservative they actually are with their "model numbers" : The XP 2800 actually trounces the P4 2.8 on most benchmarks, and slaps the 3.0Ghz around on several. If they took the Cyrix tact they would have called in the XP 8200+.
SLASHDOT NOTE: This is a repost because Slashdot lost track of my last comment. What the hell is going on with Slashdot? Not only has it slowed to an absolute crawl, but every couple of days some other poorly thought out alteration to the UI appears and then disappears, comments are being lost after they are posted, etc. The whole editors-not-reading-their-own-site-and-posting-bl
Of course, I'm not going to have the $$ to buy the NEW stuff, but the stuff I'm eyeing now is going to drop in $$ when the new stuff comes out, right?
Just to make sure the other side of the concept of release dates is heard.
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
Should be out just in time for World Of Warcraft. This must be why Blizzard is dragging their feet, they're gonna wow us with a 64 bit MMORPG!
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.
*pats his Athlon 2200+*
:-)
I hope that was the system and not the CPU itself!
Otherwise, you just burned your hand and static-fried the chip!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Good point read the article Intel hoist by Centrino megahurts petard stating how the new mobile processor Banias is running up to 1Ghz slower for same performance as the P4. Now how are they going to "Market" that thingy?
Quote from Article:
Given Intel's extreme assault on AMD's model number system, it'll be quite interesting to see how the company positions its new "Centrino" (Banias) line of processors. These CPUs will be released at a much lower set of frequencies then the current P4 crop of notebooks, even as much as a GHz lower. All of a sudden, Intel is in a bit of a tough spot -- will consumers want to adopt a notebook running so much slower than what appear to be competitive P4-M notebooks running even faster?
Help fight continental drift.
Is that how many hertz it has? I still have a 333 and it works just fine. Can somebody tell me why I'd need a higher numbers of hertz?
... the chips are generally a little faster than the number would indicate. The actual chip probably runs at 2.5 GHz or so (my 2400+ MPs run at 2.0 GHz).
3000+ means its integer and floating point calculations are roughly on par with a 3000 MHz Intel P4. AMD has actually been quite good in being conservative with these numbers
As to why you would want a faster machine, well, that depends. If all you do is surf the net, read email, run gnucash to balance your checkbook, and do a little word processing then you're probably fine with what you have. If you have the misfortune of running Microsoft, you are quite possibly better off not upgrading, given those tasks.
If, on the other hand, you like to render animations using blender, povray, or what have you, or like to capture and convert video footage (cinelerra, kino, dvgrab, and transcode), or enjoy running an optimized, source based distribution such as Source Mage or Gentoo, then being able to compile your entire system, complete with open office, kde, mozilla, and so in in a few hours, rather than a few days, is kinda nice.
All that having been said, my firewall remains a Gentoo box on a k6, so older, slower hardware is by no means worthless with GNU/Linux around, even if the newer, sexier, faster hardware really shines under FreeBSD and Linux.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That's very nice. But know what? AMD really couldn't care less about you and your one system.
Release dates are very important to businesses, however, and anyone that is planning to make a large purchase of high-end workstations or servers (although servers are more interested in Opteron) is interested in release dates. As are system integrators and OEMs (who usually have better, albeit unofficial, info anyway, as well as access to samples if they're large enough).
There's quite a few companies that are waiting for a low priced 64-bit chip to be released. Generally these companies are using high-priced Sun/HP/IBM/whatever systems that either use their own CPU or a Itanium. The cost savings to move from one of these platforms to an Opteron or Athlon64 would be substantial, presuming you don't also need the higher I/O provided by such a system.
But, really, AMD doesn't care about your single system. Honestly.
Why pull the rug out from under the Barton Athlons when they are still making money and relatively competitive with Intel's cpu? Technology releas dates have as much to do with marketing as engineering...
love is just extroverted narcissism
In addition, if you run something like Photoshop or Protools or some other software that chews through RAM like there's no tomorrow, you may want more than 4 gigabytes of RAM in your machine. If you do, you're going to need a processor that has more than 32 bits in order to address it (there are ways of working around this, but I'm not going to go into them here).
Finally, if you are doing, say, nuclear physics and want to simulate something in high precision, you'll want 64 bits in your floating point numbers to get a more accurate representation of what's going on.
So the advantages are a) modest speedup in code dealing with disk access, b) ability to put in more than 4GB of RAM, and c) higher precision floating point arithmetic. Most people, however, really don't need a 64 bit processor on their desktops.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
The Opteron's debut is set for April 22nd .
They say it'll be out in a month... my guess is you'll be able to by the first one off the production line when you get your Opteron and Duke Nukem Forever all on the same day.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
When we need that extra little processing kick, we just turn it up to 64.
Why don't you just get a faster 32 bit processor?
Uhh...but ours goes to 64.
You know I would prefer them to wait and release a product when it works right as apposed to when Intel released the first P4s and they were slower than the P3s on the market. Plus these processors originally named sledgehammer and clawhammer will be a great addition to the multiple cpu community because they contain there own memory processors, so the woes of redundant work in multiple CPU systems will be reduced by not having to recache the memory constantly, like modern Xeon servers do. Plus don't you like the idea of your memory bandwidth actually increasing with each processor you install
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
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.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
This will be a marketing disaster for various sectors of the Desktop PC component business.
Namely, heat sink and cooling fan vendors are bound to see a substantial revenue drop.
Blue LED vendors and tricked-out-case-part vendors will likewise see a slump in the market.
Let's hope they can make it through to the Fall on continued sales of 'Yay! It's overcloxored!' stickers and decals. Word on the street is that the sticky adhesive on the present install base of stickers doesn't hold up to the humidity in a 'dank mom's-basement' environment so second and third sales will probably continue to roll in.
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 include new technology to succeed their acclaimed 3DNOW! Instruction Set which at this time is being termed only as "NUKE'EMNOW!". Dirk Meyer, senior vice president of computational products at AMD stated that "upon consulting with 3DRealms we feel this move will ensure that the next generation of AMD processors will be able to run Duke Nukem Forever with far superior performance to any other product currently on the drawing boards". A spokesman for the Acme Toothpick company commented "Gee.... that's too bad"
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
When the 286 was released, there were no protected mode operating systems for it. (Xenix came out a bit later, after the release).
When the 386 came out, there were no 32 bit operating systems. OS/2 was 286 protected mode (actually wasn't even out yet, just developing). Xenix was 16 bit.
Athlon64 has better support NOW than either of those did then. Waiting for MS to make them a custom operating system is just stuped. If they have a better reason, like internal timing or resources, fine. But don't let MS or XP-64 drive your product release. Let the customers use XP-32 or Linux-X8664.
Are you Autistic? Tell me about it.
"At least now Apple has a better chance of releasing the first 64 consumer desktops."
Really? What color? I just got a new pair of shoes.
In this case, the "64-bit" really refers to the size of a virtual address, and not a lot more. A 64-bit processor (and an OS that can use it) allows problem sizes to grow past the 32-bit address limitation. By itself, a 64-bit processor doesn't buy you any speed improvement - in fact, it can be a bit slower than an otherwise identical 32-bit processor because doubling the address size comes at a cost in chip circuitry and OS overhead. There's also a memory usage tradeoff - if you're storing lots of addresses, it takes twice as much memory as it does for 32-bits.
I've been through the 16 to 32 bit transition as well as 32 to 64 (ten years ago!). While the marketeers love to tout the "bit-ness", what has really happened each time is that the processor architecture was redesigned to accomodate new technology, and this is what delivers overall performance improvement.
Where a larger address space really shines is in VERY large applications, such as relational databases, weather modelling, etc., which have to use disk segmentation to work around the limits of a smaller address space. This is why 64-bit processors are much more important for servers than for desktops.
As for 128-bit, etc. - I suspect you are looking at some specialized processors which operate on data that size, not virtual addresses. Will we move to 128-bit someday? Perhaps someday - after all, software expands to fill the available address space (Windows certainly demonstrates that!) Once 64-bit becomes mainstream, I expect it to not be supplanted for at least a dozen years.
[snip: about the limitations of the built in memory controller holdning the Athlon64 back]
AFAIK the Athlon64 memory controller can easely be bypassed by chipset manufactures. So Athlon64 and Opteron motherboards with RDRAM or 400MHz DDR are possible (though unlikely). Besides that 333MHz DDR memory is standard, the SIS 755 chipset support 800MHz FSB speeds. The "Athens" version of the Opteron will include onboard 400MHz DDR II support.
The biggest problem with the Athlon64 cpu is, that I can't buy one until september.
In the meantime I will drool over the system from www.newisys.com : dual Opteron, onboard PPC cpu running Linux; http, ssh, ssl for management, dual channel u320 scsi w/mirroring (LSI logic with ARM cpu?) hotswap drives, all packed in a 2U casing.