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AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+
Harle writes "Today AMD has introduced a new version of the Athlon, codenamed "Barton," that features twice as much L2 cache as previous chips. Along with the increase in L2 cache comes an increase in the Athlon's performance rating -- specifically the new 2.17 GHz chip is rated at 3000+.
The clockrate is actually slighly lower than the Athlon XP 2800+'s 2.25 GHz speed, so the question becomes "Does the cache improve performance enough to counter the loss in clockspeed?" For the most part, the answer seems to be "yes," however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4.
With the recent delay of the Athlon 64 to September, this is AMD's top desktop chip for some time to come. The reviews are starting to pop up at Ace's Hardware and Extremetech." There's also reviews on The Tech Report, SimHQ, HotHardware, EarthV, in Norwegian on Hardware.no, and last but not least AMD's press release. I'm sure there's many many more links, but I'm tired of pasting them all in here, so post 'em below. *grin*
From the article on Ace Harware
This exclusive 512 KB L2-cache works together with the 128 KB L1-cache (64 KB data, 64 KB instruction) to form one impressive 640 KB on-die cache. According to AMD, the extra 256 KB cache boosts, an 2170 MHz Athlon XP from a 2700+ level to a 3000+ one.
If this is the case why do AMD, and Intel for that matter not put ever larger amounts of cache on their existing chips to achieve better performance ? Does the cost implications completely prohibit this or do the performance benefits tail off too quickly. SUN seem to able to achieve impressive performance with lower far lower Mhz (I know its different architecture) but I get the impression the large amounts of cache (2-4 MB) they use contributes significantly to performance.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Well it is quite clear that the Athlon
architecture is at the end of its useful life.
However,the performance difference is somewhat
"exaggerated" in favour of the P4. Most of the
"content creation" applications and games
are SSE2 enhanced while, on the other hand
3dnow is propably less popular. The hard fact,
of course, is that P4 needs less time in these
applications so it is faster (whatever the
reason).
However, for general purpose usage, I firmly
believe that the Athlon is faster, mostly
because everyday applications do not need
huge memory bandwidth and cannot be made to
run with SSE.
I'm thinking that someone should start doing
some "Open Source" benchmarks where the source
is available. A good idea would be to run
a set of:
a) Kernel compile (or gcc compile or something
like that) and perhaps even "make check"
gdb or gcc or some other application (libc!).
b) MP3 compression with lame
c) Video compression with xvid or ffmpeg
d) Linpack/POVray for fpu
e) Ecasound/LADSPA for sound processing
f) Maybe a perl/high-level bechmark for some
standard system tasks.
g) Cachegrind some of the above (have a look
at valgrind/cachegrind!!)
Anyway, if someone has anything above XP 2600+
let's gather some results.
P.
I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
Oh come on... haven't you figured out by now that all new chips start expensive, and in a year are the bottom of the barrel, bargain basement, can't buy anything slower deals? And that all top-of-the-line chips are a marginal improvement for way too much money?
Do you know what bottom-of-the-barrel is right now? It's like an Athlon 1800+ depending on where you shop. (Gee, I was just in there last week and they were still selling 1.2GHz Durons...) Do you know how much an Athlon 1800+ cost when it came out? Do you really think this price is permenent?
What's the alternative? Never introduct a chip until it's cheap? Doesn't work that way, for a whole lotta reasons.
depends on which review you read and with whose devils eye you read it with.
you do realise that p4 3.06 is supposed to be better/faster than p4 2.8 would be at 3.06 speeds too? does that make calling p4 2.8 a p4 2.8 wrong, or calling 3.06 a 3.06 wrong? you can't compare even intel products just by the number they're sold with.
it certainly doesnt get 'bitchslapped'.
intel is far worse. they sell celerons and p4's with essentially same 'horsepower' numbers(to the consumer). not to mention their ht tech they're trying to make look far more better than it is. if you think the common joe can identify the differences then you're really wrong and haven't do enough mandatory helpdesking for your relatives.
intel is like a car dealer selling cars by just telling consumers how high they can rev, amd is telling a performance number(though, mostly just comparable to other amd cpu's, and thats alright, why should they change their rating system according to what their competitors do.)
i'd prefer to know the actual kw rating of the engine rather than just it's displacement and how high it can rev.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A serious question: If I booted up vanilla DOS on this thing, would it pretty much all run inside of cache?
That would be insanely fast.