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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*
so post 'em below..
OK Then... Anandtech link
"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."
Am I the only one who can see Bill Gates drooling over this?
AMD better get there act together and get the Athlon 64 out in september or sooner. Intel is just kicking there ars right now and AMD has nothing to compete with that 3.06 ghz with multi-threading and whatnot. Dont get me wrong i dislike intel but unless AMD's next big thing is BIG, then they could be in for some trouble
There is 1.1 fps improvement for Jedi knight,
and this comes at 200$+ Isnt it better to invest this money in a graphics card...
Other benchmarks also dont show marked improvement. I guess this is due to delays introduced by the much larger die size...
AMD's botched it for sure this time. I hope they bring down the pricing to a more sensible level.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I think it's fast. Gigaherz, sure sounds fast.
GIIIIGGGGAAAAAHHHEEEEEEERTTTTZZZZZZ, cool.
Needs more penis though.
2.7GhzPenis now that's fast!
Thx.
Yay, a processor code-named after our first Prime Minister :)
I'm never buying a 'Keating' or 'Howard' though...
-- Shaun "Blessed are the geeks, for they shall Internet the earth"
We've now got Palomino, Thoroughbread A, Thoroughbread B and Barton under the Athlon XP name. To make things worse, some of the chips are using a 133 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus), and some 166.
:)
Due to this and AMD's PR ratings you have to be real careful of what you buy, if you're aming for a specific core. Expecially since AMD doesn't plan to replace all Athlon XPs with the new core.
Just remember to do your research, and you'll be fine
.: Max Romantschuk
Why are the real life bench-mark specs always just about very theoreticial things rather than real life software? The software, if they *do* decide to test it, is usally either a MCSFT or Novell application or some other Windows-only piece of code in which the interests of us Linux folks is surely unsatisifed.
Therefore I really encourage these producers like AMD to start benchmarking Linux applications for their new procs. For example, run a %top instance and then run a few different programs: for example 1) a C++ app... 2) a JAVA app... 3) and perhaps a compile of the Linux kernel (2.2x series though, not 3.x).
That would indicate a great deal of things including thruput and FSB calculations as well as hard disk access times in conjunction with a fast CPU.
We want to no what we're getting here so don't give us QUAKE III marks, give us Linux benchmarks that reflect real life computer code!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Good point, except this will never happen. Intel have based their marketing around the clockspeed, and to go back on that would be distasterous for them.
AMD have to pander to the 'OMG 3.2 Gigawats is better than 2.3Googawits!' idiocy.
"Thoroughbread"?
mmm, freshly baked Athlon
-- Shaun "Blessed are the geeks, for they shall Internet the earth"
The people who care about the difference between AMDese and real megahertz, already know. Joe Public doesn't honestly care; an Athlon 2000 is a match for a Pentium IV 2000, and that's all that really matters. AMD aren't on the fiddle; they've been entirely fair with the ratings at which they market their chips (and the temptation to inflate a little would be considerable...)
As for asking Intel nicely to help out AMD's marketing department, what colour is the sky where you live? The Pentium IV is designed to get big megahertz at the expense of actual performance; why would Intel throw away their chip's advantage like that?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
IBM should have their Power970's out at least a month ahead...I don't remember where, but I heard they were going to release it in the 3rd Quarter of this year, presumably along with Apple's new release of a new (G5?) Power Macintosh, or XServe (just a rumor, don't flame me), although it may not go into full production until the end of the year. What about the Itanium 2? I haven't heard anything about that. Unless its not for desktops and only for servers. If that is the case, what is Intel coming out with to join the 64-bit desktop wars?
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4.
;)
Well, of course not... if it did, they'd be calling it the Athlon XP 3060, wouldn't they?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I concur, but I doubt this will happen, as such a spec for direct performace comparison (1) is difficult to do, as performance can be quite different depending on the intended application; and (2) would hamper each company's marketing efforts.
For an quick read on some of the issues associated with different benchmarks, you could look here.
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
I just bought a 2000+, and I thought I was cool. Looks like I'll have to upgrade again. Can anyone lend me some LOX to cool this thing down?
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
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.
The first Athlon's came out in the summer of 1999 at 500-650 speeds. By my count, that was about 3.5 years ago. Athlon is obviously prepping the Athlon 64 for launch within the year, so they are moving on to a new design, but the Windows world doesn't seem ready to make that big jump quite yet, so they've done a good job of extending the line of the 32 bit CPUs. They've redesigned the core a couple times, and increased the bus speed from 100/200 to 166/333, and it's quite possible they'll make it to 200/400 by the time they're done.
> mmm, freshly baked Athlon
:)
I baked an Athlon MP last spring. I can assure you the reaction to the smell is not "mmmm...."
Oh wait. Actually, I guess that was because I _fried_ it. Oh yea. Thats it.
In any case, it was the most _expensive_ bad smell I've ever smelled.
I'd say that was informative and maybe insightful. Someone needs to get their finger out and develop a comprehensive, relevant and useful set of Linux (and UNIX in general) benchmarks for these platforms, especially since Linux is gaining so much market share. Just how does a SQL server benchmark on Windows 2k relate to what I do on my AMD Slackware box? How does a Windows game using Direct X have any relevance to OpenGL applications? So, come on, who's going to do it? Who's going to give us some Free (GPL preferably) benchmarking software for Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems? I can write C. I'd gladly contribute a few hundred lines of code.
Stick Men
Theres an excellent review at Bit-Tech.net. Its interesting how the P4 wins easily on the benchmarks, but in games things are much closer. The Athlon even wins several games tests.
It's pretty clear which one is a better measure of relative performance. Although Toms' Hardware would not admit it for some reason.
--
If cars were open sourced, there would be at least five steering wheels in the cockpit, each operating differently -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
If it is like this with the 2.17, then it will be sweet when the faster cores get the increased cache.
Although I'm not really sure why I care other than when these things come out the slower ones go down in cost and that makes building clusters cheaper.
Right now I feel that the 2000+ chips are the best bang for the buck (I can make a single node in a cluster with one of those and 256M ram for under $300) - but perhaps with this thing coming out the pricing structure will shift and I can get me something faster.
hot damn.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Hers's the [H]'s take on it, , and here's Sudhian's.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
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?
What I've heard is that the MP chips are the "cream of the crop" of the XPs - AMD manufactures a batch, and then picks out the best to be MPs. So you do get something for what you pay for.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Wow, a great idea, I can see it now...
Intel has a faster processor than us, and we can catch up or even beat us, but that would only be an small percentage increase.... I say we just sit on our asses until we can double our speed. We'll be bankrupt by then, but users don't care about the releases.
If you are saying they should be doubling the speed at the same intervals as current incremental changes, you are being ridiculous. They are moving as fast as they can. This is what a competitive market does. They try to move any slower than they possibly can and competition leaves them behind. This is why the x86 platform is becoming much faster much more quickly than other platforms, the fierce competition.
If you don't like the small speed increase releases, just ignore them and pretend they never happen. For example, if you have an Athlon XP1500+, pretend that every successive release until now never happend. Then you'll be happy.
These are not meaningless speed increases. If you have the 2700+ processor, the 3000+ is faster, but not worth an upgrade (not yet anyway). If you have a 1500+ processor, this release is bound to make the 2700+ more reasonable, or even 3000+. Manufacturers do not expect a consumer to buy into every release cycle, but they expect different consumers to be ready to buy into different cycles at different intervals.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Here's the Link http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030210/index.htm l
It's seems like they say that AMD'S 3000+ rating is extremely aggressive and they do not seem to think it should have had that rating. They also have a good point in there about price gouging essentially eliminating the comeptitive price difference. Since the chip is so hard to get the price skyrockets. It's kind of disturbing that AMD recommends testing this chip with DirectX 7 that definitely does not speak well of AMD's confidence in competing with Intel's stengths.
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
X-bit labs has also got some info on the new Barton procs http://www.xbitlabs.com/cpu/athlonxp-3000/
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.
Processors that can move at such speeds - and, incidentally, keep requiring larger and larger heatsinks - only have practical applications on high-performance server (clusters). The average desktop user simply doesn't need all that, even for gaming; if you go to the store it's rare that you'll find a game that also requires you to have a computer with over a Ghz of computing power. Unless you're toying with some seriously heavy graphic or music manipulation software, it's next to useless.
So why is the hype aimed at so many desktop users? Simple: it's the largest market. Do we, the endusers, need it? No. Are we going to buy it, with the economy in the tight spot it's in? Nope. We're going to upgrade their memory sticks and leave it at that. I've got a trusty P3 600 which works fine with my GeForce 4 to run NWN at awe-inspiring resolutions and graphics, it's got 512mb so it's smoother than a narwhal, and I for one see no need to buy a new one anytime soon. The net result is that the intel/amd power struggle has been so intense that there's no point to it anymore. My system is still configured for gaming, but a lot of people - in companies as well as at home - only use their computers to email and write letters and maybe listen to some music. Like as not they'd much rather save for a 19" TFT than another tower. I own my own little IT company and generally advise my clients to stick to their 450mhz machines and upgrade a few choice parts.
The only thing I'm wondering is how big is the group that seriously uses such powerful machines? I can understand major websites or software companies will have clusters, but that can't be much more than a few percent can it? Anyone have an idea?
- Jynx
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
You have to tweak a memory management setting in the registry to take advantage of your L2 cache anyway. Look here... http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=guide& dId=145&dPage=6
Finally a chip that can generate the 1.21 gigawatts (pronounced jigawatts) needed to replace the flux capacitor!
otherwise you'd realize that a P4 3.06 oc'd to 4.4GHz and at least 2GB of RAM are a minimum!
On another geeky note, I wonder if you could somehow use this without any external RAM to run DOS...
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.
That could be useful in embedded applications. Running the entire app in the cache, at higher speed than in main memory, could be a Very Good Thing.
Sorry dude. Embedded apps usually aren't starved for CPU time. They are often real-time and have to be very predictable. Caches actually make things less predictable because the execution time of a high-priority task can substantially differ depending on the cache hit rate at a given execution.
And any embedded application that needs an Athlon, and can afford to dissipate 64 watts of power, will surely be larger than 640kb in footprint.
I've assembled many systems for value-conscious people around, most being Duron 700-950. Nowadays the Duron 1200-1600 are nice bets since any higher clock would push the price by a bigger margin.
The vast majority of customers, both OEM and custom-assembled, really couldnt care about the psychological 1GHz or 2GHz bump, or getting the very latest processor. The real competition is the number of processors sold, and everyone can see the Athlon has always outperformed the Pentium4 in price/performance competitions. Give the new power ratings, with the Athlon chugging lesser watts while pushing the cache for a more reasonable performance figure, I'd say AMD will come out the winner.
Most customers quite simply dont want a $3000 system with the latest and greatest parts. Sure such a market exists, but theyre a loud minority. There are parents buying systems for their kids, their offices and college guys for their collegework. There are ordiniary people who want ordiniary computers that just do the job reliably, you know, use MS Word, browse the net, maybe watch a DVD. You dont even need a processor clocked over 1GHz for this, a Duron 800 with 256MB RAM and a Geforce2MX card can hold its own even in todays market. Remember very few are really buying Windows XP right now.
In planning for the future, AMD should not ignore the FSB for the Hammer, nor should they ignore the power ratings. The price has always been their edge, but having the only 32/64-bit processor, they could even afford to jack it up a little assuming Intels 64-bit doesnt do too well with 32-bit code. What bothers Intel and Microsoft right now is that people are perfectly happy with a low-end machine, and will continue to be for a while. The whole North Amerian market is coming closer to saturation, and poorer countries would have a bell curve centered much closer to the very low end of America's computer buying bell curve. All this points to the next boom in extreme value systems, where AMD again has kept their edge over Intel, only to compete with transmeta and the C3.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
>>Self shutdown - if the heatsink falls off an Intel processor, it throttles itself down until it stops, if required, so that it doesn't burn, whereas an AMD chip just burns. >>Less heat - this is a major issue in a datacenter
--My AMD Duron 900MHz had its cooling fan STOP once. I continued using the PC for about an hour, then smelled something funny. Shutdown, reactivated the cooling fan, and I'm still using the PC right now for this post.
--However, if it had been 1GHz or better, I think the chip would have fried...
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
In most cases, it is far more cost effective to buy what you need for the moment, and upgrade later after
- prices have dropped,
- you actually need the upgrade.
Here's one example: in 1998 I bought a Pentium II 350 at about the same time my friend bought a Xeon 450. Four years later, I upgraded to a Pentium III 1.2GHz, while his Xeon slot doesn't support any cpu upgrade options. Today my system smokes his system for way less money.Of course, if you actually need the Xeon right now then you should get it, but buying in anticipation of future needs makes no sense to me when prices are falling so fast.