Athlon 64 Debuts

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Posted by michael on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @05:37AM from the hotter-than-ever dept.

SpinnerBait writes "AMD launches their Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX chips today and there is a full analysis with benchmarks up at HotHardware. Interestingly enough, Intel pulled a fast one (literally) and released a new breed of Pentium 4 chips with 2MB of on board L3 cache, just in time to boost their performance in the benchmarks for this launch. Regardless, the performance levels for AMD's new flagship look very strong." Tom's has a story, or Tech Report, or see info straight from AMD.

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A happy coincidence by RealAlaskan · 2003-09-23 05:47 · Score: 5, Informative

By a happy coincidence, I just today got my copies of the x86-64 programmer's manuals. There are five volumes:
1) Application Programming
2) Ssytems Programming
3) General Purpose and System Instructions
4) 128-Bit Media Instructions
5) 64-Bit Media and x87 Floating-Point Instructions
Get them here.
Then go make your favorite compiler or windowing system work better on this.

--
See what I've been reading.
Come on now by MalleusEBHC · 2003-09-23 05:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

I would hope that Tom's Hardware would at least try to keep the anti-Mac bias down to a tolerable level.

"At the same time, Apple laid claim that with the G5 model, it would offer the world's most powerful desktop system. Apparently there are users who will believe these kinds of claims. Whatever - at least the G5 also has 64-bit support with regard to the software. Nevertheless, there is still no final operating system available for it."

FUD, lack of evidence, and outright lies - they call this journalism? They dismiss the Apple's claims about the G5's performance without a) including it in their later benchmark or b) citing any references. Why am I suppose to believe someone who is trying to put down a group of users like they are petulent 2 year olds. Also, what is the crack about not having a "final operating system" out yet? 10.2.7 is a fine OS for the G5. If he means that there is no 64-bit OS, why not just come out and say it?

Pfff. I can't believe I took time away from constantly reloading my Fedex tracking page to read that drivel.

PS - FEDEX, BRING ME MY DAMN G5 ALREADY!!
1. Re:Come on now by TheNetAvenger · 2003-09-23 06:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  FUD, lack of evidence, and outright lies - they call this journalism? They dismiss the Apple's claims about the G5's performance without a) including it in their later benchmark or b) citing any references.
  
  Because sane, savvy people in the technology industry should know better.
  
  We have had 64bit AMD systems running here before the Apple G5 announcement, additionally, we have had Itanium with Windows XP 64 edition running here for over a year.
  
  Considering we ACTUALLY have these 'shipping' systems already in our office and labs for quite some time, do we need a reference from the article's author to know that Apple was lying out their ass?
  
  Where in the hell have you been?
  
  Apple was NOT the first 64bit desktop PC, their performance numbers were 'admittedly' pulled from a comparison of slower 32bit Xeon CPUs, and only showed the specific few tests that the G5 actually outperformed even the older Xeon chips.
  
  And the last nail in this Apple shenanigan is that Mac OSX (even the new release for the G5s) is NOT a 64bit OS, and has no plans to be a 64bit OS in the near future.
  
  I don't dislike Apple or their products, but their marketing department needs to be whacked up side the head. Instead of billing the G5 for what it IS and its TRUE good points, they go out on this hyperbole that is false and make a fool of themselves.
  
  I'm sorry you and other people buy into it. If you are so worried about facts and citing references, why haven't you checked the facts that Apple has been purporting? You would have found they are false which is what the rest of the industry already knew.
2. Re:Come on now by WiseWeasel · 2003-09-23 07:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You claim to have been using 64 bit x86 CPUs for over a year (Itanium) as well as from AMD (Opteron), but what you fail to realize is that Apple is claiming first 64 bit DESKTOP. The Itanium and Opteron chips are not desktop CPUs, but server and workstation chips. This is just silly semantics, and anyone who believes marketing drivel should have their head examined. But to simply dismiss a whole platform for these stupid marketing claims is ridiculous. The 1.6 and 1.8 GHz G5s have been in the marketplace with a final version of MacOS X 10.2.7 for over a month, making them the first viable 64 bit DESKTOP solution available in my book, since they run a final, stable version of MacOS X which is as tuned as it needs to be for 64 bit operation (mostly 42 bit memory address space support and a few 64 bit math libs), and a good consumer user experience. Someone trying to use Windows XP 64 right now had better be an expert user, to deal with all the problems with missing drivers. If you want to argue that the opteron was a desktop CPU or had desktop solutions (since it can run Win32), that might be a valid argument, but you can't fault Apple's marketing department for trying to cash in on the 64bit buzz, especially since most people who watch those commercials have never heard of an opteron.
  As for benchmarks, it's silly to omit the G5s from the comparison for religious reasons, and people want to see how they stack up. The only way to counter Apple's marketing drivel is to do actual real-world benchmarking using cross platform apps and benches. The 'slow' Xeon chips Apple compared the G5 to were the fastest available at the time from Intel. I don't know why they didn't compare themselves to the Opterons, but them's the breaks. What we need now is for all these PC tech sites to get some dual G5s and compare them to what they think is the top of the line on the x86 platform. FUD and hostility will only make people see these sources as biased and unprofessional. Objective comparisons between G5s, Athlon64 FX and P4 EE will drive lots of page hits, since people are starved for this info right now (due in part to Apple's excessive marketing claims). So, either put up or shut up, and be happy that Apple's marketing claims drove so much interest in G5 comparisons w/ x86 offerings.
  
  --
  "I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Re:What about supporting hardware? by CausticWindow · 2003-09-23 05:52 · Score: 5, Funny

Have they even created one yet?

Actually, no.

If you take a closer look at the pictures in the article, you will see that they've attached a wire to each and every pin of the processor. It's all a loose mess of wires and duct tape. If you want an Athlon 64, you'll probably have to do the same yourself, because there aren't scheduled any motherboards for it before sometime after christmas.

--
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
The biggest benefit... by chill · 2003-09-23 06:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

...of both the new AMD-64 and the Pentium 4 Extreme is that the prices of the older chips should start dropping like a stone.

--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Re:What's up with AMD's model names lately? by Tumbleweed · 2003-09-23 06:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

I couldn't care less about their silly-ass naming schemes - I'm much more irritated with their ridiculous lack of planning on socket formats & memory controllers. Single channel on that kind of processor (the non-FX) - what were they smoking? Maybe if they want to call that the new Duron, but otherwise, that's just idiotic. They should also have increased (doubled!) the L1.

It's not like any of this _really_ concerns me, mind, as I'm now saving up for a G5. It's time to 'Switch'! :)

I'd say with CPU prices like that AMD & Intel are now charging, the whole 'PCs are cheaper than Macs' theory is gonna get a lot less credence.

I'm _really_ interested in seeing some real & comprehensive benchmarks between all the processors, now that they're all out. G5 vs P4 vs P4EE vs Xeon vs Athlon 64/FX.
Reviews of Mobo and Chipsets by carbona · 2003-09-23 06:13 · Score: 5, Informative
For those of you lucky enough to be already considering what mainboard your new Athlon 64 will be running on, OCWorkBench has been posting reviews in the past month on three motherboards/chipsets:
- K8VNXP VIA K8T800
- K8NNXP nForce3 150
- M1687 K8.
  
  Looking for a Linux/Windows/Mac admin/support tech monkey in the Los Angeles area? Please see my resume.
Re:Indeed a fast one up on AMD by Zathrus · 2003-09-23 06:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

Though I am a die hard AMD supporter, i have to admit Intel has really pulled one up on AMD this time. The 64bit 3200+ is just about 15-20% faster than the stock and barrel Intel 32bit 3.2 GHz. Bad news for AMD this is, considering the retail price of these babies is 450 & 800$ (Normal and FX).

Yeah. I can't believe that you can get a brand new CPU that's 15-20% faster than the previous champion for only 25% less! Oh, and that's in 32-bit mode. If 64-bit computing takes hold then Intel is SOL at the moment - despite the rumors flying around about Prescott and 64-bit instructions.

Yeah, the Athlon64 3200+ is $465 (note, look at the retail price w/ heatsink to be fair), but the P4 3.2GHz is $619.

The Athlon64 FX-51 is certainly overpriced, given how miniscule the performance differences are, but that's hardly a surprise.

What Intel did pull wasn't a price/performance coup (because it isn't, by any means) but a paper launch debacle. Every single review I've seen thus far includes benchmarks for the P4 3.2EE -- which isn't available until November, and at prices similar to the Ath64-FX (based on preliminary 1000 CPU lot prices). The P4EE is competitive with the Ath64, but it's a smokescreen. You can buy an Athlon64 right now, but the P4EE is non-existant.

And BTW windows released XP 64bit Beta1 today.

Unfortunately it appears that there's a severe lack in available drivers. All the sites are having to use nVidia 5900FX's and even then can't bench any DX9 apps in Win64 due to no 64-bit DX9 being available.
Re:Threat to Athlon64: Prescott (not Pentium 4) by Bo+Diddly+Squat · 2003-09-23 06:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

While it's likely that Intel has some form of 64 bit instructions built into Prescott, it is highly unlikely that they will enable it. They would have to lose much ground to the Athlon64 and Opteron systems to do that.
Remember that they are betting on the Itanium as their 64 bit processor. Enabling the 64 bit instructions on Prescott will almost instantly kill the Itanium and I doubt Intel wants to do that.

As for 64 bit Prescott killing Sun. I don't see any reason for that. It seems to be fashionable to predict the death of Sun these days, but they are not in that much problems. The Itanium already crushes UltraSparc for performance, but Sun is still doing fine. A 64 bit Prescott will not change that. The software base difference doesn't really matter here either as there is simply stuff that runs on UltraSparc but not on x86 systems. Also, a processor is not the only part of a computer. While UltraSparc's performance may be lagging at the moment, Sun's systems are very well designed and no x86 system can compete with their high end systems.

Hell, Sgi is in much more trouble than Sun and they still design their own processors (MIPS).
Re:Threat to Athlon64: Prescott (not Pentium 4) by afidel · 2003-09-23 06:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually the 64 bit instructions from Prescott ARE x86-64 which is AMD's extensions. Intel has a liscense for x86-64 and has been working on project Yamhill for some time to integrate the x86-64 instructions into the P4 core architecture. They did this when they Microsoft agreed to make Windows for x86-64 as well as IA64, MS will NOT keep three forks of their codebase so Intel's option was so ceed the low end to AMD or use their liscense, they of course chose the latter since almost noone has installed Itanium systems. Btw Intel chips have been faster than Sparc for some time, people don't buy Sun machines for number crunching they buy them for stability and scalability. Until there is an Intel machine that can scale like the 6800 and is as stable as Sun hardware there will be a niche for Sun. Of course Oracle with it's RAC initiative may reduce the scalability argument.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
AT and THG compared ! by pyrros · 2003-09-23 08:39 · Score: 5, Funny

>And Anandtech has a good article up, as well.

Ha! good article my ass.

The anandtech article runs a measly 18 pages, while tom's runs 53. So it is clear that the THG article is 194% better than the anandtech one (see fig.1).
55| __ 50| || | || 40| || | || 30| || | || __ 20| || || \--------- . THG. A/T
What's more, in our second test, "pretty pictures on the first page of the article" the beleaguered news site falls even further behind. While THG has 4 pictures on the first page, including one of the athlon XP (oh shiny!) anandtech has none. This could be due to a browser incompatibility or a hyper-active web-filter but we couldn't be bothered to check. (see fig.2)
A/T | | THG |================] \----------------- 0 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4
As we can see, the THG article has !DIVISION_BY_ZERO! times the images of the anandech one, and so it must be much better.

[I am quite surprised that this post passes the lameness filter, considering the amount of ugly ASCII art. The fact that ./ kills whitespace in ecode is annoying though ]