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AMD's Roadmap revealed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the socket-to-me dept.

NoPants writes "It looks like the aces at Anandtech were able to get their hands on some of AMD's internal roadmaps. Anand has some interesting information including the new upcoming Socket 939 CPU standard as well as AMD's predicted release dates for Athlon 64 4000+ processors. Hopefully this will shed some light on what AMD is trying to do with all the different socket types..."

56 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe all of this... by BJZQ8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe all of this preliminary information will help Intel markitecture their way to the Pentium 6!

    1. Re:Maybe all of this... by somethinghollow · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think they wanted to call it Pentium !!!!!! after their last really successful processor, Pentium !!!.

    2. Re:Maybe all of this... by JediDan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Intel has said sometime in the past that their plans for the P4 core will last them until ~11 Ghz.

      --
      - Dan
    3. Re:Maybe all of this... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2, Funny

      Dunno. Pent- alludes to 5.
      Insert some joke about Sexium (at last?) here.

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    4. Re:Maybe all of this... by varslot · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think that should be "Pentium 3!" ...

      --
      There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. (Francis Bacon)
  2. well thats nice by ZenBased · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but my amd 700mhz proc is still quite fast enough to give me debian, fluxbox, openoffice etc.. ah well there must be enough people out there who cant live without a fast proc

    --
    http://www.virtualconcepts.nl/
    1. Re:well thats nice by TheViffer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless you are a gamer or looking to compute Pi to the last digit, most of todays "out of production" (even lower then "budget") processors are fast enough for most of today's computing tasks. My cool running Duron 1000 still powers my file server like a champ.

      The more they release these fire breathing, heavy Watt using, frying pan of CPU's, the easier it gets on our pocket books.

      Wake me when a cheap "build your own system" RISC alternative hits the market.

      --
      -- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
    2. Re:well thats nice by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Unless you are a gamer or looking to compute Pi to the last digit

      Or are wanting to do things like rip MP3s (trivial) or burn DVDs (non-trivial; technically it's the MPEG2 mastering, not the burning, that takes the CPU time). Developers, graphics artists, and most engineering can also use as much CPU as is available. For just a plain old file server you do very well by using the cheapest (in terms of purchase and run cost) that you can get. A webserver probably needs more juice. A database server definitely does. Trivial home use excluded of course. I'm not talking about trivial usages -- they can always be solved easily.

      Wake me when a cheap "build your own system" RISC alternative hits the market.

      When you realize that the core ISA of all x86 chips is RISC let me know. Not to mention that most of the classic "RISC" designs have deviated far from the "reduced" portion of that moniker. Looked at the Power or PowerPC ISA recently? RISC was created not because a reduced instruction set is inherently better, but because it allowed for a number of technologies such as pipelining, branch prediction, caching, and so forth to be implemented. Every single one of those is in x86 architecture now. Sure, the ISA is still a mess, but it's a better price/performance than anything else out there. All the naysayers have been disproven, time and time again. And yes, when I was a little college student I was horrified at the design of x86. Then I grew up.

    3. Re:well thats nice by dasmegabyte · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Except that programmers like myself write for the slowest currently marketted PC. We take advantage of the excess speed by increasing search capabilities, performing more intricate analysis, using higher quality fonts, sounds, graphics, etc.

      Yes, MOST of what people really need to do can be done on a 500 MHz machine. Shit, most of what people do -- search for information, write email, word process -- can be done on a goddamn Commodore.

      It is a fact of life that computers are going to get slowly faster, and people are going to expect these faster computers to have better software. Even if it's mostly superficial, we try to deliver that. Most of the time, though, a faster processor is a boon even to Joe Q. Homeuser. Consider a 3 megapixel camera, delivering photographs in excess of 1.5 megabytes. Time was we'd never THINK of doing graphical operations on that much information. Nowadays, it's so trivial that many photoalbums are processing 10 or more such pictures per second!

      Anyway, for easy operations like file serving, running a firewall, serving 100,000 or fewer web pages per day, etc...your best bet is a processor with a fast bus and a slow clockspeed. It'll be cooler and more reliable than some 64 bit god (honestly, who needs 64 bits to send packets?)

      --
      Hey freaks: now you're ju
    4. Re:well thats nice by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Funny

      Run Gentoo or the FreeBSD ports sytem.

      Your mind will change quickly. :-)

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    5. Re:well thats nice by krzysztof · · Score: 2, Funny

      I need the fastest computer possible. I helps me feel better about my personal shortcomings.

    6. Re:well thats nice by Cthefuture · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Or are wanting to do things like rip MP3s (trivial) or burn DVDs (non-trivial; technically it's the MPEG2 mastering, not the burning, that takes the CPU time). Developers, graphics artists, and most engineering can also use as much CPU as is available.

      Right on... Also, most developers need all the juice we can get. Faster compiles, better testing environment (more VMware sessions), etc, etc.

      All these people that say "nobody need anything more than X" are idiots. If a 700 Mhz proc works for you then fine (*). For the rest of us there is never enough computing power.

      Even if all you do is Office applications and web browsing, faster processors make the system more responive. Faster boot times, faster archive extracing, faster application start times. If you don't care about that stuff then fine, but I suggest you're not really using your computer anyway if you don't care.

      * By the way, just try a 3 Ghz processor for a while (maybe a week or two). Then go back your 700 Mhz system. You'll see the light.

      --
      The ratio of people to cake is too big
    7. Re:well thats nice by MarcQuadra · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But the PowerPC line has superior signal processing capabilities these days, is much easier for compilers to cater to, and runs cooler and more efficient than the X86 offerings.

      AFAIK, x86 units since the i686 have all used a RISC-like core that runs x86 ops by breaking them down into micro-ops and reconstituting them. It -works- but whay do that when the real thing is available?

      I think PowerPC would have a real future if MS lost full dominance of the PC market, it's a very short leap from Linux/OS X/BSD/whatever on x86 to the same on PPC. And now that IBM is making them tere seems t be a much more serious commitment to the architecture as a whole.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
    8. Re:well thats nice by comedian23 · · Score: 2, Informative

      >* By the way, just try a 3 Ghz processor for a while (maybe a week or two). Then go back your 700 Mhz system. You'll see the light.

      Disagree. I use a 2.4Ghz at work and a 533Mhz at home and can't really tell a difference, except when (un)zipping files, or installing software(maybe 1% of my total use of the machine). My home machine can play music, games, surf the web, edit docs, etc. just fine.

      > Faster boot times, faster archive extracing, faster application start times.

      I think the faster disks in newer machines are probably the main reason this is faster, except the archive extraction, which is CPU intensive.

      >Also, most developers need all the juice we can get.

      You must be a Java programmer. :-)

      -Comedian

    9. Re:well thats nice by Zathrus · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unless you want to factor in things like power consumption....

      Feel free to. x86 is still cheaper. Equivalent speed systems don't use vastly less power. Best number I've seen is ~75W, which is 3/4 of what a P4 or Athlon64 uses. That's not an abundance in savings.

      To put it clearly -- 25W saves you 219 kWh/year (assuming it's on 24 hours a day year round (365.25 days/year)). If electricity costs $0.10 kWh then that's a savings of $22. Wow.

      And that, of course, is assuming that the CPU is fully loaded the entire year. If you aren't using 100% CPU power then the CPU will reduce its power draw -- not massively (these aren't laptop CPUs), but somewhat.

      You can point to other CPUs that draw less power than a P4/AMD64/970, but they cost vastly more to purchase. The PowerPC 970 is already overly expensive -- particularly given that AMD has already cut prices on the Athlon64 and Opteron lines since introduction.

    10. Re:well thats nice by Hoser+McMoose · · Score: 2, Informative

      But the PowerPC line has superior signal processing capabilities these days

      According to who? And why? SSE2 provides plenty of instructions for signal processing, and SSE3/PNI will fill in a couple of the last remaining holes. AMD64 also doubles the number of registers for SSE2 as well as the general purpose registers.

      Exactly what advantage does the PowerPC have for signal processing? They do have a nifty multiply-add instruction that is missing on x86/SSE2, but on the flip side their vector processing engine (Altivec) seems to be limited to single precision floating point math unless I missed something.

      is much easier for compilers to cater to

      Ohh, so THAT'S why there are WAY more x86 compilers out there than PPC ones.

      And runs cooler and more efficient than the X86 offerings

      The PPC 970, used in Apple's Powermacs is listed at a "typical" power of ~48W at 1.8GHz. Maximum power is probably a good 20-40% higher. In other words, power consumption is pretty much identical to AMD's Athlon64/Opteron line and pretty darn close to Intel's P4 line. It also has 52 million transistors, nearly the same as the 55 million transistors of the P4. The IBM Power4+ consumes a ton of power, somewhere up around 100W.

      AFAIK, x86 units since the i686 have all used a RISC-like core that runs x86 ops by breaking them down into micro-ops and reconstituting them. It -works- but whay do that when the real thing is available?

      Why do it? Becuase hardware is cheap, software is expensive. They also do it because it doesn't really make a difference, ALL chips start by decoding their instructions, executing them and then putting it all back together again. It's not just an x86 thing.

      The main downsides to x86 are as follows:

      - Too few general purpose registers and restrictions on what registers can be used for which instructions

      - 32-bit pointers

      - Stack based FPU

      - Somewhat more complex instruction decoder

      AMD has addressed the first two points with AMD64. They've extended the general purpose and FPU (SSE) registers from 8 to 16 and removed the restrictions on what registers can be used for which instruction. Not quite the 32 registers of some other architectures, but still pretty good.

      The stack-based FPU is in the process of being replaced by SSE2. While SSE may have started out just as a vector SIMD engine, with SSE2 it's really a full fledged floating point unit to replace the old x87 unit.

      The more complex decoder has also been largely addressed by Intel in their P4 design with their trace cache. This stores already decoded instructions, so about 90% of the time the decoder is not needed (and therefore can be made much simpler).

    11. Re:well thats nice by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Funny
      By the way, just try a 3 Ghz processor for a while (maybe a week or two). Then go back your 700 Mhz system. You'll see the light.

      I saw the light, it was the glowing heatsink.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  3. Re:offtopic.. by Trigun · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Slashdot staff created this story with a timestamp from a Mars watch. It's thirty nine minutes off.

  4. Re:Grhh... by BJZQ8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ya, it bothers me too. But if Intel hadn't messed it all up by designing a "clock speed only" processor, then we wouldn't be in this situation. I definately agree that the Performance Ratings are a very poor way to describe a processor...

  5. Still not convinced by LookSharp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's no question Athlon 64 and AthlonFX are great products. That being said:

    *Do they really need to be different products? Opteron is your product for server/high-end workstations, Duron (and now Athlon XP) is low-end... you want Athlon64 to be mainstream, right?

    *Is it really a good idea to have the memory controller on the CPU? OK, I buy that it increases performance, but it hasn't lowered mainboard costs and all I've seen it doing is causing a rift between the A64 and AFX product lines, since Athlon64 doesn't have a dual-channel memory controller.

    *Why in the world introduce an AthlonFX based on Socket 940, especially at the outrageous price, when you're moving to socket 939 imminently?

    I think it would have been more of a slam-dunk as a platform and a "brand" to release Athlon64 as all dual-channel, all Socket 939 (or some standard), and left Opteron as the high-end platform. Any other takers?

    1. Re:Still not convinced by lwells-au · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Why in the world introduce an AthlonFX based on Socket 940, especially at the outrageous price, when you're moving to socket 939 imminently?"

      Simple really. AMD feared that Intel was about to release the next revision of the P4 aka. Prescott. The 940-pin FX was an attempt to get something out the door ASAP.

      Unfortunately that means that some people might be caught at a loose end when it comes to upgrade time, but that is not clear cut at this stage to my knowledge.

    2. Re:Still not convinced by LookSharp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On the other hand, your question about having the memory processor directly on the processor. It is the best idea ever, and you may not understand this, being a desktop user, but being in IT when I was young, and now in the money end of IS, I understand the value of the system amd is implementing, for instance sometimes I would purchase a quad Xeon system but it irritated me to do so, because I knew that because of the bottleneck to the memmory, my fourth processor was almost worthless. But with the memory controller on the proc, you amazingly reduce latency, and every time you add another processor you add more memory bandwidth, as apposed to each processor having to share a limited amount of memmory bandwidth on the board.

      That argument makes sense for Opteron, but not Athlon 64/FX. OK, you want your cores as similar as possible to reduce costs, so you can argue that point... and I did acknowledge the performance increase; but does it make sense for the mainstream product line at this point, especially if it's not reducing the costs of mainboards?

    3. Re:Still not convinced by LookSharp · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, the Athlon FX line seems to have been aborted shortly after birth...

      Actually, read the roadmap. AthlonFX and Athlon64 will both be Socket939 and dual-channel memory controller products by the end of 2004. The chips will be the same, except A64 will have 512k cache and AFX will have a full meg.

      This actually makes a lot of sense, and should have been the way it was done from the start. No socket 754, no socket 940 (except Opterons), just a "mainstream" and a "performance" product.

    4. Re:Still not convinced by Hoser+McMoose · · Score: 4, Informative

      The marketing of the Athlon64 FX has become a bit confusing. It kind of made sense for the initial launch to combat a precieved weakness of the design compared to Intel's P4 though. With the P4 you get up to 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the first Athlon64 would only have 3.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. Now, it turns out that the extra bandwidth doesn't actually buy you much on most applications, but this was seen as a weakness, hence the Athlon64 FX. With Intel bringing out the P4EE to compete with the FX, now AMD might need to keep the chip, even if it isn't a worthwhile product (The P4EE isn't a worthwhile product either).

      *Is it really a good idea to have the memory controller on the CPU?

      Yes, yes it is a good idea. A VERY good idea in fact. Memory latency has only improved by about one order of magnitude in the past 15 years. Meanwhile everything else in the system has gone up by at least two orders of magnitude. Virtually everything that is being done in CPU design these days is to hide memory latency (larger caches, out-of-order executation, branch prediction, even SMT).

      Integrating the memory controller reduces latency by 20-30%. At 2.0GHz this makes a BIG difference (this is the main reason why a 2.0GHz Athlon64 is faster than a 2.2GHz AthlonXP), at 4 or 5GHz the difference will be huge.

      but it hasn't lowered mainboard costs

      You can buy new Athlon64 motherboards for only $100, only 3 months after the chips release. It took ages for Athlon or P4 motherboards to reach that price point. What's perhaps even more impressive is the dual-processor boards that are only $200. In short, it HAS reduced motherboard costs, whether you've noticed or not. It also means that ALL Athlon64's support ECC, chipkill and a few other nifty reliability features, regardless of how badly VIA screws up their chipset design.

      *Why in the world introduce an AthlonFX based on Socket 940, especially at the outrageous price, when you're moving to socket 939 imminently?

      The Athlon64 FX was a bit of a last minute decision I believe. They found a marketing weakness and wanted the quickest and easiest solution they could find. The answer? Sell your server chip as an "enthusiast" chip. Intel did exactly the same thing for the same reason with the P4EE.

      Also, it's actually VERY normal to switch sockets soon after releasing a new processor. Intel's upcoming Prescott will use Socket 478 for only about 6 months before switching to socket 775. The original P4 used Socket 423 for a very short time before switching to socket 478. The original Athlon used Slot A for a year or so before switching to Socket A. The PIII came out in Slot 1 form but then switched to Socket 370 about a year later. The Celeron followed the same path a couple years before.

      I think it would have been more of a slam-dunk as a platform and a "brand" to release Athlon64 as all dual-channel, all Socket 939 (or some standard), and left Opteron as the high-end platform. Any other takers?

      In retrospec that might seem like a good idea, hindsight is 20-20 after all. However the original split of ALL Athlon64 chips being socket 754 and ALL Opteron's being socket 940 seemed to make the most sense when AMD was desigining them. It wasn't until market conditions changed and a new perceived weakness was discovered that AMD felt they need a consumer chip with a 128-bit wide memory bus. By that time the chip was already late to market and designing a new socket would have added more delay to the equation.

      There's also the question of budget chips. AMD hopes to move their entire product line to the Athlon64/Opteron platform by the end of 2004. That means they need a budget chip, and socket 939 with it's 128-bit wide memory bus is problematic for that. Hence the continued existance of Socket 754 and the AthlonXP for that platform.

  6. Re:Grhh... by binaryDigit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    AMD's new stuff has been pretty impressive, but it really bothers me when they pull this type of stuff: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHz 1MB Q2 '04 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4GHz 512KB Q2 '04

    What's the problem. They're saying that having the smaller cache gives you less performance. Are you upset that they happen to have the same clock speed? I assume you'd prefer nomenclature more on the order of "AMD Athlon 64 2.4/512 and 2.4/1024"? In many ways they way they are currently doing it is more descriptive to the average buyer. No guessing as to how much performance you're giving up by going with the smaller cache ,or how much you're gaining by going with the bigger (performance benchmark inflation not withstanding).

  7. Global Warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow if these new chips radiate at a proportionate level to AMDs current offering we could all be wearing shorts in Antartica by new year 05.

    Seriously tho. I think AMD ought to work some better thermal performance into its cpu range. A low cost, low temperature, high performance CPU is what is required in the market.

    1. Re:Global Warming by hattig · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This whole AMD is hotter than Intel thing was true when Intel's flagship processor was the cool (relatively) PIII.

      The P4 generates more heat than the Athlon (any variant) for the same performance.

      It is such an old, and incorrect joke it isn't even funny anymore.

  8. Re:Grhh... by TrueBuckeye · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not to mention the fact that it lowers costs to them, and thus to the consumer, to do this. From what I've heard, they are able to take cpu's with some bad cache, which isn't uncommon, disable that non-functioning section, and then sell the cpu as a 512k cache cpu rather than wasting the entire chip. Lower performance, lower cost, but less waste. This is a far cry from the world of the Intel 486 sx vs dx with the math co-processor fiasco.

    --
    Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
  9. Socket, shmocket ... I want RAM! by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only reason I'm even considering one of these gems is so I can cram more memory into a system for video work. All the boards I've seen for Athlon 64 max at 3Gb. The SK8* boards for the Athlon FX will take, IIRC 8Gb. Where's the boards I can cram 32 or more into?

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Socket, shmocket ... I want RAM! by BigDumbAnimal · · Score: 5, Funny

      Call Sun.

    2. Re:Socket, shmocket ... I want RAM! by Eric+Sharkey · · Score: 3, Informative

      Where's the boards I can cram 32 or more into?

      Here.

  10. socket types by ynohoo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hopefully this will shed some light on what AMD is trying to do with all the different socket types..

    Making us buy more motherboards, of course!

    --
    need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
  11. Dual Processors? by Krieger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What the article does not cover, is when we will be able to purchase non-Opteron Dual processors. Since they are inherently capable, it would be nice to know when we'll be able to build a performance (non-ECC) dual desktop.

  12. G5 looks like ramping up faster by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Interesting

    By the look of the figures the Athlon 64 is margionally faster than the G5 clock for clock... (the 2.2 Ghz beating the 2 Ghz G5 convinvingly and the 2Ghz ones locked in a tight battle). It looks a lot like AMD are gonna have to ramp up faster though, because IBM are gonna have 3Ghz G5s by Q3 this year, and AMD are only saying 2.6Ghz by Q4. Bob

    1. Re:G5 looks like ramping up faster by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      IBM hasn't hit the power/heat problems that Intel has, primarily because the PPC is a more streamlined processor. It's still very complex, mind you, but the x86 line is so complex, with all of the legacy support and CISC to RISC conversion and wacky nonsense like MMX *and* SSE *and* SSE2 all at the same time. Intel is already talking 150 watts for processors to be released this year. It is quite likely that the PowerPC line is going to pass Intel in the next 8 to 12 months.

    2. Re:G5 looks like ramping up faster by brokenbeaker · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know much about processor design, but one problem of the IBM POWER series is that they are NOT very streamlined. They in fact use more transistors to do the same job as other designs (I think the Alpha is a good counter example). This is because IBM uses automated design techniques. The tradeoff for the less efficiency is faster development. see for example,

      http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/461/warno ck .html

      http://pix.cs.olemiss.edu/csci523/64bit.html

      http://www.research.ibm.com/compsci/spotlight/de si gn_automation/ddh.pdf

      I'm sorry i can't relocate the original article, but maybe this helps.

  13. Top 5 things you will do with your Athlon64... by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Run Doom 3.
    Compute Pi to 5.497558e+11 bit precision during your lunchbreak.
    Store this value of Pi in RAM.
    Install Kazaa and not notice the spyware slowdown.
    Use the faster page loading times to get FP more often.

    --
    Beep beep.
    1. Re:Top 5 things you will do with your Athlon64... by LDoggg_ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I would not want to run doom3 on my athlonXP 1700 with a limited geforce4TI. That is for usre.

      I seem to remeber the leaked demo running playably on a 1Gig celery and geforce2 MX.
      You'd think they've had plenty of time to optimize code since then.

      --

      "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
  14. Socket hell by freidog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So 940 gets moved to opteron only
    939 encompasses both Athlon64/FX chips, starting in Q2.
    754 is relegated to the next gen AthlonXPs (with the on die memory controller, but only 32 bit)
    462 dies a slow death.

    Why can't every CPU made just fit on Socket 7... :)

    1. Re:Socket hell by Hoser+McMoose · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Socket 7?!?! Good &deity no! Talk about a TERRIBLE design!

      If we kept socket 7 we would: a.) still be stuck at ~1GHz processors because the socket did not provide enough power or grounding pins for todays faster processors. b.) would have TERRIBLE memory throughput, the real-world performance of this socket was terrible even if when the theoretical numbers were ok.

      Perhaps most importantly though, it wouldn't help anything. You would STILL need to buy new motherboards to support new chips. In fact, it would probably be a LOT worse because you wouldn't know just what processor your particular version of socket 7 board supported! So instead of having 4 sockets to worry about you would have THOUSANDS of different motherboards, all with a lists of dozens of processors that they do and do not support.

      There's MUCH more to making a chip compatible with a motherboard than just the socket. In fact, the physical socket is a rather trivial part of it.

    2. Re:Socket hell by Cyno · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Do you think a 10000 pin chip can really be trimmed to a 4000 pin chip without making huge compromises?

      Yes.

      Like you said some pins are used for memory bus bandwidth and power. Build a generic configuration that supports enough power and bus pins for all your average 256-bit wide buses. So each generic socket would have like 1000 pins. Enough to have direct CPU-CPU, CPU-Memory, and CPU-IO buses and power.

      I don't design hardware, but if I did I wouldn't waste so much time redesigning it every year.

  15. AMD shot self in foot by gr8_phk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With all the talk of unexpected 90nm delays and scaling problems over at Intel, one hopes AMDs problems are just typical delays with a new process. At any rate, we hope AMD will push ahead of Intel with the K8 architecture. IFF this happens, how on earth are they going to market them using their "false" speed ratings. Their rating system is flawed in that it uses Intel chips as the gold standard to measure performance against. You can't market a 4000+ if Intel has no 4GHz processor. If you do, you risk having the rating not match when Intel catches up, which makes the numbers completely meaningless. Today, they at least help to compare apples and oranges.

    1. Re:AMD shot self in foot by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      All AMDs ratings are measured against a Duron 1ghz (so a 2000+ is exactly twice as fast).

      This means the scale is LINEAR unlike measuring against Pentium speed which is inverse-square (or similar, only done rough calcs) related to performance. You have more certainty with the AMD rating system.

      --
      Beep beep.
  16. Re:Grhh... by glsunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ratings have been mostly accurate when comparing AMD cpus, and they're useful when talking to non-computer people rather than explaining things like cache size, locality, etc. With the Athlon64, it should be even more accurate since they now control the memory controller. If the performance rating can make it easier for the average person to compare systems accurately and pick the better value for them, then I'd say it's a good thing.

    Also, normal users don't care about 10% performance differences. I've found a good way to relate to this is to think about old computers. Do you really think of the difference between a P133 and a P166? No, they're both from the p5 generation, with a L2 caching up to 64MB or 128MB depending on chipset and the cpu performance is basically equal (slow). If a p166 will do the job you need nowdays, a p133 probably will too, and it's doubtful that you'll notice much difference.

  17. Re:Real Mhz on the 4000 chip? by DanglingPointer2004 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    False advertising? It's called marketing. They never said "Our 3200+ is equivalent to Intel's P4 3.2C". Find that on the AMD site and you are making sense. Also, compare a duron chip to a celeron chip that are "rated the same". There is no comparison, but then, neither company specifically said "these two chips are the same speed", so you can't really complain. You can't blindly trust a number to tell you how well a processor will perform, there's a lot more to it than MHz and GHz. As for Tom's Hardware, I would look at who pays their bills before counting on their "benchmarks" too closely.

  18. Re:Does it really matter? by DanglingPointer2004 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The point is that most people keep a CPU for more than a few months, generally for several years. A 64-bit OS is coming. So, why would AMD spend time developing another 32-bit architecture, then have to switch to 64-bit when the software is made? It makes more sense to get there first, so that when the software comes, you've got a proven, trusted technology.
    Also, the Athalon64 and AthalonFX chips blow the old XP chips out of the water, so it's not equivalent at all.

  19. Re:Grhh... by mfago · · Score: 2, Informative

    the Performance Ratings are a very poor way to describe a processor...

    I agree it's all marketing, but ...

    As a data-point, I recently upgraded from an Athlon 2400 to the 3200 -- a 30% improvement in "PR," and saw my benchmarks go up almost exactly 30%. By benchmarks here I'm talking about a CPU bound computational mechanics code I wrote for my thesis. About as useful to everyone else as SPEC, but very relevant to me.

    As usual, YMMV.

  20. Intel is the Global Warming threat by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 4, Informative

    Running at full CPU load, an Athlon 64 3200+ uses less power than an Intel P4 3.2GHz. Furthermore, with AMD's Cool and Quiet power management enabled the Athlon 64 CPU slows down to 800MHz and drops to 1.275v when you don't need much CPU performence, ie, while I'm typing this message. ASUS has a nifty little program that displays the current CPU speed and core voltage on my desktop.

    AMD CPU power requirements are expected to drop substantially when they switch to 90nm in the second half of this year. OTOH, Intel's prototype 90nm Tejas CPU burns up 150 watts .

    AMD chips haven't used more electricity than Intel chips for years. Pay attention.

    BTW, Athlon 64 notebooks are out. $1,550 for a widescreen 64-bit notebook! I'm going to stick with my Athlon 64 desktop, at least until I come up with an excuse to buy a portable. Really, I am...

  21. Re:I used to be a AMD fan by Chatterton · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well you have compared an apple with an orange. A Athlon 2800 is not on par with a Pentium 2800. On some benchmark the Athlon could loose, but on other Win. If you want to try to compare the 2, compare them on the exact application you use and need power to use them. Not some synthetic benchmark, or ISPEC or FSPEC and then you could make your choice. But please don't troll about the PR rating. AMD NEVER say that the PR rating is something equal to the frequency of an Intel processor. And as a side note. If you compare your applications on the 2 architectures: Please recompile them with the exact architecture of your processor and the hadoc optimizer. This can change a lot of thing. I am not an AMD or Intel FAN. I just choose the best Proc/MB at the best price for the work I need to do. (And I have the facility to try them before buying :))

  22. Athlon Thunderbird by Chicks_Hate_Me · · Score: 5, Informative

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was told the PR xxxx+ was in comparison of what a Athlon Thunderbird clock speed would be.

  23. There ARE 64 bit OSes by miodekk · · Score: 2, Informative
    Of course there are 64 bit systems ready to install.
    If you need better performance it may be another reason to switch to linux :-)

    Only Microsoft didn't catch up, but who cares ;-)

    Regards

  24. confuse much? by imbezol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What a load of crap. I have bought only AMD processors and I swear by their performance. I jump at the chance to race a P4 touting fool through a compile of Mozilla. But this is getting ridiculous.

    They've got to the point with all these different lines that it's no longer possible to talk AMD CPU's with anyone but the most avid AMD enthusiast. If you do try to talk the talk it ends up being a group memory excercise to see if together we can remember 50% of the difference in the varying jungle lines of processors.

    Opteron is a good thing. Keep it simple. Give the FX a real name too. Don't call it an Opteron FX or 64 FX or whatever the hell it might be. Give it a damned name. How about an AMD Jargon? That would be a good name for a processor. If they all had names, you could associate the capabilities of the lines to the names and people could pick a favorite and learn the product.

    As it is there must be extremely few people that can rattle off all the cache sizes, 398043+++ ratings, what core it is, blah blah blah. Not only do the different lines have different specs, but there are different specs within a line. There several instances of the same + rating with different specs in the same line. "I got a 2600+" "Which one?"

    Not that I won't do all the research before I buy the next one, but I envy the Intel enthusiast that can just look and say Bigger is Better, and buy what they can afford.

    I can't imagine my the other members of my family buying an AMD. They'd have to take a 3 week course, 2 hours a day, before they'd know which of the AMD's to buy. "This one costs more, but is it better?" "I have no idea." "This one has a bigger rating." "Yeah, but I heard this one is more advanced."

    Is AMD hoping nobody will know what they're buying? Is that the ultimate goal? Why not just put a random number on each chip and put a MSRP on it and call it good.

    1. Re:confuse much? by Loki_1929 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "There several instances of the same + rating with different specs in the same line. "I got a 2600+" "Which one?""

      The idea is that you don't have to know what the exact specs are. What AMD is trying to do is show that CPU performance is relative. Within a few percentage points, every 2600+ CPU will perform equally, regardless of its core, amount of cache, socket, memory lines, clock frequency, etc. That's the whole point - you don't have to know. If you're "in the know", you can look at individual 2600+ CPUs to see which one has more of what will help you in the specific applications you use. If you're a general user, then 2600+ is the only thing you need to know. How many people buy a 3.06GHz P4 instead of a 3.00GHz P4 because they think the former is faster? The clock frequency alone belies the fact that the higher FSB on the latter CPU will actually make it perform far better on nearly every application. AMD is trying to hand you the whole package in a single number to simply the buying process for everyday people.

      The fact is, neither AMD nor Intel are telling the whole performance truth, nor could they do so. The only way to do that is to educate consumers about CPU mechanics, latency, IPC, L1/L2 cache, cache hits and misses, branch prediction, pipeline stages, and so on. The average consumer (hell, the average geek) can't understand half of these things. Thus, Intel has chosen to show the clock frequency of its CPUs, and AMD has chosen to use performance ratings that give consumers a performance index relative to the Athlon's Thunderbird core. Neither system is perfect, but neither system is more imperfect than the other, in my opinion.

      "Is AMD hoping nobody will know what they're buying?"

      AMD is hoping that those who need to know, will know, and that the rest who buy the "bigger number" will at least have an idea of what to get.

      --
      -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  25. What is the FX's market? by Sloppy · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I have admired AMD for the last few years, but I think they've made a mistake. I don't understand why a thinking person would buy an Athlon 64 FX.

    The plain Athlon 64, sure. I see why someone would buy that. If you want decent performance but also want to keep things dirt cheap, that's a nice chip. I think a low-power "mobile" version of that processor will also be a winner.

    But if you want to spend a little extra money and build a "hotrod" machine, the Athlon 64 FX is a dumb move. Most CPU-bound stuff that people do, is parallelizable. (The only major exception I can think of, is that today's apps for multimedia encoding, tend to not take advantage. But they could (e.g. the portion after every key-frame could be handled by a different thread).)

    So just spend a little more (it's really not much) and get multiple Opterons. If you're really hurting for money, get "obsolete" 240 models, and two of them will still run rings around any Athlon64FX or single-P4EE system that money can buy.

    The class of problems that can't take advantage of multiple CPUs but still needs lots of speed, is small. Maybe I'm just being dumb, but I just don't see a market for a socket-939 or single-socket-940 board. Why would AMD, and motherboard manufacturers, bother to spend money development something that hardly anyone needs?

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  26. Athlon 64: Boon for Unix/Linux/BSD by n9fzx · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There are plenty of applications which benefit from a 64 bit memory model -- particularly text string operations, encryption, error control codes, and the like. Given the importance of search engines, privacy, and noise reduction, AMD's decision to push the 64 bit advantage could really help them, at least in the short run.

    And since Microsoft is once again behind the curve, the various freeware Unix platforms could benefit a great deal by trumpeting their inherent advantage over Windows in these key areas.

    --
    ...-.-
  27. Re:I used to be a AMD fan by Hoser+McMoose · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The "2800+" IS the speed. No, it's not the clock speed that the chip runs at, but that really doesn't make it any more or less relevant to the speed.

    Intel decided to market their processors using one totally meaningless measure of performance, the clock speed.

    AMD decided to market their processors using a different totally meaningless measure of performance, the model numbers.

    The problem with the chips is not so much sleezy marketing as with are ridiculous focus on clock speed. That's like buying a car solely based on the displacement of the engine. Sure, a 3.0L engine might produce more power than a 2.5L engine, but that certainly isn't always the case, and it sure doesn't tell you much else about the car. But if the public bought cars based ONLY on the displacement of the engine like they buy PC's based ONLY on the clock speed of the processor, you better believe that companies would bring out "3.0+" engines with 2.5L of displacement.

    In any case, AMD's marketing numbers have been extremely successful for the company. They almost instantly increased AMD's profit when they first brought them out years ago. Argue all you like, but the fact is that the computer buying public is, by and large, generally uniformed and buys systems based on two numbers alone, clock speed/model number of the processor and the price.