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AMD's Dual-core Athlon 64 X2 reviewed
ChocolateJesus writes "Weeks after formally announcing its dual-core Athlon X2 desktop processor, reviews are finally trickling out. The Tech Report's coverage tests two flavors of the Athlon 64 X2 against a whopping 17 competitors, including AMD and Intel's fastest single- and dual-core offerings. They've even thrown in a handful of dual-processor systems (and dual-core, dual-processor systems) for good measure. Testing focuses on multi-threaded applications, and the X2s deliver remarkable performance. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that unlike Intel's dual-core Pentiums, AMD's X2s consume no more power than single-core chips." Looks like this story has come out of embargo - if you've find more reviews, post them in comments.
I don't get how this can run on the same power level as the single core chips. Can someone explain on how this is possible?
I'm relieve to see at least one thing out of this launch, and I would hope that other companies would do as much. AMD has clearly defined their rollout process so there will be no confusions and hopefully no false expectations.
1. Announcement
2. Technical Preview (benchmarks Appear)
3. Launch (OEM Availability)
4. Ramp-up and Reseller Availability
They even give dates, if they can keep to those dates then we might actually have a product launch that doesn't antagonize the community with accusations of a 'paper launch'.
I'd like to see more companies be more upfront about this.
The market for this is everyone who uses an agressive anti-virus program. The AV will run on one prcessor, what you are doing on the other.
It's a sad case that as malware becomes more previlent, hardware vendors win. Really, you can be productive with (for example) Win2K on a 1GHz machine and 256MB, in an office. Now add the wait as every file is scanned on access for viruses (per corporate policy), and the machine somehow becomes "too slow."
OH well. I guess it's time to put all productivity applications on a Server & run them remotely. Again;-(
Programmers? Multimedia people? Scientific computing folks? There are quite a few markets that can use dual-core right now. Basically, anybody who buys a PowerMac :) Moreover, in the future, everyone will have to move to dual core (including gamers), because AMD and Intel cannot ramp up the clockspeed of single core chips. So AMD's strategy makes quite a bit of sense. Sell dual-core chips to the high-end now (notice how all of these CPUs are high-end chips that carry quite a price premium), and start getting the ball rolling on multithreaded software.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Dual CPU systems tho are useless to the home users, it's for businesses and scientists with more computing need. Real enterprise applications are multithreated.
Not so!
I was one of the lucky people buy a cheap dual Celeron setup right after that hack was first discovered and I can tell you that multiprocessors on the desktop rock. My old system was a dual Celeron 400, and while it couldn't compete with a modern system in terms of benchmark speed, it had my current 1400 MHz Celeron system beat bloody when it comes to interactivity and responsiveness -- that elusive "feel".
The price is steep now, but don't let arguments about application benchmarks dissuade you from trying out multicore when prices go down. The Anandtech review cited about has some really telling benchmarks about how well a dual system performs when loaded down with multiple tasks.
Unlike the unnoticeable 200 or 400 MHz incremental bumps you usually see with processors, dual core really brings something of value to the desktop user. Try it and you'll see.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Scientific workstations?
Anyone involved in matrix math (circuit design, mechanical engineering, fluid dynamics, etcetera) would love to be able to do this on their desktop instead of shared time on an HPC. Or combine the computational power of an office full of these machines at night or over weekends for the really big jobs. What's not to like?
Any scientific organization that has been holding off on capital expeditures while waiting for a clear winner to emerge ((AMD vs. Intel) vs. (PPC vs. SPARC)) will have come that much closer to making a decision.
Intel's IA64 gambit has not panned out -- their marketing hype has brought down some of their competition (PA-RISC and MIPS), but it has not proven to be the market leader Intel would have hoped. But like a wildfire in the woods, Intel's IA64 has opened up competition for diversity and some new leadership.
Intel is obviously relying on fat vendors like Dell, but with performance like this and power consumption like that, buyers will be asking Dell what their problem is. When Dell finally cracks, you'll know Intel have spent too long fixating on their stock price rather than their products. It's a tough thing to recover from, too, and will call for a major shake-up.
Pity is, companies which go though this usually are considerably weaker. AMD looks good, but you have no idea what may be coming out of Japan/Taiwan/China in 10 years.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Read the article, it was the flash memory business that caused the loss, not the cpu business.
The only time when heterogeneous processors are really useful is when each is better than the others at a sub-set of tasks. Current PCs are usually a set of 3 different processors in a single box[1]. They have a reasonably fast general purpose CPU, and on the same die a simple vector processor (e.g. MMX, SSE, AltiVec), which has a different instruction set to the main processor and must be invoked explicitly. They also have a highly parallel large vector processor on a separate chip, which is usually used for graphics. No automatic scheduling is performed between these - it is up to the programmer to explicitly code for each one. Ideally, a heterogeneous processing environment would require code to be JIT compiled for each processor, and then moved between them depending on run-time profiling information.
[1] Yes, this is an oversimplification.
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