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AMD's Dual-core Athlon 64 X2 reviewed

Posted by Hemos on from the lots-of-reviews dept.

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.

77 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Cooling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Cooling by masklinn · · Score: 5, Informative

      Specific design and use of a modified version of the most recent AMD core (Venice). Venice's consumption is much lower than it's parent (Winchester core), check the graphs, Dual Cores' power consumption is a bit higher than the 3800+ Venice processor.

      On top of that, A64 platforms are known for their low power consumption compared to Netburst based processors.

      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    2. Re:Cooling by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Easy. Multi-threaded electricity.

    3. Re:Cooling by Kobun · · Score: 5, Informative

      Over at Anandtech, they have a similar article up.

      http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2410&p=2

      On that page they compare a 130nm single core Athlon to a 90nm dual core. Even under a full load, the 90nm dual core uses less power than the single core 130nm chip.

    4. Re:Cooling by Xoro · · Score: 2, Informative

      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?

      It isn't.

      Under load, the dual core system consumes about 25 watts more power than the single (178 watts vs. 154) -- and 25 watts is just less than what a single-core A64 consumes under load.

      I think the poster was looking at the numbers for idling.

      --
      Kill, Tux, kill!
    5. Re:Cooling by drakyri · · Score: 3, Informative

      For a smaller manufacturing process (90nm), the transistors are smaller. On the single-transistor level, at least, they require less power to operate than 180 or 130nm transistors.

      Other considerations factor in to determine the power consumption (total number of transistors, other elements, arrangement, etc.), but the smaller size drops the power level quite a bit beforehand.

    6. Re:Cooling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Close, it's the quantum nature of the electrons; each core shares all it's electons. In core 0 a quantum filter is applied so computations are done on spin up electrons; core 1 uses spin down. In order to move larger numbers of cores you have to use something with more than two states -- QCD confinment makes it tricky to get the necessary free quarks. That, however, is just an engineering issue and we'll soon be able get cpu's in any color you want.

    7. Re:Cooling by ThosLives · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The really interesting thing is they measured system power consumption, not chip consumption. They specified that the power supplies were the same, but the systems have different specs.

      It's hardly accurate to judge a CPU's performance based on a "power drawn at the wall" measurement.

      --
      "There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
    8. Re:Cooling by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2, Funny

      I knew there was something to that whole super-string theory business...

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    9. Re:Cooling by orderb13 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Look at the numbers for the Athlon's. They used the same had the same specs, just changed out the chips. The Dual Cores ran under less load than the FX did.

    10. Re:Cooling by Short+Circuit · · Score: 2

      Nah...that would be quantum mechanics.

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    11. Re:Cooling by nokiator · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Comparing the X2s against 130nm Athlon 64 is not fair. As expected, the new X2 Athlons do burn more power than a single core Athlon 64 built on the same core/process at the same frequency. The amazing thing is that the difference appears to be only around 20%, which is almost unbelievable.

      You would expect to see less than 100% increase in the case of a dual core CPU due like the shared components which are not replicated:

      - The X2 chips still have a single, 128-bit wide memory controller. Since the memory controller charges/discharges external bit lines going to DIMMs, they do burn quite a bit of power. This power consumption is not duplicated in the case of a dual core CPU.

      - The X2 chips still have a single HyperTransport bus. The power consumption of this bus is the approximately the same between a dual core and single core CPU.

      However, power scaling due to these shared components would probably not explain how a dual core chip can burn only 20% more power. For both of the above cases, you could argue that one should expect to see higher utilization of the memory bus and the HyperTransport bus, so the exact power consumption contribution is not entirely clear.

      One thing to note that, AMD Athlon 64 cores tend to burn much less power in idle state compared to Intel chips. This is probably due to choices AMD made both in architecture and process. So the fundemantal reason why AMD X2 chips have such minimal incremental power consumption over single core chips is that one of the cores is typically underutilized most of the time and therefore burns much less power.

    12. Re:Cooling by Jherek+Carnelian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      For what it is worth, those charts are moderately deceptive. Like most amatuer sites, Anandtech doesn't have the equipment to measure actual cpu power consumption. So they measured the consumption of the entire system.

      So, assuming they used the same system for all measurements and just swapped out the cpus, the relative differences are accurate. But you can not draw any conclusion about the absolute power requirements of the cpus based solely on Anandtech's review.

      Maybe no one cares, but it would be easy to read that article and come away with the idea that the dual core cpu consumes (and thus must dissipate) 150 watts under load. While that might be in the realm of possibility for Intel's cpus which are little micro-furnaces, the AMD chips are significantly less hot than that.

  2. Anand's Take by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's Anandtech's review of the X2.

  3. What's that burnt intel smell? by MaceyHW · · Score: 2, Interesting

    will they be able to outmarket AMD again?

    1. Re:What's that burnt intel smell? by eyegone · · Score: 2, Insightful


      Yes.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    2. Re:What's that burnt intel smell? by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Interesting
      will they be able to outmarket AMD again?

      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
  4. I'll wait for the next version... by Eagle5596 · · Score: 5, Funny

    While the AMD 64 X2 Dualcore is impressive, I am still waiting for the AMD 69 XXX Hardcore myself.

    Sorry, it just had to be said.

    1. Re:I'll wait for the next version... by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 2, Funny

      Beh, I'm waiting for AMD X3 86 myself.

      --

      "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy

  5. Re:Mmm.... dual core. by maharg · · Score: 4, Funny

    forget longer pipelines, it's girth that really counts

    --

    $ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
    @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
  6. Row, row row your boat, gently down... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No actually, they're going to be launched in June. The fact that this would be lost on the submitter was so obvious, I was able to prepare this message in advance and just paste it in.

    These look to be amazing CPUs. After the initial linpack-with-large-matrices benchmark, you have to go thirteen pages into the benchmarks at TechReport to find some of note where the Intel solutions are able to score off a win!

  7. Don't Forget the [H] by Unholy_Kingfish · · Score: 5, Informative
    The cold dark [H]OCP also has their preview up.

    Or you can jump right to their conclusions.

    --
    Fear Is the Only God
  8. Rollout process by fbody98 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:Redsigning your applications. by mattmentecky · · Score: 5, Funny

    That a lot of applications are not multithreaded. Thus wont get the speed advantage of the Duel-Core processor.

    Thats because the two cores are too busy fighting.

  10. Re:Redsigning your applications. by BigGerman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    it does not have to be the same application. I have seen the environments where the business users are crippled because they have over-agressive anti-virus running in the background. Their apps would fly with a dual-core (or even hyperthreading).

  11. vs by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is all getting very complex in the "Pentium compatible" world. Where's a chart of direct CPU performance comparisons across manufacturers (Intel, AMD, etc), so I can look up a potential purchase? Eg, I see that PriceWatch has an "Athlon XP 3000" at $102, and a P4/2.26GHz at $111. How much faster/slower will my LAME encoder server run for the $9 difference? At the very least, where's a chart showing which makes/models are direct competitors?

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:vs by fbody98 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The best example of what you're looking at that i've found is at http://www23.tomshardware.com/index.html

      It's an interactive chart of all major processors available now and plenty that aren't available, it's a good idea to compare what you might have not and what an upgrade could do for you.

  12. Re:Redsigning your applications. by natrius · · Score: 4, Funny

    What a lot of people dont realize (Including a lot of programmers). That a lot of applications are not multithreaded. Thus wont get the speed advantage of the Duel-Core processor.

    Correct. Instead of executing the code in parallel, both cores will fight to the death for the privilege. Since only one core survives, you don't really get much benefit from duel-core processors.

  13. Cooler than the old AMD 130nm designs and Intel by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sayeth Anandtech: ...the Athlon 64 X2 will consume less power than a 130nm Athlon 64, and less than 20% more power than a 90nm Athlon 64. Note that the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ compared here also consumes less power than all single core 90nm Intel Pentium 4 CPUs, even the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ consumes less power than all single core 90nm Pentium 4 CPUs.

  14. Re:market for this? by Stibidor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the general public can be convinced that these new dual-core chips are "better" than the old single-core stuff (not hard to do in a culture always seeking the so-called "latest and greatest"), then there is certainly a market for this. People don't always buy things for practical purposes.

    Besides, in an industry where if you don't come out with something new frequently you die, it seems likely that it won't be too many years down the road before dual-core may be the only option for consumers in the market for a brand new machine.

    Just my two cents...

    --
    http://nerdfortress.com/
  15. It's about the interactivity by tinrobot · · Score: 5, Informative

    A dual CPU machine provides such a smooth operating environemnt. Never hiccups or pauses. I'm hooked on them. I hope dual core provides the same interactivity.

    1. Re:It's about the interactivity by snookerdoodle · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hit the nail on the head.

      Certain image process apps (e.g.: enblend, a panorama enhancing app) drive my single athlon into a state where it is sluggish and hard to use (1.8ghz athlon, 768 mb ram, fedora core 3).

      So, while the Gimp can be compiled to do some multiply-threaded stuff, the real boost is that my computer should still be useable for other things while it's off fixing my panoramas.

      Since some of my panoramas take over 2 hours to fix, I'm looking into a faster system and will definitely be trying to make sure I can get something that lets me plug one of these guys in when they become available.

      Mark

    2. Re:It's about the interactivity by D.+Book · · Score: 2, Interesting
      What about the operating system's role in multitasking efficiency? Just a few days before joining the latest dual-core drumbeat, Scott Wasson of The Tech Report posted the following item:

      We've already asked you for some input on our possible multitasking tests, but let's talk for a sec about that creamy smoothness that comes from having multiple processors in a well-tuned system. I've said many times that it smoothes over potholes and allows the user experience to feel friction-free. In fact, if you pick up the latest copy of PC Enthusiast magazine, my column this month extols the virtues of dual-core CPUs for multitasking. I use an example of a problem with my own PC slowing down to a halt while checking mail, caused by the convergence of too much client-side spam, virus, and mail filtering. Dual-core processors should make problems like this almost a thing of the past.

      However...

      After writing that article, I decided to troubleshoot the mail-checking slowdown problem one more time, and I realized that I hadn't applied some basic tweaks to this installation of Windows XP Pro. Once I set the OS scheduler preferences to optimize for "background tasks" instead of "applications," my mail problem was largely resolved. I also used registry tweaks to increase the size of the system disk cache and to disable paging of the Windows executive, and all told, my system is much more responsive now.

      Now, I still think dual-core CPUs will be a great thing for multitasking, but this raises the question: How much creamy smoothness can you squeeze out of a box with only one CPU, with or without Hyper-Threading? And what proportion of PC slowdowns and performance "hiccups" are really caused by inadequate CPU power as opposed to lousy OS scheduling, hard drive bottlenecks, running out of RAM, lousy drivers, or the like? Is multitasking nirvana really just a second CPU core away? What, in your experience, has the most impact on your PC's responsiveness, and what upgrades have helped the most?

      Unfortunately, it seemed the question was mostly rhetorical, as The Tech Report prompted their users to "discuss" the issue subjectively rather than getting some multitasking benchmarks going to back up the anecdote.
    3. Re:It's about the interactivity by maraist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Everything pre-2.5 was pretty bad for interactivity, but 2.6 is excellent.

      Don't really share your user experience.. Being a college student at the time, I salivated over a dual system for years, and finally found the opportunity with the dual Pentium II-class celeron motherboards by Abit. That brief window in history when you could have a full dual processor system for under $250. It was dual 433's overclocked to 466. At the exact same time, I had an AMD K5-400 as my main machine. The dual ran on Red Hat 8 I believe originally, and is still running to this day as my main home-server, and I've only upgraded it to Red Hat 9.0 (main because if it ain't broke, I ain't fixen it). So as I look at uname, it's still only running kernel 2.4.20-31.9smp. I remember running this puppy side-by-side to the K5-400, and later my K6 Thunderbird 800MHZ. The Thunderbird should have blown away with dual 466, but it didn't. I had better throughput of mp3 encoding on the duelies (which I was doing a lot of at the time, farming out all my machines at home and at work 24/hours a day some weeks). One of the features I specificly played with was encoding single-threadedly with grip+lame v.s. dual threadedly. When dual threaded. Obviously single-threadedly the system was almost perfectly responsive (since lame isn't HD or even memory bound), but even when dual-threaded, the system was more responsive than my faster single-CPU K6. I quickly fell in love with the dual processor concept, and used it as my main home-station for just about anything that wasn't video games.. When my K5 literally exploded one day due to moisture damage, I was rather forced to migrate over to the new machine; but it was a welcome change from a mostly windows unresponsive environment.

      I am convinced that even Linux 2.4 was more smooth operating with multiple CPUs than windows. Perhaps it is because X is single threaded, but graphical thinking occurs in the application-space and is thus inherently multi-processed. Thus you get the best mixture of non-race-conditions streamlined code with concurrent processing capability. This is purely speculative. Whatever the deal, it was great.

      Unfortuntaely, I don't remember if the standard Linux benchmark of doing a parallel make of the kernel was faster on the dual 466 v.s. the single 800. I guess one of these day's I'll have to fire that 800 back up again to check; the dual's still chugging along fine as my server.

      Unfortunately I haven't had the luxury of having ANY affordable dualies in the past 5 years, so I've just gone for greater single-threaded horse-power for work-stations.

      As for the point of this thread. I seem to recall that the 2.6 kernel had more overhead than the 2.4 kernel. This along with my anxiety for changing a back-end special-purpose servers' OS kept me from wanting to up the now ancient machine. Most likely this overhead is compensated for by the better MT-support, and is especially unnoticeable at the 2GHZ range. But I find it hard to believe a perceptible difference in UI responsiveness could be found between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. Perhaps measureably in application benchmarks, but surely not on the GUI.

      Sadly, as I've said, I can not provide empirical data as I don't have $1,500 to spend on a simple file-server.

      --
      -Michael
  16. Re:Redsigning your applications. by mellon · · Score: 2, Informative

    A lot of the CPU burn with AV software involves doing I/O or scanning memory, neither of which are speeded by a dual-core processor. So you might get some speedup from this, but it won't be the difference between sluggish and speedy - it'll be sluggish versus less sluggish.

  17. Re:market for this? by Blue-Footed+Boobie · · Score: 2, Funny
    SERVERS!

    Nothing sexier than a 16slot Blade server running Dual-Core Opterons. Equivelent of 32 cpus in 5u of space.

    MMMmmm...mmm...mmm...mmm...SEXY!

    --
    DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
  18. Re:Redsigning your applications. by masklinn · · Score: 5, Informative
    What a lot of people dont realize (Including a lot of programmers). That a lot of applications are not multithreaded. Thus wont get the speed advantage of the Duel-Core processor.
    And what YOU don't realize (including... duh... yourself?) is that running two or more applications at the same time will make use of dual core system, even if the apps themselves are single threaded (which is mostly true for games, quite a lot of desktop apps are at least a bit multithreaded).
    And a singlethreaded badly written application will be less prone to lock your computer, too, since the other apps will still be able to run from the second core.

    The main issue is not the multithreading abilities of the applications, but the multithreading abilities of the OS itself. If the OS handles multithreading well, multicore (physical or virtual) will always give a slight to impressive improvement over single core.
    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  19. Adware&Virus: hardware makers win!! by amcdiarmid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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;-(

  20. Does dual core == 2xProcessor or hybrid? by amichalo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does dual core have to mean 2 of the SAME processor?

    I recall reading a /. comment on a previous news day that suggested using dual core to allow the OS and anti-virus software run on one proc, while applications share another, thus improving stability/security/performance.

    But does a vendor HAVE to make a dual core chip with two of the same processor? Perhaps gains could be made using a less powerful, commodity chip core and pairing it to a top of the line core.

    Costs would be lower and they could sell more of this hybrid dual core because they would only need 1 top of the line cores.

    Oh, you get what I am saying.

    --
    I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
    1. Re:Does dual core == 2xProcessor or hybrid? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Informative

      But does a vendor HAVE to make a dual core chip with two of the same processor? Perhaps gains could be made using a less powerful, commodity chip core and pairing it to a top of the line core.

      But the less powerful core does not exist, so they'd have to design it. And the design cost is killer.

      However, assuming unlimited design budget and schedule, there are some academic papers showing that heterogeneous cores are a good idea.

    2. Re:Does dual core == 2xProcessor or hybrid? by jericho4.0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, they have to be the same processor. The chipset design assumes that both processes are equally capable. Last time I built a dual processor machine, it was recommended that the CPUs have the same stepping number (same batch off the line).

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
    3. Re:Does dual core == 2xProcessor or hybrid? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Not only that, but scheduling algorithms for heterogeneous processors are a whole lot more complicated than those for homogenous sets (see the problems with getting good performance out of HyperThreading for an example). It might be possible to do something fairly simple, like run all processes on the slow processor and migrate them to the fast one when they use more than a certain percentage of the CPU speed, but in this case why not just down-clock the faster one when it is not in use?

      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.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  21. Re:market for this? by jtpalinmajere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For Intel, your argument definitely holds water. Their whole business plan has been based off of their vast number of production plants and relatively cheap process of putting hordes of chips on the market... hopefully making the chips pervasive enough to strike a profit level in the end (more like early mid-life with their price schemes though). It is only after a processor has been found tried and true that Intel migrates it to server land.

    AMD on the other hand has always started out chips on the enthusiast / enterprise market because they simply don't have the fabrication capacity that Intel does. Thus they market first for the high end users and over time the processors find their way into the desktop market when they've been dated by yet another new, improved processor being marketed at the first group. Their whole revenue plan is based off of the 'rich' people niche (which includes many medium to large businesses). Based on their success, I'd say that they've done really well with this business model and continuing to do so would likely continue to work for them.

    The common misnomer that is latched onto with many processor reviews nowadays is that both AMD and Intel are prodcing processors for the desktop platform, when in reality their business goals for their processors are on opposite spectrums. Intel starts desktop side, AMD starts server side. It is only after both have matured to some degree (and software caught up to both of them) that the processors can be meaningfully compared for the average joe user that just bought a new computer (or had one built for him).

    Most people who go crazy over these new technologies are either wanting it for pure bragging rights, or simply aren't aware of how little it will actually do for them... or both in all liklihood.

  22. Re:market for this? by masklinn · · Score: 2, Funny

    Even 16 slot blade servers running octo dualcore Opterons systems?

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  23. YeS! by fredan · · Score: 2, Funny

    An 32-bit comparison of an 64-bit processor. This is exactly what I look for when I need to know which cpu to buy...

  24. Highlander! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There can only be one core!

  25. Re:market for this? by Malc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If they ever make it to a significant size of the market, you will see more of the CPU intensive tasks that people do today becoming multi-threaded. Some of the of long running processes that are common on home computers lend themselves nicely to divide and conquer, such as ripping music or video. By going dual core or SMP, one can halve the processing time without having to wait a few years for the processing power of CPUs to double.

  26. Fast and INEXPENSIVE to run! by Senor_Programmer · · Score: 3, Informative

    "... AMD's X2s consume no more power than single-core chips."

    This is significant if you live in say Honolulu where electricity is 14cents/KWh or on Kauai where it's close to 22cents/KWh.

  27. Re:market for this? by segmond · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are right that the market for dual core processors for home users is really not there, but it could be. Think of the BeBox/BeOS, It was a system that was designed for dual core processors and all applications compiled for BeOS automatically benefited from it. What is missing in the x86 world for home users is such an OS. I believe that Intel/AMD are well aware of this, and this belief leads me to the conclusion that they are not really pumping out such systems for the average home users, it is more for businesses. Internet/Enterprise servers will definitely benefit more from it.

    --
    ------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
  28. Longhorn by yabos · · Score: 4, Funny

    Have you seen the specs required for Longhorn!

  29. Re:market for this? by be-fan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...
  30. Windows Licenses by Timberwolf0122 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As I understand it M$ only allow upto 2 cpus on a standard licence. I hope they will release an update to allow for 2 dual core chips.

    --
    In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
  31. Re:market for this? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gamers need dual core processors. Many games are still single threaded but that's probably the past. There is plenty to be gained from a single game running multiple threads. The only concern is that RIGHT NOW I don't think Windows will do The Right Things. I could be wrong.

    The question is, other than gamers and graphic artists, who needs them? You have a point in that almost every other application that the average guy uses has been saturated in terms of (quite prolific) features for years. I really don't think that will change much, hence MS is having a hard time maintaining the "Buy a New Office Suite every 3 Years" business model.

    More and better multimedia applications MAY be the next killer app that requires this power, but a significant amount of work needs to be done to make tools for this accessible to the masses.

  32. Check out Linux by Nailer · · Score: 2, Informative

    ps -eLFwww

    A lot more common apps are multithreaded than people think. Nautilus, Firefox, OpenOffice, Gnome Terminal, and, um Gnome Weather Applet are all mutithreaded.

    Even if no apps on your system are multithreaded, if you're like the 99% of users who run multiple processes simultaneously, you'll still get an advantage. Your updating app runs on one core while your desktop runs on another, for example.

  33. Re:Redsigning your applications. by UrgleHoth · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let me guess, if one gets hurt, is it only a flash wound?

    --

    Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
  34. Re:Redsigning your applications. by Xoro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
  35. RISC by delirium+of+disorder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Packing all this circuitry will cost more in heat and fabrication costs then conventional cpus. SPARC and MIPS CPUs get more flops, mips, and overall thoroughput per watt and per millions of transistors on a die. Maybe we will see a resurgence of eligent RISC designs as dual/quad/oct core chips become more previlent.

    --
    ------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
    1. Re:RISC by Fittysix · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A modern x86 processor is basically a RISC processor internally, the core design probably has more in common with chips mentioned in the parent than they do with the 486.

      http://arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/risc-cisc/rvc-1.ht ml

      --
      *.sig
  36. MythTV? by rkrabath · · Score: 2

    Would this chip have a usefull application in realtime video encoding/decoding? Would I be better off with a high clocked single core AMD proc? Anyone with experiance?

    --
    Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
  37. Re:market for this? by Vellmont · · Score: 2, Insightful


    who is going to buy computers with these new ultra powerful dual core processors?
    I will. I'm often running applications that take 100% CPU. Having another core around to make the system nice and responsive would be wonderful.

    gamers don't need dual core
    Right, and when video cards that supported an accelerated transform and lighting (i.e. the GeForce) came out, they didn't need that either since current games didn't support it. You can bet the next core of games will be multi-threaded.

    everyday users have had plenty of power for the last 5 years
    That's true, but thats been the case for several years now (as you yourself said), and Intel/AMD are still selling processors. Dual cores will make an OS seem a lot more responsive though. That alone isn't enough to convince the average user to upgrade, but multiple cores is the only place to go now that the heat dissipation problem has reached a crisis point for CPU makers.

    --
    AccountKiller
  38. No 'update' necessary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Because of all the recent news regarding dual-core CPUs and the licensing implications, this question has come up a lot. Microsoft's official licensing stance remains that one die = one CPU. The company adopted this view about the same time the Pentium HTs hit the market, bringing emulated dual processing (multi-threading) to the mainstream world.

    1. Re:No 'update' necessary by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 4, Informative

      Microsoft's official licensing stance remains that one die = one CPU.

      No, Microsoft's official licensing policy is one socket = one CPU. Therefore, a dual-socket Opteron motherboard with two dual-core chips would be licensed as a dual-CPU system, even though it has four separate cores.

      I think your post was trying to get that idea across, but your statement of "one die = one CPU" is misleading to that effect.

      What's odd about this is if you bought a dual-core, dual-CPU Xeon system supporting HyperThreading. If you opened up Task Manager you'd find eight CPU graphs. Not that you'd get anything near the performance of a eight-way system, though...

      Microsoft's licensing is a bright spot when it comes to commercial software and multi-core CPU's. There are several firms still clinging to the "one core = one CPU" model, and dual core chips are going to immediately make such software very expensive.

      I contacted Oracle a couple of weeks ago to clarify their position, and I was told then that dual-core chips would be considered a single CPU for the purposes of licensing. It seems that Microsoft's adherence to the "one socket = one core" idea is forcing its competitors into the same pricing model. Who woulda thunk Microsoft would actually be helpful in this situation?

      --
      In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  39. Re:market for this? by quarkscat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  40. Server's slow, but we have a mirror by Dr.+Damage · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry about our server's inability to keep up right now. We have a mirror here: http://www2.techreport.com/

    1. Re:Server's slow, but we have a mirror by arose · · Score: 3, Funny

      Does it run on the other core? ;)

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
    2. Re:Server's slow, but we have a mirror by bach37 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Apparently it does, as it too is slashdotted. :)

  41. Re:Redsigning your applications. by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "What a lot of people dont realize (Including a lot of programmers). That a lot of applications are not multithreaded."

    Well we realize it here, because it's BROUGHT UP every single time there's a mention of more than one processor running!! Yeesh. Heh.

    On a lighter note: When these processors become more popular, multi-threaded apps will come. Besides, its not like our machines aren't keeping up with apps today. Except for my 3D rendering, I don't have anything that would benefit from a faster processor, and I doubt many other people do either.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  42. Re:this is a software problem... by Big_Breaker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apps that are written with multiple threads are typically also written with care to avoid locking up the computer.

    Single threaded apps are typically written with far less care and don't leave cycles free for the GUI and OS functions.

    That is why having the second processor is nice. It has free cycles when an app is hogging the other one. A multi-threaded app will use both but will probably not hog both, leaving the GUI still "snapppy".

  43. Does anyone buy performance anymore? by dtjohnson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The performance of the AMD X2's is absolutely amazing but...will anyone really buy them? The big computer companies seem to be offering mostly P4's at about 3 Ghz using some elderly Intel core. The newspaper this morning carries an ad from Fry's Electronics offering a wimpy '2800+ Sempron with motherboard' for $69 and that's the only AMD thing listed in their ad. Can't be much money for AMD at that price. It just doesn't look like the desktop computer market cares much about performance anymore.

    AMD might be turning out some pretty good products but they are not making any money selling them and it is only a matter of time before they have to fold their tent and leave the field to Intel.

    1. Re:Does anyone buy performance anymore? by ebrandsberg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Read the article, it was the flash memory business that caused the loss, not the cpu business.

    2. Re:Does anyone buy performance anymore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From your link:
      AMD's processor business had another excellent quarter, posting record revenue and profit figures. Overall company revenue was $1.23 billion, slightly higher than the estimates of analysts polled by Thomson First Call. The processor business accounted for $750 million of that revenue in the company's first quarter, which ended on March 27.

      Now does that sound like "not making any money" to you?

  44. Re:Redsigning your applications. by MikeBabcock · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That statement is a red herring every time its brought up.

    Most people who post it don't realize that your CPU is context switching dozens of times per second when idle in your OS already. Simply letting two cores handle different interrupts is a benefit for system responsiveness.

    How often is your CPU wanting to do more than one thing at a time? All the time in an OS like Linux or Windows.

    If you're running Linux, run vmstat and check the context switches per second.

    If you install a second CPU, you may not see a 2x performance increase, but you wouldn't if you doubled your CPU speed either.

    You *will* however see a much more responsive machine, because of how the system handles load better.

    --
    - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
  45. Re:market for this? by pjrc · · Score: 5, Informative
    AMD on the other hand has always started out chips on the enthusiast / enterprise

    s/always/recently/

    Clearly, you've just not been around very long, or not paying attention, or have only short-term memory.

    It's only been in recent years that AMD has bested Intel, performance-wise. For many, many years, AMD could release a new chip with good performance similar and then Intel would beat them with another new chip.

    There's a long, long history of AMD selling their chips at approximately half the price. Certainly through all of the 90's (486, pentium 1/2/3), AMD chips were substantially cheaper than buying Intel.

    During much of this time, AMD's chips also had a strong reputation to run very hot. Intel had a reputation for running cool and being easy to overclock. It was Intel that introduced the multiplier locks to prevent overclocking, which apparantly became quite a problem outside the USA where unscrupulous companies would sand down the tops of the chips (back then they were usually ceramic on top) and print a faster speed and resell them as such.

    It wasn't even all that long ago when the infamous celeron 300A, which was multiplier locked, could overclock to 450 MHz (then, nearly the fastest chip they sold) by overclocking the front side bus by 50%. At the time, AMD's chips were far behind, and they were running hot with very little overclocking margin, just to try closing the substantial perforance gap.

    Even back in the early Pentium days, even before AMD came out with a comperable chip, the 90 MHz pentium appeared in a new, smaller geometry process that made it run about as cool as the 486 66's.

    Intel has indeed been in the lead, technologically, for a very long time... ever since they stopped licensing IP from Intel. For a bit of really ancient history, long ago, some large well known companies had a strong policy of never using any components that were not available from a second source. AMD's business model 20+ years ago was to license designs and be that second source.

    Even a number of articles mention how the tables have turned recently, and speculate whether Intel will regain the honor of top performance.

    I'm not affiliated with Intel, and in fact the PC I'm using to write this comment runs an AMD chip. When I upgrade, it'll probably be AMD again. Recently, AMD appears to have made some really smart architectual decisions that have put them in the lead, technology-wise.

    But to believe such has always been the case, or even been a trend that's anything more than recent, is to ignore or be utterly ignorant of the very long history of Intel dominating the PC / x86 market with the best chips.

    --
    PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
  46. Re:Sounds nice, BUT.... by johnw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My mind is boggled by questions like this. Are there really people out there who still use their computers for just one thing at a time?

    The machine I'm typing this on (just a simple diskless workstation) currently has 75 different processes running. The server it's connected to has 145. With a dual core processor in either of them, the number of processes able to run simultaneously would be increased by 100%.

    The idea of running just one application on your box went out more than 10 years ago. Wake up and smell the coffee.

    (If nothing else, all those blasted Flash animations can run without chewing up CPU cycles I would rather use for something else.)

    John

  47. ExtremeTech too by MStiles · · Score: 2, Informative

    ExtremeTech has an excellent story as well. They call it the best desktop processor ever.

  48. Re:Not enough comparisons ... by BFaucet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's difficult to make a fair comparision because programs are usually designed/optimized for one architecture.

    --
    -Derick
  49. Re:What would have been even more interesting... by SirTalon42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem with comparing different architectures is generally the same program doesn't exist on both, and if it does both versions may not be the same quality (one could be programmed by the best developers that arch has to offer, while the other is a 20 minute hack job). There are really too many variables to compare a specific part of an architecture.

    I'm not saying its impossible to compare 2 different architectures, I'm just saying its not practical to compare 1 part of 2 architectures and expect to get results that mean anything (though Macs are getting closer and closer to the x86 architecture as time goes on).