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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?
Here's Anandtech's review of the X2.
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.
forget longer pipelines, it's girth that really counts
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
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!
Or you can jump right to their conclusions.
Fear Is the Only God
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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;-(
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.
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.
There can only be one core!
"... 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.
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
Have you seen the specs required for Longhorn!
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...
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."
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.
Sorry about our server's inability to keep up right now. We have a mirror here: http://www2.techreport.com/
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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