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AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core Chips Released
HaloPhreak writes "InformationWeek reports today that AMD has released the Athlon 64 X2 for the high end desktop. Intel and AMD have been competing to get these out as soon as possible, but I think it will be interesting to see what AMD will do with the mobile version of this processor, due out in 2006." From the article: "Both companies have been in a tight race to deliver the processors since engineers realized that simply ratcheting up the clock speed of single-core chips was creating too much heat and not producing the same improvements seen in previous models."
Does this have built-in trusted computing/DRM technology like the newest Intel chips?
After all, I am strangely colored.
With it's lower power consuption than the Intel chips, and lower heat than expected from an AMD chip of this sort, it's definitely a reason to save up.
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Is there any chance for pin compatilbility with existing equipment?
...yup...
At almost double the price of the latest Intel chips, how can AMD stay competitive? AMD has always had the lower priced chips, and developed a loyal following of "price/performace" fans. What now?
It's somewhat like a car engine then. You can't just keep driving the one engine harder and harder with higher octane fuel and expect everything to be alright. If you want to really shift up to the next level of performance you actually have to add some new hardware to it (more cylinders, better transmission, etc...).
However, you also can't expect to continually achieve better results without some problems by just throwing another engine into the car either.
Bad news for those of you that recently bought a socket754 MB
Good news for us who own a Soket 939
Seems all we may need is a Bios update and we are Dual Core Ready. (Merry Chistmas to ME!)
Now I can toast two pieces of bread at once.
-1, Welcome to 2001.
Do you like German cars?
Microsoft has released Windows 95. It's promised to be a faster, better and a more reliable Windows yet!
Does it have built in AES like newest VIA chips?
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=athlon+64+x2+p rocessor&cat=1368
Oh well.. I'm sure they'll build multy-core processor support into the kernel.
I have been in this business 10 years. What the heck is a 'membership system'? I am refferring to the microsoft ad that is with this story. Is commenting on the ad off-topic if it appears on the page?
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What will be the impact on Desktop Linux? I ask this because I wonder whether my SuSE 9.2 Linux desktop will stop feeling "heavy" with this "dual core" stuff. Imagine this: You click on a desktop icon and the response comes after about 3-4 seconds. In openOffice.org, it's even worse. I am using an AMD Sempron 2800+ with 512MB of RAM.
If anyone needs to be refreshed on how badass these chips are:
? i=2397&p=1
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
Intel must be embarrassed
I was apparently sleeping last week. Are the Intel dual core chips 32bit or 64bit .. none of the stories seem to say.
And it seems Intel is intent on making thier naming scheme more and more confusing.
Meanwhile, Intel's desktop dual core chips seem to offer much more aggressive pricing at this time. AMD's lowest price dual core chip, the X2 4200 is almost twice as expensive as Intel's lowest cost dual core processor. However, an interview with three AMD execs on PCPerspective.com claims that "AMD would eventually have lower priced Athlon X2 processors via the waterfall effect in the future".
There were some AMD Sempron CPUs released for the earlier Socket A motherboards. The same stands, there are previous generation chipsets where the BIOS is ACPI and capable of recognizing multiple CPU configurations without actually having the physical capability with another CPU socket. If AMD released such for Socket A, I would replace my 1900+ Palomino core on this Iwill KK266+ motherboard. It's all I need, not what I want. I already primarily use a Deskstation DEC 633MHz Alpha 164UX and it is verry fast despite being about 8 years old.
I could use a 386 PDA too, for that matter...
without prejudice
The engineers realized the diminishing returns of clock speed years ago, it took them this long to convince the PHB's.
Both companies realized that simply ratcheting up the clock speed of single-core chips was creating too much heat and not producing the same improvements seen in previous models.
I thought dual core was being used as a last resort, not because it produces better speed improvements than upping the clock. From the benchmarks I have read the X2 is very fast, but is this because of the second core, or have there been other changes to the processor?
They keep saying that dual cores won't benefit users that run only a single program or game. But isn't the operating system a thread to itself? It can be handling interrupts, updating the screen, managing read/writes to the disc etc. while the main program thread runs unhindered on the second processor.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If you've already *got* dual processors, is there *any* reason to care about or be interested in this at all?
What about DRM? I'm not buying DRM infected hardware, that's all I care about.
The article needs to be changes in one way:
"Both companies have been in a tight race to deliver the processors since AMD engineers realized that simply ratcheting up the clock speed of single-core chips was creating too much heat and not producing the same improvements seen in previous models."
I just hope my SN95G5 BIOS gets an update for these.
Between the Athlon 64 X2 and the Pentium D it is pretty clear who the winner is: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/cual_core _athlon-20.html
there's a good overview on OSNews.com.
Am I the only one that would love to see like a 1.4ghz version of this that runs crazy cool (temp of course)? I would die for that in the new iWill SFF box here. Imagine that. Four 1.4ghz Athlon64 cores in such a small space :) Perfect for me desktop!
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The point has been made earlier in this page that the AMD chips are priced competetively when you compare *actual performance* rather than clock speed.
AMD just didn't bother making slow dualie chips, probably because the single-cpu Athlons chips are faster and cheaper than the lower-end Intel dualies.
I have to replace my system - lightning strike yesterday took out all the neighbourhood systems. My system quote for replacing with same or near same hardware is just over $5G.
I need to get a new system, I was thinking dual CPU again(old was dual 2800+) but a dual core system could be just the thing. Anyone seen these in the channel yet?
JC
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
LOAD"$",8
LIST
Ahh those were the days.....
"Be the first time move from Intel to AMD"
Why haven't you chosen to switch sooner? The last 3 computers purchased at my house were AMD, and although I am not a fanboy of AMD I did like the price/preformance ratio which is why they were bought.
If AMD starts doing DRM shit with bloated pricing, and Intel is the same way as that, I may switch to Mac (so IBM dont screw with DRM with your power chips).
...nVidia puts out a dual-core GPU?
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
I've had this debate before and am aware of all this. Some of us just what some compatibility; an adaptor, anything inexpensive just so we can keep our already-existing majority of quality hardware that has efficient and stable drivers. I can say the same about graphics adaptors; most of us wanting to keep a Matrox G200 adaptor and have a 3D only nVidia adaptor we swap in the typical upgrade rate. It's already fast enough and we wouldn't care if it degrades to 50% of the intended bus performance. By the memory controller being integrated, it's more of a computer replacement than an upgrade to a recent CPU. The industry should be using passive motherboard backplanes anyway. This could get more manufacturing back to America, that United States citizens are would enjoy selling breadboard and plastic for greater cost than Taiwan nationals would sell breadboard with actual components
without prejudice
Intel servers are going to be cheaper. You can't beat Dell's price point on servers both high end or low end.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
It would appear that the BIOS writers don't get this 64-bit thing. I picked up four 1G sticks of DDR 400 'value' RAM all at once rather than deal with mismatched venders later on. A painful step - about an extra $160 more than I planned to pay - but 2G of RAM is comes up a bit short when working with VMWare images that are running app servers. Besides, why not?
Had I not waited for an extra three months for a revision 'e' CPU that fixes the issues using all four memory slots, I might just be a bit bitter. Nothing on any of the forms warned me that 'supported 4G of RAM' actually translates into posting - not that you can actually access 3.4G in Win2k and 3.25G in Win2003-x64. Yup, sure enough, the 64-bit version of Windows system properties thinks it has even less memory then the 32-bit original. Task manager both report the same amount as the BIOS, however.
So, for all of those thinking this might make for a spiffy way to update an aging dual CPU rig, be warned about the RAM limitations. When DFI said 'supports 4G of RAM', they mean it will post...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
That's hotter than the dual core opterons and I think there are some 30 watts per core opterons so why wouldn't the Athlons be built to run cooler since it's designed to be in a desktop, not some server where fan noise isn't going to matter?
Intel and AMD went dual cores because they hit the wall in terms of clock speed, but yet die size keep shrinking in accordance with Moore's Law. So why not just dump two cores and on the same piece of silicon.
How useful will it be? Depends on what you do...
General office use (word, excel, internet, email): minimal impact (its not like this stuff is all that intense anyways)
Games: minimal impact for now, the next generation of games will probably be multi-threaded, so you'll start to see impacts around the holiday season
Multimedia: depends on whether or not the specific application you're using (encoders, video editing, etc) is multi-threaded or not. Also, whether or not how good of a multitasker you are (if you encode stuff in the background while doing some video editing in the foreground).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
That was so much more insightful that the other 20 "AMD r0x0rz so they can charge more" posts... Someone here actually took/remembered an econ class.
By ATI it seems. Though I can't tell if this article means dual core, or actually two cards in the computer.
what, do you guys have poison ivy on both hands today or something?
When?
The BIOS is looking for more than one CPU, and there is an MPS setting in the BIOS even though there is only one physical CPU socket. That is all I can say. It's almost as though the designers were aching for dualcore 4 years ago...oops, did I say this computer is four years old?
without prejudice
A dual core 1.6 at $200.
Right now, you can get a single core Athlon 64 3200 for $200.
Considering that said processor is 2x faster (clock wise) than your dual core solution, and that dual cores are not necessarily 2x faster than whatever speed they are rated for, I would say that it would not be very smart for you to even buy such a chip, let alone AMD manufacture one.
The HP Pavillion zv6000 and Compaq R4000 notebooks use Socket 939 desktop CPUs with their aluminum lid removed. They've been shipping with the old 130nm core, all the way up to 4000+. In theory there's no reason you couldn't swap in a X2, so long as the BIOS supports it, although if you read the service manual they made it much more difficult to swap CPUs than they did on the zv5000z/R3000z series. Best to wait for HP to sell them with that option.
Too bad HP didn't include a card slot to upgrade from the onboard Radeon 200M video. Even with the 128MB dedicated RAM option (which all the retail models I've seen come with) it's too weak for serious gaming, which is pretty retarted for a desktop-replacement behemoth with the best gaming CPU on the planet. They also managed to break dual channel memory support, so sticking with the 3500+/3800+/etc ratings is a little misleading (subtract 100 to get the correct single-channel rating). That said, they're very inexpensive so you get an awful lot for your money.
Turion dual cores wait until next year. Meanwhile, this single-core Turion notebook looks very tempting, for those of us who can't quite afford a Ferarri.
fine that these are compatible with s939 after a BIOS update, but will you have to reinstall XP from scratch or will it 'magically' autodetect the 2nd processor? Don't think I've ever read an article discussing this issue yet.
-- the cake is a lie
Yeah, that Google sure is big. Your post was so gratuitous that I ran your .sig
" Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3."
through it:
Yoda said that, not Spock.
Dr. Spock was a child psychologist, who was never said to utter that phrase. Spock was a character in the Star Trek TV series that featured "stardates", though Kirk called him "Mr. Spock" in traditional naval parlance.
Stardates don't have dashes, they have dots.
Google is useful, but it can be abused, if used without restraint.
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make install -not war
newegg
You can't compare "lowest priced CPU" to "lowest price CPU". That's like saying 15 lbs of apples at $5 is a better deal than 30 lbs of oranges at $8. $5 $8 so it must be a better deal. [rolls eyes]
Look at the specs of the lowest priced A64-X2 and compare those specs to the lowest priced PD. You'll noticed that the performance of the A64-X2 is a lot higher than that of the PD.
Work your way up Intel's price chart until you find a PD or even PEE CPU that has similar performance to that of the lowest priced A64-X2. Compare the prices of those two, and you'll find the AMD CPU is a better deal.
Stupid comment system stripped my less than sign out even though it's posted as plain text. The above comment should start:
You can't compare "lowest priced CPU" to "lowest price CPU". That's like saying 15 lbs of apples at $5 is a better deal than 30 lbs of oranges at $8. $5 is less than $8 so it must be a better deal. [rolls eyes]
I'm a rapist, you insensitive clod.
... only disgusting pedophiles watch star trek.
You forgot the zoophiles and the furries. Yeah, many of those are disgusting paedophiles as well, but not all of them.
[/sarcasm]
I didn't know males can get PMS. I bet you're a fat greanpeace Islamic transexual woman lesbian dyke nigger crab fisherman living in San Francisco.
Be sure to conceal your beauty from unworthy eyes.
Propz to all the dead homiez!
Playing themselves off as the "cheap alternative" is no longer a good idea, especially when their product is superior. In the distant past, I bought AMD because, yes, it was cheaper, but since K7 they do not represent a compromise, and with K8 they are superior.
..is something that no gentoo user should be without. I don't leave my computer on all the time so when I do turn it on after I get home from work I start launching lots of programs, with emerge --sync, and emerge -avuD world, and whatever else I might want remove or put into my system. It would be very nice to be able to be compiling updates in the background while I wh00p some ass in UT2K4!!!
AMD released their dual core servers first because thats where they are most useful, then went for desktops shortly after. Likewise, they are realeasing the highest powered and therefore more expensive dual core desktop processors first for those who want somthing faster than what's currently available. They are realeasing several more Athlon 64 X2 processors in the next few months with pricing set based on how they perform against whats out there now. Seeing as how the slowest of their current dual core's is faster than a Athlon 64 4000+ (which is identical to an FX-53) the fact that it's $500 or so is completely understandable and is actually a bargain.
And don't forget that the "D" in Pentium-D stands for DRM.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
XBox360 will have 3 cores, each dual-threaded. Playstation 3 will have 8 single-threaded cores. Revolution will definitely be multi-cored but it's not confirmed how many.
This means that anyone developing for either of the consoles will be writing multi-threaded applications as standard. If you're not farming out work to other threads, you're letting execution units sit idle!
PC games are currently mostly single-threaded (or at least the distribution of work is uneven so multiple cores aren't used properly). In order for PC games to still have a market in competition with the consoles, multicore chips are going to have to be the minimum specification for the next generation of games.
sorry I put that in parenthesis, because, yes, technically its wrong. However, back when Intel was assigning Ghz ratings to their machines (which was not that long ago), AMD's PR rating was roughly equivilent. Now that they're using the silly three-digit numbering scheme, they still have Ghz ratings. You know what, tho? The PR ratings are STILL valid.
Besides, I was rummaging around a neither of them even make a 1.6 dual core anything. None of his post made any sense whatsoever, just whiny bitching about not being able to afford dual core.
I see you got +1 Nitpicky for your effort.
this is exactly why intel hurried to get out their dual core chips, they know they had nothing that could compete head to head, so they are relying on their marketing and the fact that "they got there first", even though, IMHO, they rushed their inferior product drastically
you could go with a dual processor Athlon MP 2Ghz system off eBay. Those seem to be within price range. Don't forget that you have to get a new board with the Intel dual core processors.
The first time that I saw his(her?) sig, I had a similar reaction -- initially. Then, after about 2.3 nanoseconds, I realized that it was a joke.
P.S. "Humer-impearred" was deliberate. Just a heads-up.