Slashdot Mirror
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.
Web Design Tips
Yes, I believe they are standard Athlon 64 socket-types (939). Pretty much any motherboard will be able to support them with nothing more than a BIOS upgrade (if that)
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
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.
Oh well.. I'm sure they'll build multy-core processor support into the kernel.
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
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".
The engineers realized the diminishing returns of clock speed years ago, it took them this long to convince the PHB's.
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."
Drop KDE/GNOME. They have both become too bloated for everyday use. There's a lot of excellent "lightweight" desktop enviroments and window managers: i reccomend XFCE (4.2.2). It's like Gnome after 6 months of workout and strict diet.
The Opteron 939 and 940 sockets and pinouts where designed for dual core to begin with so the upgrade is fairly smooth. The pinout change doesn't come until the Quad core processors are released sometime next year.
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
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
I have an Athlon 1800+ with 512mb. I'm running, right now:
- XFCE 4.2 with 4 desktops
- Opera 7.54u2 with about 15 tabs
- Beep Media player
- Gaim, 4 accounts
- aMule
- Several console sessions and GVIM windows
- Assorted sevices (Samba, SSHd, Apache, etc)
- GKrellm2
The system is consistently responsive and snappy, and Gkrellm reports 305Mb free (without swap pages), with 0% of the swap partition used. I know FF is quite more memory hungry than Opera, but still, there's no need for 1Gb of memory to run a desktop comfortably.
And don't forget that the "D" in Pentium-D stands for DRM.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.