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Athlon Socket AM2 Review
NerdMaster writes "Hardware Secrets has just posted an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ review, one of the first AMD CPUs to support the new socket AM2. It runs at 2.4 GHz, has two 512 KB L2 memory caches (one for each core) and supports DDR2 memories." However, many are still predicting an end to AMD's dominance in the market thanks to Intel's Conroe.
Hardware secrets - you suck.
10 pages not saying very much is (irritating, but) acceptable, but when you split the print article into 10 pages, you've crossed line from greediness to stupidity.
(fires up IE). Oh nice, and there's advertisments on each of the print pages too. How is that supposed to be printable?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
According to the last page of the review, they gave the Socket 939 platform 2GB of ram, and the AM2 platform 1GB.
The 939 NForce 4 Ultra/SLI line is showing age so on one hand, I'm glad to see the new tech (and DDR2 support) finally.
However, I don't know that I can convince my wife to let me spend the money on such a large overhaul again. I'm fairly happy with my AMD 64 system at the moment.
Honestly, I just hope AMD maintains their lead long enough for people to start taking notice (like Dell using AMD in the server line).
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
One of the first sentences of TFA states that the 5000+ is clocked at 2.6Ghz.
They actually tested the 939 rigs with 2 gigs of memory, and the new rig with 1 gig of memory. They said they didn't have 2 sticks of DDR2 for the AM2 rig, but then they should have only used 1 stick in the 939 rig.
When benchmarking, you should try to keep all test systems as comparable as possible. I really am disappointed by what I consider a glaring oversight.
Seriously, for shame.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
[from page 10]
I for one welcome Intel to the top performance game. I used to be all happy about AMD gradually taking over the market ever since their first Athlon slot CPU:s. This has also caused the pricing war significantly since AMD already knew they kicked Intel in most parts of all reviews.
Now that Intel is back, we can finally see some heavy competition between the two. The Core Duo is a superb processor and I am eagerly awaiting my MacBook to arrive and I can't wait to see the second release of the Core Duo.
Remember what it was like a few years ago? I used to follow the price charts of CPU:s for drops and they were a lot more frequent than they are today. So now it's easy to say that we should get the same competition all over again and I am quite sure that Hector Ruiz at AMD has a backup plan ready to be enrolled this year.
So once again, welcome, Intel!
Full Tilt
The folks over at HotHardware.com also have a very detailed performance evaluation of AM2 Athlon 64, right here
What many seem to have neglected is that there is an evident problem with odd CPU multipliers. AMD has no support for "half" memory multipliers (4.5/5.5/6.5/etc), which means that you will actually not be able to run memories at their full potential when using processors with odd multipliers (7/9/11/etc):
i velse=481
http://www.nordichardware.com/Reviews/?page=3&skr
My 1.66GHz Athlon XP 2000+ does the job well and is still very often limited by memory (1GB) and harddisk bottlenecks. That's a 3 year old system, and CPU+Board cost only $140 back then. Am I really expected to pay that price several times over to replace a reliably working system and get less than a 2x performance increase?
For the last couple of years, AMD products have been the best in so many ways and Intel have been producing heating units. Now the Empire has Struck Back - Dell will be very happy about that.
I personally have absolutely no interest in 'the fastest thing in town', gamers may care but Cool, Quiet and Reasonably Fast are easily enough for me.
From what I hear, the Conroe is slightly more energy-efficient than AMD's offerings.
How does it scale? The Opteron is designed to be a server processor more than anything else.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articleprint.html?ar t=MTA2NQ==
/. editors review entries to prevent this abuse? If anything, when new hardware is released we all know multiple sites will cover the release. That means, put links to the more popular review sites into the story instead of helping one person get his ad hits.
Much better than the posted story which is nothing more than an advertisement for Hardware secrets.
When will
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Small selection:
- HardOCP
- X-Bit Labs
- HotHardware
up to date list here
Here is another review of the new socket/ddr2 amd part
n -64-fx-62.html/
It's great to look at fx-62 results - it looks like only that processor (or if you overclock it) can
use the available bandwidth
"Frankly speaking, it's the main competitor who must be bustling now. AMD is doing great anyway. At least in terms of CPU performance. Durability of the K8 core and its capacity to adapt to new market realia is admirable: having lived without major modifications through two process technologies, dual cores, and now a new memory controller, this core meticulously responds to each improvement with performance gains. We were very skeptic about future chances of the new AMD platform against the new processor core from Intel (Intel designed the new core nearly from scratch, while AMD K8 is rather old), but our tests warmed up our interest. The situation may turn out not that simple"
AMD Catches Up in Technology and Shoots Out in Performance
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/cpu/amd-athlo
developer http://flamerobin.org
This architecture is a pretty big disappointment.
Sure, Socket 939 was amazing when it came out. Nine hundred and thirty-nine pins -- quite an amazing figure.
But I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was less than thrilled at the release of Socket 940. I mean, just one more lousy pin? That's only a tenth of a percent improvement on Socket 939! One wonders what AMD was thinking.
And now here we are, with this farce of an architecture. Yes, Socket AM2 has only 940 pins as well! All that AMD has done in all this time is to shift the pins around on the CPU, much as the occupants of the Titanic spent their time rearranging their deck chairs -- even while that one guy kept on yelling "Iceberg ahead!"
Of course, AMD has tried to hide their laziness with the snazzy marketing name AM2. And yeah, I have got to admit that the name sounds pretty damn good. But in the end, isn't the socket itself more important than a mere name?
Here's another "benchmark":
A 2NSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MT
Not me. I've had an "Intel Outside" sticker on my front door for over 2 years now!
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Introducing a new socket (AM2) and not supporting the existing ones (939) after such a short period doesn't show much competence. I used to upgrade the CPU of any of my computer at least once during the life cycle of 4-6 years but that won't be possible with my 939 mainboard. That means at least one less CPU sell for AMD.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
It really isn't fair to compare the next-gen Intel offerings (just now coming out) against the three year old K8 core which is what people are doing. AMD's next gen processors are rolling out this summer. Let's try to compare apples to apples.
When we compare apples to apples (the P4 line to the K8 line) Intel actually uses more power, generates more heat, runs slower, and is more expensive.
I'm glad Intel stepped up and made a good processor. The Core Duo is a good processor, don't get me wrong. But for all the marketing buzz about Intel right now, AMD does in fact have a response.
AMD is not only rolling out Turion X2 series processors, but they've got the AM2 lineup such as the 5000+ X2, the quad core series, etc.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
"Guinea pigs" is right. I've been a long-time user of AMD products and I haven't been happy. The problems have been less with the chips than with the chipsets, but what good is a processor without a quality motherboard? I've built a number of systems with AMD processors and from issues with overheating, to broken usb controllers that would reboot my box if I plugged anything into it, it is fair to say I've had my share of problems. I've used chipsets from VIA, Nvidia, and AMD.
On the Intel side of the pool, I've found that Intel's chipsets are the absolute top-notch, best quality out there, works as promised. I've never had a problem with an Intel motherboard or one based on their chipsets.
What motherboard should one use for their AMD system? I don't think a single AMD-compatable chipset manufacturer has consistently released quality chipsets. VIA is probably the best bet, which I don't believe is saying a whole lot.
As far as performance-per-watt is concerned, for those saying that doesn't matter, think again! This can be a significant difference for enterprise customers. In the datacenter, less-power-consuming and less-heat-producing processors are higly desirable. Electricity isn't free, not only does lower wattage have a direct power savings, it also saves power on the AC units. Furthermore, more power can mean additional costs in both physical space and per-port costs with switched PDU units. This is compounded when using dual power-supplies!
Finally, "AMD is cheaper" is a myth in the current market place. Dell doesn't do AMD yet. If you want to buy pre-built machines off the assembly line, you can choose between an AMD machine from HP/Compaq, IBM, or Sun.. or a machine from Dell. Guess which will be the cheapest? Guess which will have the best warranty? It won't be any of the AMD machines.
Before I get flamed, yes, I've heard that AMD has been doing better with their heat than Intel in recent times. If anything, that section of my argument isn't specifically geared towards either camp.
That said, chipsets are more important than heat. As expensive as it is to power machines and to keep them cool, it is even more expensive to have a machine melt into a klump of toxins.
When amd K8L chips come out intel will fall again also K8L quad cores will be true quad cores not 2 duel cores linked by a fsb also with some K8L chips each core will have it's own L2 with shaded L3.
I have always bought Intel because of the stability. I never have to wait for an app or game to release a patch to fix the AMD issues. (Not that there's actually been a problem with that for a while, though.)
But 'AMD Cheaper' is NOT a myth. You can't say 'X isn't true because in Y area it isn't true.'
You are only looking at major computer manufacturers, and then, only a few of them.
Build your own rig. AMD is quite a bit cheaper than Intel if you do.
Major manufacturers have many political and legal hoops to jump through, and that skews their prices crazily. (If you don't believe that, research why computers with Windows installed are the same price as ones with a free linux distro installed.) You can't base your entire analysis of cost on how they price their computers.
Instead, price the components individually or check prices at a 'Mom and Pop' computer shop. You'll see that AMD is consistantly lower in price. (You'll also see that they still manage to sell the higher priced Intel machines as well.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Even Shorter Summary:
AMD are in deep shit once Conroe appears in volume, as comparisons have already shown that even an overclocked FX-60 loses badly to Conroe. Oh well, it was a nice couple of years for them.
Exactly. The other thing that most people miss is the strengths for each player.
:)
Even if the Core Duo turns out to be better than the comparable AMD chip, Intel still has ground to catch up onin the multi-chip arena due to memory bandwidth. For most people at home this might not be an issue, but for servers it can be.
Between that and the quad-core chip, it would be very interesting to see Intel manage to recapture some desktop space while AMD gets into the Server Room.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
the parent poster didn't make any claims as to what Moore's law was, he just asked if it was still holding. As his /. ID is only 5 figures long, I'm guessing he actually knows Moore's Law is about transistors and not clock speed. Even I know that. Now stop trolling :p
which is totally what she said
There is better and more balanced reviews here and here
Are they really? Conroe has been shown to be quicker in limited tests overseen by Intel. Note that, as far as I am aware, none of the 'independent' testers so far have been responsible for setting up any of the test machines. And while I am sure Intel did not do anything untoward, can you honestly guarantee that absolutely everything is fair and equal in that test?
Take a look at this article: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2487
It's showing the new woodcrest chips to be somewhere between 5 - 15% faster, as opposed to Intels claimed 33%.
Finally, have you considered that AMD may just be working on something new. For a start this is their first AM2 chip, they will surely start ramping the core clock as well as the memory clock soon. And they have kept very quiet about their other future developments, not to mention any process changes (ie. catching up with Intels 65nm lead).
So while Intel may indeed recapture the top performance slot for a while it's likely to be transient until AMD release their next big thing. Which will capture the performance crown for a while until Intel release their next big thing. And so on.
Of course I forgot to mention that Conroe is 32bit, the AMD64 chips are... wait for it... 64 bit! You may not feel that is important, but many readers on this site do.
I was excited for Conroe, too...until I found out that the Intel-sponsored public benchmark demonstration of Conroe vs. an FX-60 was (surprise, surprise) rigged. More recent, hopefully more trustworthy reviews have still shown Conroe to lead AMD's current processors, but I'll hold onto my money until it actually is released and more reviews are available before I blow them on a new X2 or Core 2 Duo.
BTW, does anyone else see how the name "Core 2 Duo" could lead to confusing people? Joe Sixpack is going to have a hard time telling the difference between a Core (1) Duo and a Core 2 Solo. And is a Core 2 Duo the same as a Core Quad or a Core 4 Solo?
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
Well, that's true, except it's not.
http://www.planetx64.com/index.php?option=com_cont ent&task=view&id=215&Itemid=14
There you go.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
> But 'AMD Cheaper' is NOT a myth. You can't say 'X isn't true because
> in Y area it isn't true.'
Clearly, I meant it is a myth within the server space, and possibly in the corporate workstation market as well. I can't even get 1U AMD servers from a certain "whitebox builder" at a cheaper price than intel machines, as they claim that they have to pay more money to get a motherboard that won't melt.
However, this isn't to say that it isn't a myth in the desktop market too. Whitebox has problems. A truely unique, untested configuration has many possible problems and unexpected side effects. White-box systems are NOT on par with OEMs in terms of quality, they simply aren't. Will you get Doom and Half-life to run? Sure, but would you trust your company's well-being to components from various manufacturers pieced together in a truely unique configuration? Or, perhaps, would you prefer to trust a tested and researched configuration used by thousands of customers?
I'll take it one step back, however, would you trust your marriage on a whitebox computer? My wife is tired of whitebox and is very unhappy when it fails, because computers do fail occassionally, and more often, my experiences have been that whitebox fails more frequently than OEM. Do I hear echos of "untested" and "unique"? YES! Often many problems arise from an overloaded the PSU, cheap PSU, cheap ram, cheap motherboard. I believe that if you want to build a system that is as rock-solid as an OEM, you really do need to pay OEM prices, and I don't mean store-front costs, I mean their R&D costs. A quality OEM won't just sell you the first thing that boots, they actually test machines and will swap out parts that don't work right. Do you do that, or do you just say, "crap, the USB controller doesn't work! I'll have to add an external card!"
> You can't base your entire analysis of cost on how they price
> their computers.
Certainly if my manufacturers of choice are big OEM shops, then yes, I can base my analysis how they price their computers! Mom and Pop shops aren't where the majority of US consumers shop at, and in my experience, those shops tend to overcharge customers anyway.
There isn't any logic to the statment: "I'm buying an AMD system from HP at $1000 more than I'd pay to Dell for an Intel system, but it is an AMD.. so I must be saving money. Although I have only 1/3 of the warranty, I'm sure I won't need that with AMD."
Tool.
I've had nothing but success using nForce4 and nForce4 Pro based motherboards.
On the other hand my i915G motherboard for my 775 pin Prescott can't access the CDROM in Linux [reliably anyways]. My Gigabyte i945 was fine though.
Stop buying crap ECS boards or low end KT or nF series. Spend the $100 and get a nF4 ASUS or Gigabyte and get over it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is Pacifica included with this? Can we finally run unmodified Windows under Xen?
...Memories of DDR2...
...If i had a magical chart making machine that knew the difference between a decline underway or a true bottom. No way would I use it on the stock market or anything like that. Seriously though, you just need to pay attention to product releases like this, and look at how it compares to existing hardware. Big price cuts generally only happen when bigger and better things roll out in the same segment. Price cuts will happen repeatedly, so don't bother waiting for the 'bottom'!
Gigabyte.. I've bought two of their motherboards. The first had an AMD chipset and would reboot upon plugging in a USB device. No fix from Gigabyte was ever provided. I believe that a Windows driver fix was made available, which did something silly like disable the +5V line. It never worked on Linux. I ended up buying an add-on PCI card for USB.
The other gigabyte motherboard I bought was crashing at high loads, even with low temperatures. The jury is still out on that one, as it could still possibly be another component, but my tests showed the disk, memory, and power supply to be fine.
nVidia chipsets. I admit they're not too bad, but I wouldn't recommend them for a server. For a workstation, they're not too bad, I've used them. The Linux drivers could use some improvement. The onboard components tend to be pretty top notch with nVidia, as far as onboard components are concerned. If you don't have need for onboard components, nVidia chipsets are overkill.
See, I like comparisons which compare products that are actually out, because comparing product a with (hypothetical) product b inevitably ends up with "product b rocks! shame it isn't out yet. can't be bought. benchmarks will be x. probably. if everything works out"
It's totally fair. You could say that the upcoming amd chips *might* be better than what intel is rolling out now, but to say it isn't 'fair' smacks of fanboiism.
This processor and socket is for servers. I want to know important things like: How long before support is available for Linux or Solaris.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
P.
Here is a review with four AM2 processor: FX-62, 5000+, 4600+, 4000+
I think is a little more complete than the one in Hardware Secrets, but is in Spanish, any way you can see the graphics.
You apparently don't deal with competent people for your 1U/workstation needs.
* Supermicro
* Monarch
* Polywell
* PenguinComputing
* eRacks
* ASA
Take your pick. All of these 'whitebox' vendors release quality, SUPPORTED configurations using custom, bleeding-edge hardware for build-it-yourself prices.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The nForce 2200/2050 MCP is a much better part than the nForce 4/SLI. Its my favorite system baseline for new servers. I love being able to have dedicated PCIe 4x lanes on each HT link and such. In that configuration there aren't many drivers to speak of that you need. forcedeth works fine for networking, it even supports much of the TCP offload capabilities...
An even better mix is the AMD 8131 + nForce 2050. That gives you PCI-X AND PCIe, dedicated. It's my favorite server platform.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Why didn't they just test with 1GB of ram accross the board? That would have make it seem fairer than 2GB and 1GB systems.
My two cents is that wait for the AM2 socket to progress further and don't jump on the band wagon just because its there. I am a computer enthusiast and love to have the best hardware in my system. The problem is that with new stuff coming out all the time, there is no point to upgrade just yet. My AMD64 3200+ runs great, does everything I need it to do on my system and more. I would love an AMD64 X2 4000, but the funds are low.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Can you link me to the article that says the Conroe is 32bit? Thanks.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
AMD has beaten Intel's offerings for, what, three years now, and STILL they can't get a break. Apple won't use them. Dell just this month tentatively offers AMD chips for their server line.
The chips are cheaper and are faster than Intel's. You couldn't tell from the press!
No matter what AMD does, the next line in this type of story is "But Intel's next CPU, expected in the year 2121, is expected to outperform AMD's best. Is AMD doomed? "
That's ironic, because prior to Conroe's dominance over AMD's AM2, AMD fanatics liked to ding Intel for being a 10 year old core because they reverted from the Pentium4 core back to the original Pentium III core.
...to...
/.
So basically the opposition argument goes like this:
(pre-Conroe)
"AMD's K8 beats Intel's 10 year old core, I guess Intel doesn't have any new designs"
(post-Conroe)
"Stop comparing AMD's 3 year old K8 core to intel's latest and greatest... um, despite the fact it's still the same 10 year old core..."
I believe that's called a double standard. But again, this is
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I've always upgraded those three things together. If not at best your getting a 30% improvement in processing speed.
Even if amd used socket a for a long time they migrated from pc100-133 ram to pc 2100-2700 (drr 266 & 333) and bus speeds changed. That required new motherboards. It's quite pointless to upgrade your machine to a new cpu if your bus speed and memory speed remains unchanged in almost all cases. The speed difference is so minor.
Hmmm... Pie...
This argument shouldn't exist. Checkout the numbers that AMD X2 4600 put out, very on par or close to that fx60 and the 5000. That chip is out now and you can put it into your computer you buy from new egg on the cheap. Compare that to what Intel has out now and life aint so peachy. And I am not the type to knock on the intel p3 core, it rocks. It was a good move to go back to it and work forward again. In the end, the AM2 chipset (with 400/800 fsb now, but 3 faster ones coming out later) and the soon coming/core duo intel chips will both be good choices, and present a healthy & competitive market.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
We're comparing the latest from each competitor. That's completely fair. If AMD doesn't want to look bad in comparison, they need to catch up on technology.
From what I understand, AMD will not have 65nm chips until December. That means they won't be catching up soon.
When we compare apples to apples (the P4 line to the K8 line) Intel actually uses more power, generates more heat, runs slower, and is more expensive.
Apples to Apples will change next week when Core 2 Duo comes out. And already, if you compare Core Duo to AMD's chips at the same clock speed, the Core Duo is faster and uses less power.
(comparison against Socket 940)
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2750
But here's the sick part. Read hothardware's review. They include a Pentium Extreme Edition 3.73GHz in their tests. It runs neck and neck in the tests (except in gaming where it gets shellacked). But the final test is power consumption. At the wall socket at least, the AM2 CPU appears to use more power than the Pentium EE 3.73GHz.
If you can't do better on power consumption than the most power-hungry P4 out there, you should go to the back of the line.
It's clear AMD is behind Intel at the moment. I really hope they catch up and pass them. We've benefited from the competition and I don't want to see it end.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I don't know where you buy consumer boxes (can't speak to coporate servers), but I've yet to find an OEM box that isn't crap. Crap packed with cheap propritary parts, odd designs, sometimes custom PSUs, occasionally the CPU SOTTERED to the motherboard etc...
The very best OEM I've ever dealt with was MicronPC, and they went out of business I think.
Of course, neither one of us is statistically relevant, but I've had the exactly opposite experiance of you.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
"Whitebox" not on par quality-wise versus OEM? I know you must be joking (or trolling). OEMs are popular for one main reason at large corporations: when something breaks you get the convenience of a single point of contact for warranty service. Other than that, they are generally built with whatever lowest cost crap they manufacturer could get their hands on (ESPECIALLY Dell, which in recent years has just gone to crap. It's a pathetic thing when I can pickup a desktop system unit and by lightly twisting on each ends with my hands see the system FLEX back and forth).
You also have to deal with their horrendous OS loads which nearly cripple the system and the fact that 99% of the time they don't include an actual OS install CD to start from scratch - just a "restore disk" that will start off with a fresh system just as messed up as when you started. Heck even when they do include an install disk it's often missing stuff from the full version.
Yes, a whitebox system can be crappy too, because you have the option of buying crap components. However, a custom/whitebox system built with good memory, a reputable mainboard/graphics card/etc, will beat an OEM machine in quality and stability every time. The only caveat is that you have to be preparted to do some legwork regarding the warranties if something breaks (which in my experience, isn't often. only things I've ever had actually break were hard drives, and most of those were from that horrdendous IBM 60GXP line).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Stability wise, the Athlon64 chipsets are indeed as good as any I've seen. Just a few days ago I had to shut down my Windows XP PC to install an extra hard drive I'd bought (because 550GB obviously wasn't enough, I had to get another 300GB drive :)). My main system (which is actually running Windows XP; I've got another AMD machine running Gentoo Linux) had been up without a reboot for nearly 4 months before I took it down a week ago to add an extra hard drive. Before that I had shut it down to upgrade the cpu and ram. With it sitting on a UPS, the machine pretty much only gets rebooted during the ugprade process :).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Seriously, why are we still stuck with DDR2? I want a processor that supports at least 7th Mix!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I could have sworn I linked correctly.
Here is the correct link:
Anandtech's Real-Time Pricing Engine
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Apparently you didnt know that Intel released Conroe's to be benchmarked, nice and convienent that they did it on AMD's release day no? :) Good marketting if you ask me..kill all the hype about AMD's release day and make it about Intel...
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5692
And this is with a gimped Intel board running at 677mhz instead of 800, and only 1Gig of ram not 2 Gigs like the FX62...
They found no system speed difference between:
1 GB of DDR2
2 GB of DDR1
If you skip over to their auto department, you'll also find that, despite expectations to the contrary, a Ferrari performs no better than a VW Beetle. Granted, they didn't have any tires on their Ferrari at the time of testing but that's not going to stop them announcing their findings now with a quiet footnote about retesting later.
The funny part is that it just hasn't happened yet, but the Intel fans have been waiting for so long that they've just gotta get up and sing anyways. AMD has only a 90nm process, and is still competing with the futuristic Conroe. AMD is still the best option on the desktop. AMD is still the only real option in server land. Want 4 sockets (or even just 2)? Want a reasonable cooling/power bill? AMD is the only option. Intel lucked out by keeping the Pentium 3 architecture around thus managing to keep the laptop/mobile market. Now they're putting those benefits into their desktop/server platforms and by doing being competitive again.
But Intel has not won the battle yet, is the Conroe out yet? Where is the massive proliferation of desktop motherboards for building Core Duo machines? They're not here yet.
Once DDR2 moves beyond 400mhz, AMD will have some serious bandwidth. Later this year AMD will have 65nm, this will bring huge results for their power/watt numbers. So both sides of the story can spout off about what they will have 'eventually.' People need to sit back and re-evaluate things. All we have right now is a healthy, competitive market.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Intel? Don'tcha just love 'em? Conroe is wiping the floor with AMD's aging Athlon 64 Chips right now at 2.6Ghz. Intel will really put the MEGAHURTS (Geddit?) on AMD with the 3Ghz Core Extreme. And Woodcrest and Merom should be 20% faster.
Intel? Don'tcha just hate them. Faced with the failure of the Netburst, they've dug out the aging Pentium 3, and revamped it a bit. Now they're releasing benchmarks for unreleased chips, claiming they'll be faster than a high end AMD64. Doesn't anyone remember Intel leaking outrageously exaggerated benchmarks long before a chip release to limit sales of a competitor's faster chip that's actually available now.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I have found "whitebox" systems to be no more less reliable than OEM systems. You're kidding yourself if you think that the major OEMs do a whole lot of testing of their configurations. Heck, go and open up a bunch of Dells that are an identical model - chances are you'll find they have different video cards, different brands of harddrives - even different motherboards. I'm pretty sure that Dell just buys whatever is cheap that week, slaps it into a box, and out the door it goes.
With that said though, I have had a fair share of problems with AMD based systems - mostly due to shitty chipsets and crappy motherboards (especially on the Athlon XP line). Since many whiteboxes are AMD, and most OEMs are Intel, that undoubtably leads to the perception that whiteboxes are less reliable. But the Intel PIII/P4 whitebox computers I deal with have been extremely reliable and problem free machines.
btw, did you notice the numbers the amd x2 4600+ put out? that processor is the real one to buy. i would much rather spend $550 on the 4600+ than over $1K on the 5000+ or about as much on an FX62. how much does the conroe cost? the core duo t2600 (2x2.167) is of very similar performance to the 4600+ for $642 on newegg.com.
for power consumption, the core duo t2600 idles at the same wattage as a turion. under load the amd 3800+ was 60 watts away, and the pentium 4 based xe chips hitting 315 watts. these numbers will likely change though once the intel puts out their desktop chips. along with that performance should also increase which is good for intel.
i hope people don't get offended by what i'm saying, i certainly don't want to get put on lithium again. the core duo is definitely worth buying, but not any more so than and amd64. you need to look at the whole solution, not just the cpu. i would definitely have to say that amd has sorta slumbered within the last year or so, and that has allowed intel come back swingin'.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Here's the hothardware link:
l eid=822&cid=1&page=21
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?artic
Look at the graphs at the bottom, the increase in power when the CPU is loaded is presumably due to the CPU. The EE adds 80W when going to peak power, the AMDs add almost 90W. Make of it what you will. To me it looks like the AMD is a hog. I say this because I know the EE is a hog.
I dunno why you list 130W as AMDs TDP. Are you considering that a good thing? That's an assload! My entire system doesn't take that, counting inefficiencies. (and I have an Athlon X2).
Clock-for-clock, Intel is beating AMD with Core Duo. In performance per Watt, they are KILLING them. AMD does win out on the top end, because Intel doesn't have high-end chips out yet. This will probably change when Core 2 Duo comes out.
See link:
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2750
The Intel chip beats the AMD in every test that measures CPU performance. It only falls to even or a bit worse in tests which test primarily the speed of peripherals.
If you are looking at an Athlon X2 4400+ or below and you don't need 64-bit, you're making a big mistake buying an AMD. The Intel is superior. That's why I say "clock-for-clock". If you need a processor in the speed range that Intel covers with Core Duo, the Core Duo is the winner. They just top out at 2.16GHz (almost the same speed as my Athlon X2 4200+), so if you want more performance than that, you have to go to AMD (because going to P4 makes zero sense).
If what we hear about Core 2 Duo is correct, AMD won't have much left to crow about next week. Intel will have 64-bit in Core 2 Duo. AMD willl be beat on performance/Watt. They'll be beat on performance/MHz. They'll be beat on performance in multiprocessing situations. They'll be beat on performance "at any cost" (max performance). If they're lucky, AMD will keep the performance/dollar measure. That's a pretty big fall for a company that had a clear edge just a few months ago.
I don't have anything against AMD. My primary machine is an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and I love it. And it was exactly the right thing to buy at the time. But that's changed for the mainstream today, and it look like it'll change for the top end too next week.
I wish AMD the best. I hope they have something up their sleeve to top Intel again. But AM2 isn't it. I really hope they can get to 65nm (and presumably competitiveness on power) sooner than the December they state.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"I believe that a Windows driver fix was made available, which did something silly like disable the +5V line."
... you can't disable the +5V line. That's where things get their power from. Your mouse, usb sticks, keyboard, etc wouldn't work.
Um
My bet [other than you're making this up to troll] is that you bought returned items which were damaged. EVERY SINGLE computer I've bought that was AMD used the nvidia series of chipset. They all worked properly and never had a "plug usb in and die" problem.
I've seen some MSI boards [using VIA chipsets] have random SATA problems and what not. But generally ASUS and Gigabyte are good to go with. My 2P Tyan board is running two high end Opterons and everything on it, even the audio codec, is working perfectly [using nvidia nF4 Pro chipset].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=27 62&p=11
The FX-62 taking the same power (at the wall) as the P4 EE under load.
Very sad for AMD. They've resorted to performance though power-sucking, the same thing everyone crapped on Intel for with P4.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
> items which were damaged. EVERY SINGLE computer I've bought that was AMD used the
> nvidia series of chipset. They all worked properly and never had a "plug usb in
> and die" problem.
The chipset was an AMD 768, a first-generation chipset for the original Athlon processors. Checkout page 14 of the following document.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/whit
Meanwhile, in my experience, I've rarely had a failure of an OEM machine, while I've had failures in all my whitebox systems to date. For me, it is piece of mind, and also "someone else's problem". With my wife, for instance, if a system I built was to break for any minor reason, it would be my fault -- if a machine from Dell breaks, it is Dell's fault. I don't like being at fault, if I don't have to.
Something I didn't notice initially, this is a 65nm version of P4 EE. So it likely takes a lot less power than the usual hog 90nm versions of EE.
Still, I think it does indicate how AMD's architecture is a bit behind the times, and they are stretching it with clock speeds, just like Intel did with P4.
Hopefully (like Intel finally did) AMD will debut a new architecture soon that changes this.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Athlon != K8/Opteron.
Though my experience with K7 stuff was fine too, only significant problem was overheating.
I seriously think your impressions are just out of date. If you are buying brand name K8 components today and they're not working you're either
a) setting it up wrong
b) buying non-brandname parts
c) buying it at a place you shouldn't trust
d) Lying.
I've bought several 754, 939 and 940 motherboards from ASUS and Tyan and they all work just fine. The fact that you seem to be having consistent "problems" with them suggests that your process requires updating.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.