Intel Stepping Up to Combat AMD's 4x4

Haste by MECC · 2006-07-20 05:47 · Score: 1, Insightful

Make waste...

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Re:Haste by DittoBox · 2006-07-20 06:53 · Score: 1

How was this modded "off-topic"?

He's simply saying that if Intel tries to release a product simply to get ahead in the short term by entering the market with a product that just isn't ready then Intel could be very sorry.

Haste Makes Waste

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Re:Haste by chrish · 2006-07-21 02:01 · Score: 1

On the other tentacle, it's possible that these chips were nearly ready anyway, and were being delayed for marketing reasons, to avoid competition with the other Core CPUs that Intel is releasing this year.

How about a dual-CPU w/quad cores Mac "Pro" system? *drool*

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- chrish

And so it begins by Linkiroth · 2006-07-20 05:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

The great hardware war heats up once again. Right now, the biggest advantage Intel has is that their chips are scheduled for an earlier release. If they wait on the Core 2s, they're screwed. They need to get the Core 2 Duos out before AMD gets out their 4x4s so that people have less of a reason to upgrade when AMD releases their chips.

Re:And so it begins by vancondo · 2006-07-20 06:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

They need to get the Core 2 Duos out before AMD gets out their 4x4s so that people have less of a reason to upgrade when AMD releases their chips.

Do most chip sales happen at the release date, or do most people wait for the competitors product to come out spurring price drops to compete? I know I seldom buy anything at the alpha-expensive stage, usually preferring to wait a few months for the inevitable price drop.

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Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:07 · Score: 2, Informative

The Core 2 Duos aren't "alpha expensive" -- they're significantly cheaper than AMD's prices as of right now.
Re:And so it begins by Mr.+Flibble · 2006-07-20 06:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

Do most chip sales happen at the release date, or do most people wait for the competitors product to come out spurring price drops to compete? I know I seldom buy anything at the alpha-expensive stage, usually preferring to wait a few months for the inevitable price drop.

It is not a question of inital chipsales, it is more a question of marketing. Back when both companies were trying to hit the 1 Ghz mark, AMD got there first. That was a big win for them, as consumers could now say 1000 Mhz! WOW! Even though intel quickly came out with faster chips thereafter. It was a win for AMD because the name AMD got into the minds of customers. The same thing with the 64 bit. Now, most people here on slashdot know what a 64 bit chip is, and does, and does not do. But the public does not. And since AMD had the 64 bit chip out first, consumers wanted it, even if it had no real benifit for them initally.

The same goes with this technology. Whomever gets it out of the gate first wins the "mindshare war" as we call it now. IIRC, the book "Predatory Marketing" covers how this works in detail - but they don't use the "mindshare" term in it.

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Re:And so it begins by LoudMusic · 2006-07-20 06:44 · Score: 1

... usually preferring to wait a few months for the inevitable price drop.

And bug fixes.

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Re:And so it begins by timeOday · 2006-07-20 06:48 · Score: 1

But the product cannot begin to mature until it is actually released. Then you can start to see the price drops, motherboard availability, bug workarounds, etc. A head start is a head start.
Re:And so it begins by tomstdenis · 2006-07-20 07:21 · Score: 1

4x4 ... You mean a pair of 285s and a tyan mobo? Aside from the lack of dual SLI that's basically a 4x4 setup.

If you actually need CPU power you can already buy Opteron gear today. Also while I wouldn't mind playing with a 4-core Intel kit I still love my 2x285 kit.

Tom

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Re:And so it begins by srw · 2006-07-20 07:29 · Score: 1

It is not a question of inital chipsales, it is more a question of marketing. Back when both companies were trying to hit the 1 Ghz mark, AMD got there first. (...) And since AMD had the 64 bit chip out first...

They might have got there before Intel, but they were hardly first. (1Ghz OR 64bit) ***cough***Alpha***cough*** (Where was the marketing at DEC?)
Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:33 · Score: 0

Premature vs Early.

Early release means the engineers are working out problems much faster than anticipated.

Premature release is when the PHB decides that the engineers will work out the problems faster than they say they will.

The problem is that PHB's that decide the latter often are ignorant of the fact that they do not have the authority to make the decision. That's Mr Murphy's job.
Re:And so it begins by twitchingbug · 2006-07-20 07:34 · Score: 1

Sure AMD got to 1GHz first and came out with x86-64, but really does that matter anymore? Are you really going to purchase a chip today based on who got to 1GHz first?

AMD is selling a lot of chips, not to regular joe consumers, but to OEM server makers and /. nerds that build their own computer from scratch. Joe consumer buys a dell cause it's cheap. I have a lot of friends in tech, and AMD doesn't have the name recognition that Intel has. Everyone knows Intel, very few non tech people know AMD. Plus, regular joes often ask their more tech savy friends about computer recommendations, and really what's not to like about Core 2 Duo? Plus it'll be even easier to recommend than an Athlon 64 was before. You'll just have to wait 3-6 months, and be like, "order it from dell". With Athlon 64, you'd have to buy an HP or build it for them - pain in the ass.

AMD has built up mindshare, no question. But Core 2 Duo will knock AMD down a couple places out of sheer performance, performace per watt and performance per dollar.

-don
Re:And so it begins by jejones · 2006-07-20 07:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

The Core 2 Duos aren't "alpha expensive" -- they're significantly cheaper than AMD's prices as of right now.

Agreed, but... July 24th, the date when AMD is going to cut some CPU prices almost in half, is barely over a weekend away, and there is the question of supply and demand. Will demand be sufficient to drive the price up?
Re:And so it begins by AvitarX · 2006-07-20 08:17 · Score: 1

I remember an add in a PC magazine that was to the effect of "Now your using alpha power" or something, it was a jab at an Intel add campaign.

It was for 500MHz when Intel was selling 300.

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Re:And so it begins by Gr8Apes · 2006-07-20 08:22 · Score: 1

The same goes with this technology. Whomever gets it out of the gate first wins the "mindshare war" as we call it now. IIRC, the book "Predatory Marketing" covers how this works in detail - but they don't use the "mindshare" term in it.

Well, I guess AMD won that too, by that logic. After all - their dual core offerings beat the Core Duo out the door by a significant margin.

Honestly, when it really comes down to real tests of multi-threaded applications (mostly in the multi-media arena at the moment) AMD will wipe the floor with Intel just based on 3 year old architecture. However, in the single thread arena, Intel holds the crown at the moment. Dual core chips still help with single thread apps, as it will allow the single thread to run on it's own CPU.

When Intel's 4 core chips come out - unless they up the clock rate, it won't help any of the game benchmarks. The same will be true of AMD's 4x4. However, the multimedia multi-threaded benchmarks should point to a winner.

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Re:And so it begins by petermgreen · 2006-07-20 08:22 · Score: 1

ok well for 1GHZ first with a standard PC processor running at its rated speed without having a freezer unit strapped on then.

as for 64 bit both the alpha and the itanic suffered from not being PC processors more specifically:

in the case of the alpha while there was code to make it run i386 apps and i belive it did perform rather well (at least in its later days) you were still forced to run a special version of NT that home users would have almost certainly found unacceptable.

in the case of the itanic it could run i386 apps directly but performance was abysmal, again you wouldn't have dared to put it in a consumer machine with full 64 bit software a long way off for most uses.

AMD64 chips OTOH allowed manufacturers to advertise the 64 bit processor while still shipping the standard 32 bit os and thus not unduly pissing off the customers once they got it.

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Re:And so it begins by Joe+The+Dragon · 2006-07-20 08:38 · Score: 1

AMD's true quad-cores will intels ass and you will be able to use 2 quad-cores in a 4x4 system as well.
Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 08:39 · Score: 0

Yes -- the Core 2s are going to be in short supply and probably will be marked up signficantly at retail. Will that affect the Dell or Apple customer tho? No.
Re:And so it begins by ChrisA90278 · 2006-07-20 09:01 · Score: 1

I think most people buy new computers when they need a new computer. School starts in September not Feb. so You buy the machine in Sept. I think most people go for what ever gives them the best bang for the buck with in their price range at the time. And I'm sure most don't wait they buy only when they need to. That said. I know Apple will be putting one of these upcomming Core 2 Dual CPUs in the new "Mac Pro" that will come out in August and possably they will use it in a new iMac too. I'll buy it in Late October for a video project I want to do then.
Re:And so it begins by Mr.+Flibble · 2006-07-20 09:46 · Score: 1

The Alpha had true 64 bit for a long time, but you had to be some level of a Unix user to use it, and you never found a DEC alpha on the store shelves at big box stores. The same goes for the intel Itanic. It is a 64 bit chip, but ran x86 instructions poorly.

What AMD did is get an x86 chip out with 64bit extensions, that, at the time of its release were usless to the public at large. However, consumers thought "OMG! 64 is better than 32! ZOMG!!!" I know, because I was selling computers for a short period when the AMD 64 came out, and consumers were all about the 64bit. Even if they were planning on running XP 32 bit on the machine...

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Re:And so it begins by srw · 2006-07-20 10:47 · Score: 1

True, they didn't mass produce the 1Ghz until about 2003. Basically, though, it wasn't a matter of not having the technology. It was a matter of not having the corporate will. They announced their 1Ghz processor in 1999. They were ready to ramp up production for mid-2000.

The point (if there was one) of my post was that you can have the technology, but if you don't market it, it will fail. (Just having the technology first isn't "marketing")

My first Alpha came with Windows NT installed. It was the current Microsoft business OS at the time. Software could harness the 64 bit goodness and speed of Alpha, or you could run "regular" Wintel apps too. I don't believe it failed because it wasn't x86. It failed because DEC failed to market it. Microsoft supported it up to a beta of Win2k. If DEC had marketed the Alpha enough that there was an installed base, or any hope of one, MS would have shipped Win2k for Alpha. We might be living in a less processor-homogenous world today.

Remember -- there's another software/hardware company that has successfully changed their predominant processor twice already. It _can_ be done. (Granted, they own both the software and the hardware) If the will had been there, Alpha and/or Itanium could have been sucessful. (ignoring the technical failings of Itanium.)

BTW, AMD uses some Alpha technology in the Athlons, so, in a way, it lives on.
Re:And so it begins by srw · 2006-07-20 10:59 · Score: 1

The Alpha had true 64 bit for a long time, but you had to be some level of a Unix user to use it,

Not true. Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0 were fully supported on Alpha. MS even shipped a beta of Win2k before cancelling it. Granted, the first thing I did with my first Alpha was blow off NT and install Linux.

and you never found a DEC alpha on the store shelves at big box stores. The same goes for the intel Itanic. It is a 64 bit chip, but ran x86 instructions poorly.

True. I bought mine at the campus computer store.

What AMD did is get an x86 chip out with 64bit extensions, that, at the time of its release were usless to the public at large. However, consumers thought "OMG! 64 is better than 32! ZOMG!!!" I know, because I was selling computers for a short period when the AMD 64 came out, and consumers were all about the 64bit. Even if they were planning on running XP 32 bit on the machine...

Yes. Marketing genius. Heck, the A64 I'm using right now is still running 32-bit Linux. 64-bit x86 extensions still aren't ready for the desktop in my opinion. (Until they can decide on a standard way to host both 32bit and 64bit libraries so I don't have to play all sorts of tricks to get Flash, etc. working.)
Re:And so it begins by Mr.+Flibble · 2006-07-20 11:02 · Score: 1

Not true. Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0 were fully supported on Alpha. MS even shipped a beta of Win2k before cancelling it. Granted, the first thing I did with my first Alpha was blow off NT and install Linux.

Oh yeah, good point, I totally forgot all about NT. Course, I never saw NT running on an Alpha, and my first experience with Unix was on an Alpha box... I can't even remember which *nix it was now... Something Sys V... So I forget all about 64 bit NT. :p

(I don't think it was Slowaris, and it MIGHT have been SCO... But it was so long ago I have since forgotten.)

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Re:And so it begins by srw · 2006-07-20 11:21 · Score: 1

If it wasn't Linux, it would have been DEC Unix (aka OSF). Sun Unix/Solaris ran/runs on M68k (I believe, but don't quote me on that), Sparc, and x86. SCO has always primarily been x86, although Xenix also ran on PDP-11, Z8001 and M68k (Tandy 16B and 6000 and Apple Lisa) and they were involved in the Itanium port. (My first exposure to Unix was while working for Tandy.)
Re:And so it begins by namityadav · 2006-07-20 12:14 · Score: 1

Well for that matter, most people buy pre-built machines (Read Dell), so the whole Intel vs AMD doesn't apply to them anyway
Re:And so it begins by samkass · 2006-07-20 12:35 · Score: 1

It really comes down to memory. Both AMD and Intel have decent dual-core designs now. AMD's has an integrated memory bus, which speeds accesses to main RAM, while Intel has a unified cache, which allows reallocation of the cache much more flexibly. I suspect it's the unified cache that lets the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo clean AMD's clock when it comes to single-threaded performance... the one thread gets almost all the cache. On AMD's design, it can't have more than 50%.

As for multithreaded performance, the Core 2 Duo is still no slouch, though. I don't think AMD's going to be wiping any floors with Intel any day soon.

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Re:And so it begins by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 13:44 · Score: 0

I know I seldom buy anything at the alpha-expensive stage, usually preferring to wait a few months for the inevitable price drop.

They don't sell to you, they sell to Dell, HP, Apple... who buy chips as they come.
Re:And so it begins by Gr8Apes · 2006-07-21 01:26 · Score: 1

As for multithreaded performance, the Core 2 Duo is still no slouch, though. I don't think AMD's going to be wiping any floors with Intel any day soon.

On the unified cache, having 4MB of L2 cache available across both processors also aids multi-threaded code greatly by allowing both cores to access the same items in cache.

My statement about AMD wiping the floor with Intel - 4+ processors only, with the current design. It's quite obvious that single chip to single chip (1P to 1P) - Intel's the winner for at least the next 6-9 months, unless AMD pulls a surprise. In the 2P arena, I've yet to see any benchmarks, but analysis given by sites such as ars and anandtech both lead me to strongly suspect that Intel's offering will only be competitive against AMD's 2P setup, and will perform worse at 4+P (if Intel even has a player in the 4P space with Core 2).

Let me also say that I'm right now debating about going cheap and picking up a E6600 for my next box, or whether I should go for the 2P AMD AM2 boards. Considering I can start with a single cheap Opteron, or a dual core Opteron, or 2 of each, there's a lot of flexibility there. Also, as it's the new socket, it will most likely be a safe choice for 2 or more years, as far as being able to upgrade to newer CPUs, given AMD's history.

Multimedia editing is why the latter is a potential choice, I just haven't decided if I want to invest that much cash at this time, or just wait another year to do the AMD upgrade, when the new processors (K8L) have come out. The picture will be much clearer then, and the E6600 will do nicely for almost everything I wish to do today.

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Re:And so it begins by evultrole · 2006-07-21 06:09 · Score: 1

Didn't an Alpha port of some sort exist of SunOS back around the time the PowerPC one did? I seem to remember m86k, PPC, Alpha, x86, and Sparc at the time for a short run, but I can't seem to find anything about even the PowerPC port anymore now that people are working on porting OpenSolaris (not that I spent more than 30 seconds looking)... sometime around Solaris 2.5.x... something else too... I vaguely remember 6 supported platforms... And that really isn't the best way to go about looking at it... "If it wasn't linux it must have been Tru64/whatever"... NetBSD has had support for Alpha since very early 1995, probably 8 months before Linux supported it (netBSD support in binary form started Feb 95, earliest reference for Linux I can find is Nov 95, but that's just going by the axp-linux mailing list archives), OpenBSD has had support for it since 96, and FreeBSD has supported it since version 3.something... sometime late 98/early 99 I guess? So there are at least 5 possibilities in there for things he might have been on, possibly more...
Re:And so it begins by Magius_AR · 2006-07-21 07:59 · Score: 1

Agreed, but... July 24th, the date when AMD is going to cut some CPU prices almost in half, is barely over a weekend away, and there is the question of supply and demand. Will demand be sufficient to drive the price up?

Why does everyone point this out as if it's a valid point. Intel has stated they are slashing prices the exact same day.
Do you honestly think Intel is going to release Conroe and keep their aging Pentium D line at the current prices?
Intel CPUs are likely _still_ going to be cheaper than their comparable AMD counterparts following the price slash.
Re:And so it begins by srw · 2006-07-21 12:09 · Score: 1

I'm not sure about an Alpha port of SunOS, so you could be right. (Maybe I should stick to what I know!)

You're absolutely right about the BSDs. It completely slipped my mind. I suppose I should have simply said it was most likely DEC Unix/OSF. (Wasn't the "Tru64" name only after Compaq bought DEC?)

The port of Linux to Alpha was started in 1994. Before that, Linux was i386 only, and not designed to be portable. In June 1994, Jon "Maddog" Hall convinced Linus to port Linux to the Alpha and convinced Digital to fund the port. (They provided an Alpha workstation to Linus. I'm not sure if they actually paid for anything else.)

Gotta love CPU wars by ntxb229 · 2006-07-20 05:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

Consumers really come out on top. Better processors at cheaper prices.

Re:Gotta love CPU wars by Roody+Blashes · 2006-07-20 06:20 · Score: 0, Interesting

But what if consumers don't need better processors? There's a huge disparity between this new "war" and the early P4 and late P3 days. Back then, it was a foot race to provide the newest, most exciting processors around. Now? Meh.

Here's the rub: everytime a new breed of chips comes out, I find myself just buying the increasingly cheap leftover stocks of prior generations. The last big thing that got me up off my butt to buy a CPU was 64-bit on the x86 platform, and the only reason I even did that was because my LAST chip, the innovation of which was an 800MHz bus, got a nice little roasting from a shorted motherboard.

When it comes down to it, processing power and innovation, outside a few specialized sectors, isn't really doing it for me anymore. I find myself focusing very little on processors when shopping for parts because, frankly, I literally just need "A" processor and I can practically grab just about anything I want as long as it's compatible with my chipset.

Intel and AMD need to branch off into something more interesting. As a consumer, I don't need all this stuff. Give me something truly innovative, don't just drag concepts over from other platforms and hype them up in a press release. This is all well and good, but it's just not exciting and, by extension, it's not creating anything exciting as far as applications and use go. There is niether a NEED for the latest and greatest (short of neuroses some of us suffer) nor is there any exciting drive fueled by innovative new concepts.

Bah. Wake me when the first consumer-level quantum processing unit is getting ready to be released, I guess.

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Re:Gotta love CPU wars by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:46 · Score: 0

quit your whining. the price/performance ratio is as good now as it's ever been. those of us who need more power and the ability to run more stuff at a time on their PC like the increase of capacity these chips give us.

if you need increase of power, fine. you don't have to piss in everyone else's breakfast.
Re:Gotta love CPU wars by AcidLacedPenguiN · 2006-07-20 06:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

don't you realize that the high performance wars fuel the low performance price drop?
I mean, I don't call myself an expert or anything like that, but I think one of the sole purposes of pushing a high performance part onto the market is to move med/low performance parts into consumer's PCs.
I mean, most of their revenue comes from selling consumer parts, not high performance ones.

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Oooh.... core wars by October_30th · 2006-07-20 05:49 · Score: 3, Funny

Cores - the more the merrier.

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The owls are not what they seem

Re:Oooh.... core wars by DeathKoil · 2006-07-20 05:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm not entirely sure that throwing more cores at the problem is neccessarily a great solution for combatting Intel's Core 2 Duo chips. Wouldn't this make AMD systems cost more money (2 FX chips on one motherboard) than an Intel gaming box would?

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge AMD fan but I'm not conviced that, "let's just put more cores into the box" is a great response to Intel's Core 2 Duo. The announcement of a new core from AMD would have been more exciting. I guess I'll have to wait for that.
Re:Oooh.... core wars by vhogemann · 2006-07-20 06:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

And also consider that many softwares over there are not prepared to take advantage of these extra core... Sure, you'll be able to run more applications at the same time without degradation.

This makes me wonder, will the developers adapt to this new reality. I mean, Intel and AMD can't give us more performance by raising the clock of their processors... so they started to put more cores on them. At one point developers will have to paralelize their code to be able to gain performance.

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Re:Oooh.... core wars by October_30th · 2006-07-20 06:10 · Score: 1

My point was that the more cores we can get into the mainstream computing the merrier I will be. I don't really care if they're AMD or Intel or something else.
I don't do much scientific computing anymore, but I can still respect the awesome power of hundreds of cores running code that an take advantage of such resources.

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The owls are not what they seem
Re:Oooh.... core wars by October_30th · 2006-07-20 06:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

With the advent of cheap dual (soon quad) core setups these days, developers will be holding back progress if they don't adapt to the new reality. Parallel algorithms are well researched. It's just a matter of taking what's available and building from there.

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The owls are not what they seem
Re:Oooh.... core wars by fimbulvetr · 2006-07-20 06:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

Which came first, the SMP or the SMP apps?

Personally, I think this is the best way to go about solving the chicken and the egg problem. Just doing it. Just start releasing the cores. I have absolutely no doubt that many, many applications will catch the drift and hop on board. It will take some time, indeed, but so did other software with hardware advancements (MMX, SSE, Graphics solutions, etc). Historically, the hardware has become before the software.
Re:Oooh.... core wars by Andy+Dodd · 2006-07-20 06:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

It isn't. The original linked article pointed out that while Intel's quad-core approach may suffer performance penalties compared to 4x4, BUT will likely provide more "bang for the buck".

AMD (sadly) seems to have forgotten that x86 SMP was around for at least a decade before the Athlon 64 X2, and due to cost issues, it was always a niche technology.

Dual-core-in-a-single package chips have managed to change that in the span of 2-3 years... SMP has gone from a a niche technology installed in probably less than 1% of computers sold to something present (in the form of dual-core CPUs) in what is likely 75% or more of new machines in a VERY short time. Simply put, multiprocessor in multiple sockets does NOT sell except to the extreme high end. Keep in mind how well dual-core has done despite the fact that it has clear performance penalties in most situations compared to two seperate CPUs.

In short, 4x4 isn't really going to get AMD anywhere in my opinion. Unlike dual core technology, it'll stay as a small market share niche item just like classic SMP systems did.

Hopefully for AMD, they can remain profitable even after the massive price cuts they're going to have to do (and apparently will be doing shortly) in order to remain competitive.

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Re:Oooh.... core wars by TheRaven64 · 2006-07-20 06:49 · Score: 1

And also consider that many softwares over there are not prepared to take advantage of these extra core
I keep hearing this, but I don't think I've seen a piece of CPU-bound software for quite some time that hasn't been SMP-aware. Mind you, I haven't seen very much CPU-bound software for the last few years...

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Re:Oooh.... core wars by October_30th · 2006-07-20 06:54 · Score: 1

I haven't seen very much CPU-bound software for the last few years

Compressing video. I can't understand why all the software, at least the freely available stuff, still doesn't seem to know how to take advantage of multiple CPUs.

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The owls are not what they seem
Re:Oooh.... core wars by ArbitraryConstant · 2006-07-20 07:11 · Score: 1

Intel has deffinitely given us better performance per core with Core 2. There probably isn't that much room left for per-core improvements, but there's deffinitely some.

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I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Re:Oooh.... core wars by Surt · 2006-07-20 07:23 · Score: 1

Everyone interested in high performance software is moving to data parallel many threaded designs right now. Within a couple of years, it should be fairly unusual for CPU sensitive apps not to have at least 4 threads.

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"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Re:Oooh.... core wars by hawkbug · 2006-07-20 07:52 · Score: 1

The latest free Divx codec does a great job of using two cpus right after the install, no tweaking needed.
Re:Oooh.... core wars by jigjigga · 2006-07-20 07:54 · Score: 0

I think this 4x4 approach is a niche area in itself, this isn't to replace or succeed the dual core x2 at all. I think it is simply a new product to keep those at the high end to stick with AMD. If you can afford it or wait for it, im sure it would be very nice for people who need the power. A particularly nice area would be in CG where these cores could contribute to rendering- imagine 3 dedicated to rendering while with the 4th you continue to work on your project or work on a separate one, all on one machine. We'll just have to see how useable it really is though.

Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by ackthpt · 2006-07-20 05:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

So I'm pricing a new mobo+CPU combo for a friend. I bought an AMD64 about 14 months ago for $350. Now I see I can't even get that model anymore unless I buy the parts separately as "replacements" A few steps up from what I run is now $150. It's a good thing.

Maybe in a couple years I'll consider a Conroe or AMD 4x4 type system if I need any heavy rendering done, but for now It's astounding the bang for buck we get.

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Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by suggsjc · 2006-07-20 06:50 · Score: 1

In a couple of years...

In a couple of years we'll be wondering how we ever survived with puny quad core systems...and anything with just a measly single core will be referred to as a dinosaur.

So I agree...
It's a good thing

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Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:59 · Score: 0

In a couple of years we'll be wondering how we ever survived with puny quad core systems...and anything with just a measly single core will be referred to as a dinosaur.

You won't be wondering that until you are playing Duke Nukem Forever on Vista.
Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by ackthpt · 2006-07-20 07:00 · Score: 1

In a couple of years we'll be wondering how we ever survived with puny quad core systems...and anything with just a measly single core will be referred to as a dinosaur.

Of course the underlying question is: What are you gonna do with all that power?

Aside from whatever waste there is with the operating system (Windows XP is using about 380 MB of my 1GB of system memory to do NOTHING, but all those DLLs and Active X thingies are there, just in case I should ever need them) If you're into audio, video, engineering, artwork or heavy game play, great. If you are into just dinking around with web surfing and some home office stuff, the computer of 4 years ago is just the thing for you, if not overkill.

My trusty laptop had the HD flake out and I'm on a desktop system right now. I had Office 2000 on there and as little as I have to do with it, I was OK with it. This box has 2003. Let me be the first to say: If you don't need some feature of 2003, don't get it. Just more crap, geez, what a cow it is. I guess you need it for XML files, though as I don't think 2000 knew what they were.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by dascandy · 2006-07-20 08:32 · Score: 1

I recently bought a new processor, which was twice the price of the old one. It's 5 times as fast as the previous one. If you add to that that my current (new) processor is now almost out of stock and that the entire architecture is being phased out very quickly, I can only wait to see what you could want more for.

I'm guessing most of Slashdot will buy a new processor and some form of surround view or 3d monitor soon, you'll have enough power to render a live girlfriend.
Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by Joe+The+Dragon · 2006-07-20 08:45 · Score: 1

that 4 year old computer will go form overkill to a pos with windows vista.
Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 09:58 · Score: 0

...consider a Conroe or AMD 4x4 type system
If you want a Conroe, just buy an easy bake oven. If you really want a 4x4, why not either buy a F150 from Ford or Dodge, or go to Sun that has 2 chips,with 8 cores each and stop messing with WinTel junk. I guess that makes Sun a 2x8 or is that 8x2?
Re:Whichever... Competition is a good thing! by RevWhite · 2006-07-21 09:47 · Score: 1

Last I checked, you couldn't buy an F-150 from Dodge. Ford would be only too happy to help you out with that, however.

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Hey, can I bum a sig?

I'm seeing a greater demand for smp... by rivaldufus · 2006-07-20 05:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

in consulting. One of our clients wants to have at least 4-way SMP on each new box. With virtualization becoming so popular, those additional cores are going to help.

I wonder if AMD is going to focus on 4+ cores to maximize its hypertransport bus - and focus less on 2 core and less systems.

Re:I'm seeing a greater demand for smp... by Khyber · 2006-07-20 08:07 · Score: 1

With AMD's HyperTransport bus, I'm of the firm belief that Intel may not be able to keep up. Having seen Intel's HTT vs AMD's HT 2.0, I'm far more impressed with AMD. Imagine if you could have Hyper-Transport bus graphics cards, sound cards, hell, you could probably put everything onto one large die using the HyperTransport bus, and make ultimately smaller BTX motherboards, hell, you could theoretically (If we went to mini-cd/dvd instead of discs we use now,) make a far more poerful computer than the Mac Mini, at a much smaller form factor, and still STOMP THE CRAP out of the competition.

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Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

AMD is winning the naming war! by Trigun · 2006-07-20 05:55 · Score: 5, Funny

If the war is for who can make up the worst name. What stupid names, and not just AMD or Intel, Microsoft, Ubuntu, etc. Some execs with 8 year old daughters are naming these things. Why can't we get good names, like Project:Doom, or Omega Solution?

Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by tduff · 2006-07-20 06:41 · Score: 1

If the war is for who can make up the worst name. What stupid names, and not just AMD or Intel, Microsoft, Ubuntu, etc. Some execs with 8 year old daughters are naming these things. Why can't we get good names, like Project:Doom, or Omega Solution?
What? You want execs to name their products after their 14-year-old's rock band?
Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by bbrack · 2006-07-20 08:48 · Score: 1

they used all the good names 20 years ago...
Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by ozbird · 2006-07-20 10:17 · Score: 1

So instead of "4x4", you want it to be called the Sports Utility Computer? I can't see marketing (or customers) buying that one... :-)
Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by Tsagadai · 2006-07-20 14:18 · Score: 1

If AMD told them it was big and could easily kill pedestrians I'm sure millions of americans would buy one.
Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by moro_666 · 2006-07-20 18:28 · Score: 1

last week a pedestrian in my country was killed by a _bicycle_, so you need a bit more arguments.

perhaps amd should add a gearbox (actually would be great for laptops, a literal gearbox to turn down the mhz-s and save battery life, software tuning of same thing is cumbersome), add a sign that it can do 1mpg (and you'll still have the gallon left!), and enhance the desktop cases with kangaroo bouncers.

now that would be awesome.

other than that, i prefer a cluster of 64 bit ass-cheap semprons in the backroom, i can get around 8 cheap boxes for the price of one 4x4 "supermachine" that is constantly lagging behind a single harddisk or jammed memory channel. spread gentoo or freebsd among them, and snip :)

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I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by Petersson · 2006-07-20 19:05 · Score: 1

Intel's answer to AMD 4x4?

Pentium SUV!

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I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
Re:AMD is winning the naming war! by karnal · 2006-07-21 04:38 · Score: 2, Funny

last week a pedestrian in my country was killed by a _bicycle_,

So...

In Soviet Russia, bicyclists kill you?

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Karnal

Is this the project formerly known as Whitefield.. by Doctor+Memory · 2006-07-20 05:55 · Score: 1

...which was cancelled for non-technical but not-so-mysterious reasons?

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Just junk food for thought...

Who is paying? by Ahnteis · 2006-07-20 05:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

I can't even afford a high-clocked AMD X2. How am I (as a fairly high-spending gamer who builds his own computers) supposed to afford TWO of them? And if *I* can't, who exactly are they targetting with this 4 core nonsense?

I may still buy AMD on principal (yes, some of us do that still) but I really think Intel has AMD beat for the next year or two.

Re:Who is paying? by hawkbug · 2006-07-20 06:01 · Score: 2, Informative

Good news for you then - people are just speculating, but at the end of this month AMD is very strongly rumored to be dropping prices on the X2 line, almost in half. So, currently a $300 3800 X2 will soon cost $167 or around there. Just wait a few weeks and check back.
Re:Who is paying? by (H)elix1 · 2006-07-20 06:04 · Score: 1

These dual core things are less than I paid for my PII 400 years back. A X2 3800+ is $150, a X2 5000+ CPU is $290 today in lots of 1. I spend almost the same for a video card.... amazing cheap for what you get these days.

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+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Re:Who is paying? by Massacrifice · 2006-07-20 06:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

You know, not only gamers use high end computers. Some of us use them as tools to actually work and earn money. in which case, we (or our employer) accumulates enough money to buy such things as quad-cores CPU, and eventually make them profitable, that is, use them to earn more money than they cost!

What's even better is that these machines, once work is over, can still be used to play games!

Fantastic isn't it? Work - maybe you should try it sometime.

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-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Re:Who is paying? by Wesley+Felter · 2006-07-20 06:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

People who use computers for work and who want four cores already bought Opteron workstations. That's why 4x4 and Kentsfield are targeted at the enthusiast (aka more money than sense) market.
Re:Who is paying? by Aardpig · 2006-07-20 06:20 · Score: 1

Yep, I've got a four-core Opteron rig (2x275) for work. But now I want an 8-core rig, containing two 4-core CPUs. While I understand that 4x4 will be the desktop part, designed for single-socket systems, I expect it will arrive with similar Opteron-2xx series processors that have 4 cores. *That's* what I'm interested in.

--
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Re:Who is paying? by Wesley+Felter · 2006-07-20 06:30 · Score: 2, Informative

While I understand that 4x4 will be the desktop part, designed for single-socket systems, I expect it will arrive with similar Opteron-2xx series processors that have 4 cores.

No, 4x4 is two sockets with dual-core processors in them. Since you already have that, 4x4 won't benefit you. Basically 4x4 is a way to trick gamers into buying quad Opteron systems under a different name.
Re:Who is paying? by kimvette · 2006-07-20 10:41 · Score: 1

The hobbiest and the artist would love to get their hands on quad-core processors for things like 3D rendering, video transcoding, and so forth.

--
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Re:Who is paying? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 12:05 · Score: 1, Insightful

This is why you invest in a water cooling setup. I took a $150 processor (opteron 144) and OC'd it stable to 2.9ghz. This was when I could have purchased a FX-57 for ~$1000. Cheapest Conroe CPU with 4mb cache is around $300, which can be OC'd to 3.8ghz+ on water. You can take an opteron 165 ($300) right now and OC it to 2.6+ on air, or 2.8+ on water. This is done with a water cooling system that costs $200 up front, then $50 each processor upgrade unless you have a universal mount for the CPU block. This works alot better for the rare person who has more brains than money. The only people who are buying the FX or Extreme processors are the ones with more money than brains or hard core overclockers who want the best toys to play with.
Re:Who is paying? by Listen+Up · 2006-07-20 15:02 · Score: 1

That's why 4x4 and Kentsfield are targeted at the enthusiast (aka more money than sense) market.

That is a completely subjective statement. What does not make sense to you makes perfect sense to me. Enlightened Self-Interest. Obviously, I don't give a damn what you think or value, and if it makes me happy, then it makes perfect sense. Therefore what you think doesn't mean a damn thing.
Re:Who is paying? by jp10558 · 2006-07-21 07:48 · Score: 1

Why is it cheaper to buy the processor + motherboard then just the damn processor? I already have a 939 pin A64 3500+. I just want to slot in an X2 4400+ or better for a reasonable price. Say $150-$250ish...

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Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3

4x4 is an inaccurate name... by CyberBill · 2006-07-20 05:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

AMD apparantly cannot multiply. 4x4 = 16. The 4x4 architecture is two dual-core CPUs on a single motherboard (2x2=4 cores). This is pretty damn annoying and I wish they would rename it to something a little more accurate to whats going on... If you have a Dual 7950's (which are each just two 7900's), you wouldnt call it 4x4.

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-Bill

Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:00 · Score: 0

But if you've got a four wheel drive truck, it's a 4x4, and it only has 4 wheels.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:01 · Score: 0

When's the last time you bought a 4x4 vehicle with 16 wheels?
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by a2d2wishmaster · 2006-07-20 06:04 · Score: 0, Redundant

Yeah, cause we all know a 4x4 truck has 16 wheels. Get over it.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by dslbrian · 2006-07-20 06:11 · Score: 5, Funny

AMD apparantly cannot multiply. 4x4 = 16. The 4x4 architecture is two dual-core CPUs on a single motherboard (2x2=4 cores). This is pretty damn annoying and I wish they would rename it to something a little more accurate to whats going on...
Well thats not the worst of it. Its actually part-time 4x4, so when your networking starts to get bogged down, you need to get out and lock the hub...
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Wesley+Felter · 2006-07-20 06:19 · Score: 3, Informative

4x4 means 4 cores and 4 GPUs. I guess 4+4 just didn't sound as cool.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by kupan787 · 2006-07-20 06:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

Here is what I don't get...why is Ars comparing a single, quad core Kentsfield to two, dual core Athlons? Wouldn't a better comparison to the 4x4 platform be two Woodcrest cups? Or am I missing something?

From the article:
AMD's 4x4 system features two coherent HyperTransport (cHT) AM2 sockets, each of which can gluelessly support a dual-core Athlon CPU and a pool of DDR2. So a 4x4 system gives you two cores and one DDR2 bank per socket.

Sounds an awful lot like what Intel is doing with Woodcrest (and its platform, of which I can't recall the name). 2 sockets, each with a DIB, and can hold a dual core part. So how is 4x4 new? Hell, Apple is doing it currently with their G5
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:51 · Score: 0

How many wheels does a 4x4 SUV have?
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by TheRaven64 · 2006-07-20 06:52 · Score: 2, Funny

Meh, AMD can't multiple and Intel can't divide. I guess that just leaves IBM and Sun to buy CPUs from.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:53 · Score: 0

If Intel was smart, they'd hurry up and get "shift on the fly" out there first.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Frightening · 2006-07-20 07:08 · Score: 1

Yes but in that case the Jeeps are all badly named as well, and that can't be right.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by tyrione · 2006-07-20 07:11 · Score: 1

Not much of an off-road person I see.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Surt · 2006-07-20 07:27 · Score: 1

The 4x4 architecture is two dual-core CPUs on a single motherboard (2x2=4 cores).

Actually, you're wrong about that.

4x4 is a platform with 2, dual core cpus (4) X 2, dual GPU graphics cards (4).
Hence, 4x4.

--
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 08:34 · Score: 0

> AMD apparantly cannot multiply. 4x4 = 16.

Therfore a Jeep 4x4 has 16 wheels.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by SevenHands · 2006-07-20 08:50 · Score: 1

Gee, if I apply a 2x4 vehicle drivetrain (two wheel drive) to the likes of a quad core cpu, it would work out to having two cores working and two cores just there.. Completely different definitions of 4x4 at this point.

4 Powered Wheels x 4 Wheels is what 4x4 in the automotive world means.
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 09:47 · Score: 1, Informative

Actually, if you did your homework, you'd see that the 4X4 platform consists of the following:

- two dual core CPUs (there's one four)
- two dual GPU graphics cards (there's the other four)

Thus, "four by four", not unlike, say, a truck which has, you know, four wheels (not sixteen).
Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name... by tyrione · 2006-07-23 18:21 · Score: 1

Rear Axle, and Front Axle with represent 2 CPUs. Each CPU has 2 Cores/Wheels. Hence 4 x 4.

Latencies and more by cnettel · 2006-07-20 05:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

The fact that the two dies (with two cores on each) will communicate over the FSB is of course limiting, but we also have to remember that each of those dies will have 4 MB of L2, 8 MB in total. We've already seen what the Core 2 prefetching can do in hiding the memory controller latency, so if things are good it will work equally well in prefetching data from the L2 on the other die. Then, the memory bandwidth is irrelevant, while the FSB bandwidth is still relevant. I seem to remember reading that either Kentsfield or Clovertown would carry some kind of dual-bus solution (with support in chipset), but maybe that was further ahead.

Let's also not forget that the NUMA properties of the AMD solution, with less advanced prefetching, can actually be a more significant latency problem in latency-sensitive applications. The bandwidth, on the other hand, will absolutely be there.

Re:Latencies and more by Khyber · 2006-07-20 08:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Available bandwidth translates into less latency, FYI, always has for networking, data storage/retrieval, and graphics applications like 3d Rendering and generation. So, AMD, with it's superior bandwidth, may not need to prefetch simply because it can have that much more data crammed down it's pipeline on the fly, whereas Intel has to pre-cache it. HyperTransport doesn't go over the FSB as far as I'm aware. (But I'm not that aware, so please correct me)

--
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Re:Latencies and more by HoboMaster · 2006-07-20 10:44 · Score: 1

The HyperTransport replaced the FSB. The memory controller is on-die, so it effectively runs at the speed of the processor.

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Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Re:Latencies and more by john_uy · 2006-07-20 17:42 · Score: 1

intel already has a dual bus chipset 5000p for their server line.

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Live your life each day as if it was your last.

Kentsfield Panini by digitaldc · 2006-07-20 06:00 · Score: 3, Funny

In other words, the Kentsfield is two Core 2 Duo dice sandwiched into a single package, and likewise with the Xeon-based Clovertown part.

How long before we have a Core 2 duo meltdown and Core 2 core breach??
One Kentsfield sandwich please, extra hot! I'll take that to go in my 4x4.

--
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson

memory bandwidth is irrelevant? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:04 · Score: 0

What if you're crunching a bunch of data just once?
Lot's of apps do that.
How many videos fit in 4MB cache?

Memory bandwidth is VERY IMPORTANT.
The disk bottle neck remains a huge problem also.

You must first ask the right questions by Ctrl+Alt+De1337 · 2006-07-20 06:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

Are you a gamer? Are you someone who does intense multimedia work? If not, then a single-core chip is fine, much less a 4-core chip. For the vast majority of home and business desktops, chips that are considered old right now offer plenty of computing power. The Apartment Hunters across the street from the UF campus still use G3 iMacs at the front desk. These 4-core beasts will be niche things for a while, I think, unless a lot of weasely salesmen can (continue to?) convince people to buy more computer than they need.

Re:You must first ask the right questions by dextromulous · 2006-07-20 06:44 · Score: 1

I think, unless a lot of weasely salesmen can (continue to?) convince people to buy more computer than they need.

I don't think it will be that hard to convince people:

Salesman: "For only 20% more for your system, you can surf 4 porn sites at the same time!"
Customer: "What if I only want to surf 2 porn sites at the same time?"
Salesman: "That costs 10% more than the base price... but do you really want to take the risk that you have 2 sites open and there is something really good you want to see on a third site?" Customer: "When you put it that way... is there any way I can surf 5 porn sites at once?"

--
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Re:You must first ask the right questions by masklinn · 2006-07-20 06:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Dude, even a dual core chip is pretty useless for a gamer already, there's almost no game using the second core right now (the only use it has is that it runs all your malware and the Steam client [well one could say that Steam is a malware in its own right though] so that the actual running of the games can be done on their own core).

Games making use of 4 cores? You've got the time to see it coming.

--
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Re:You must first ask the right questions by Deviant+Q · 2006-07-20 08:16 · Score: 1

Not so much gamers, as anyone doing slightly-intensive multitasking. There are definitely times when I wish my processor wouldn't choke on whatever it's doing at work (compiling, loading a huge file into a sucky inefficient Java IDE... doing anything Java, for that matter... even Firefox can be a bit of a CPU hog for a few seconds sometimes). With a second core, I could let one core choke while the other caters to me. ... at least, that's how I understand it.

--
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
Re:You must first ask the right questions by skiflyer · 2006-07-20 08:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

actually for the most part right now dual cores don't speed up any single application. (Yes there are plenty of rendering/scientific applications which it does speed up, but I said for the most part.) Where it really shines is in speeding up the user experience.

Run a compile, a virus scan, and still have your email app or browser pop up immediately when you click it.

The neat thing about the way multi-core programming works is that for alot of things once they make it support two, it'll automatically support 4.... so once we get app support for multi-threads as a common commodity you'll be able to scale performance alot easier (easier, not cheaper)

Personally tho, I'd trade all my single core systems for dual cores systems that ran two cores each at 50% the speed of the single cores, cause like you said, most of us have more computer than we need for most applications, but most of us also multi-task quite a bit, and it's the responsiveness and multi-tasking of my dual core machine that makes me so happy, not the raw speed (tho that's nice too :))
Re:You must first ask the right questions by PitaBred · 2006-07-20 08:27 · Score: 2, Informative

a) Quake 3 uses multiple cores, IIRC
b) You're telling me gamers won't benefit if all the other system processes are constrained to core 1, while the game runs on core 2? Seems the game will get a slightly larger chunk of processing time to me, without having to deal with context switching

--
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Re:You must first ask the right questions by Tsagadai · 2006-07-20 14:24 · Score: 1

And you have the nerve to call yourself a gamer. Two cores definately benefits most of the games I play. Battlefield2 and quake4 both use both cores.
Re:You must first ask the right questions by cfuse · 2006-07-21 04:31 · Score: 1

Are you a gamer? Are you someone who does intense multimedia work? If not, then a single-core chip is fine, much less a 4-core chip. For the vast majority of home and business desktops, chips that are considered old right now offer plenty of computing power.
I cast Dispell computing power aka. Vista
Seriously, Microsoft makes an Office suite that rapes machines to death - Vista's going to hump a hole from the top of your cpu to china.
Re:You must first ask the right questions by init100 · 2006-07-22 23:24 · Score: 1

Run a compile, a virus scan, and still have your email app or browser pop up immediately when you click it.

Do you realize that all these applications will still compete for access to the harddrive? Ever tried copying two sets of files at once?
Re:You must first ask the right questions by masklinn · 2006-07-23 05:07 · Score: 1

Ah, so not liking FPS' defines not being a gamer? Sorry then, I guess I ain't a gamer indeed.

--
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Re:You must first ask the right questions by skiflyer · 2006-07-23 06:04 · Score: 1

Yes, it goes better than it did with a single core, and in the real world examples I mentioned it's really not that big a deal, my browser & email both fit in memory easily, so only the compiler or virus scan really hit the harddrive regularly.

And in my personal experience it's greatly more responsive, so I can take off my geek hat and say I don't really care what they're doing, I notice significant improvement in the above examples and many others.

Is itanium officially dead? by acomj · 2006-07-20 06:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

Now that intel is finally throwing research and marketing on 64 bit x86 to compete with AMD, is its intel's other 64 bit chip itanium officially dead?

Re:Is itanium officially dead? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:28 · Score: 0

Now that intel is finally throwing research and marketing on 64 bit x86 to compete with AMD, is its intel's other 64 bit chip itanium officially dead?

Why don't you ask Netcraft?
Re:Is itanium officially dead? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 09:34 · Score: 0

...is its intel's other 64 bit chip itanium officially dead?
Not dead, just mortally sick.
HP abandoned PA-RISC development for Itanic so if HP wants to keep a few high end UNIX customers they had better follow though. Mind you, most have gone to Sun or IBM if they had any smarts.
I wonder if HP said to Intel if we loose Itanic then we go AMD? It would explain why Intel didn't dump it's buggest turkey ever. Mind you, the market for HP-UX is drying up faster and faster by each day and HP is just trying to stave it off and mik out a few more customers before they too switch. Dumping PA-RISC (and Alpha) development killed HP's high end market and now they are just another big commodity PC manufacturer (with printers from Canon).
Re:Is itanium officially dead? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 15:38 · Score: 0

"It's not dead, it just smells funny." - Frank Zappa

Bandwidth will be a problem. by default+luser · 2006-07-20 06:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Intel knows this very well, they've been having trouble with bandwidth for years while stuck at 800 MHz FSB. The only dual-core Pentium 4 processors to show efficient use of the second core are the EE-series, with 1066 MHz bus.

Even if Intel can successfuly crank the FSB up to 1333 MHz bus, that's still significantly less than they need to feed twice as many processors as Conroe. If this were AMD, they'd just add more memory controllers and more HT links...but for Intel this is not an option.

Intel does offer a Dual-Independent Bus architecture, but this is designed for Woodcrest, and is extremely expensive to implement. DIP does allow Woodcreast to scale effortlessly to 4 cores, and that is why we've seen Intel encourage reviews of their 4-core (2 processor) Woodcrest platforms. Unfortunately, even this DIB architecture will not scale well into 8 cores (4 cores per bus), and Intel's cheaper-to-implement quad-core processors will really feel the squeeze.

--

Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.

Re:Bandwidth will be a problem. by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2006-07-20 13:23 · Score: 1

Does anyone remember the Dual Independent Bus on the Pentium Pro? I think the second was for a look-aside cache but it appears to be a re-use of terminology.

it's not about gamers by sofar · 2006-07-20 06:14 · Score: 1

This isn't about gamers

The low-heat low-power low-price market for servers is dying for 4-core chips. Multi-core doesn't make sense under the desktop, but it sure makes a lot of sense in a 19" rack.

intel is about to eat market share back in the cheap multicore server market, where amd is traditionally strong.

Re:it's not about gamers by DeathKoil · 2006-07-20 06:23 · Score: 1

That does make sense, but if this is designed for the server market, how is it supposed to combat Intel's Core 2 Duo which is a desktop chip? They mention the Core 2 Duo but not the new Xeon 5100 series. The article gave me the impression of the 4x4 competing with the Core 2 Duo, not the Xeon 5100, which implies this is intended for the desktop market.
Re:it's not about gamers by chez69 · 2006-07-20 06:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

hell yeah it makes sense under the desktop. windows desktop for testing , linux desktop for development, linux dev server, linux DB server all on the same desktop.

it'll be great for developers

--
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
Re:it's not about gamers by sofar · 2006-07-20 06:53 · Score: 1

I think everyone knows that people will build servers out of lower-end (heh) cpu's and motherboards to reduce price. After all - you can get a conroe for about 180$, it just makes so much sense for component-builders to start selling them on pretty motherboards and put them in a 1U jacket for under 800$ or so :)

The Xeon 5100 is exclusively targeted towards the server market, but I think conroe will do really good in *any* application, and if it had 4 cores instead of 2, it would certainly be a kickass lower-end server platform cpu.
Re:it's not about gamers by sofar · 2006-07-20 06:55 · Score: 1

when I said 'under the desktop' I was referring to the _GAMER_ desktop. having 4 cpu's in single-threaded game world is a bit sad. But gcc -j4 beats the crap out of my kernels :)
Re:it's not about gamers by chez69 · 2006-07-20 07:06 · Score: 1

this is slashdot, where the misunderstandings are part of the fun =-)

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PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.

but... by mseidl · 2006-07-20 06:22 · Score: 1, Insightful

these new chips are still based on the AGTL+ bus, which doesn't compete with HyperTransport. While it'll add perfomance, can you imagine a 4way 4x4 setup with Intel? You will have 16cores sharing one bus w/ half the bandwith of HT, NOT PRETTY!

Re:but... by Khyber · 2006-07-20 09:40 · Score: 1

whomever modded this down obviously didn't bother to do any research - I just checked and the parent is indeed correct in the logic used.

--
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

Re:and selling us the half assed solution again by mudetroit · 2006-07-20 06:28 · Score: 1

*Ugh* Did you even bother to read the explanation of the two technologies? Or did you just decide to make a half-arsed comment to play AMD fanboy?

The Intel product is two dies on one package, aka one socket. There are some issues with this setup, and it will definately have to be shown to be an effective solution, but it isn't even close to some "hack" as you decided to declare.

Re:Who is paying? I just did! by hguorbray · 2006-07-20 06:30 · Score: 1

Drat,

and I just bought an Athlon x2 from HP at Fry's last week....

Seriously, this was such a great deal that I couldn't build one for cheaper:
Athlon XP x2 4200+
2 GB RAM
250 GB SATA Drive
DVD+-combo writer
built in firewire and NIC and every type of removable media support that you can think of.
Windows XP Media center
$820 + $50 rebate = $770

The same Frys had the CPU ~ $350 and when you add the standalone costs for 2GB RAM the SATA drive and the DVD burner (and Windows) you're already ~700. I know that you can buy the Intel dual cores for cheaper now though...

The only thing I will be adding soon will be some good video card to replace the integrated nVidia graphics.

HP a1450n Ath64X2 4200+ Processor for TRUE multi-tasking

http://shop3.outpost.com/%7BlZNEvmnJrJRmmQ+BgJ8WIg **.node2%7D/product/4796499

-What's the speed of Dark?

Re:and selling us the half assed solution again by wjsroot · 2006-07-20 06:32 · Score: 1

If you want 4 cores (or even 8) in a mother board, this is already around. It is easy to do with opterons or xeons. I doubt intel would add another socket to a desktop market board to enable 4 cores. But then again intel did make the P4, not the smartest move...

I would be interested to know where you read that!

--
Mod others as you would have them mod you.

GHz war by Morky · 2006-07-20 06:32 · Score: 1

I love this. It reminds me of the race to 1 Ghz back in 2000. When AMD and Intel are neck and neck the inovation speeds way up.

Re:GHz war by Prof.Phreak · 2006-07-20 08:09 · Score: 1

It reminds me of the race to 1 Ghz back in 2000.

Ironically, around that same time someone ``predicted'' that the clock speed would stop increasing after 6Ghz (or possibly half that). And strangely, it has.

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

Re:Who is paying? I just did! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:38 · Score: 0

Unless Fry's is jumping the gun on the price cuts, you do realize that July 24 the prices on that CPU you just bought last week will be cut by 50%... probably saving you about $200 or so... right?

Reminds me by Kr5is · 2006-07-20 06:39 · Score: 2, Funny

This reminds me of the time I wanted to try the Gillette Mach 100 razor and then had to have a skin graft to fix my face. More isn't always better, but in this case I think there may be an exception.

Re:Reminds me by vux984 · 2006-07-20 07:33 · Score: 1

This reminds me of the time I wanted to try the Gillette Mach 100 razor and then had to have a skin graft to fix my face.

Gillette is already up to 6. 100 may seem a long way off, but I really couldn't see the reason for more than 2. They've already far exceeded my expectations, (and far exceeded my judgement of usefulness...although its ironic that 5 is so cumbersome for fine details that they had to add another 1 on the flip side to fix it.)

More isn't always better, but in this case I think there may be an exception.

Maybe, maybe not. If the cpus are all starved (and waiting) for memory, the main problem for general multi-cpu setups, then doubling the number of cores will just starve them further.

Re:Is itanium officially dead? NO by hguorbray · 2006-07-20 06:40 · Score: 2, Informative

No, it's just pining for the Fjords.....

Seriously, this comment is trotted out every time Intel or AMD sneezes and some 64-bit multicore goodness leaks out.

The Itanic plays in the mainframe server space -ie. up to 64 CPU machines such as the HP Superdome.

Its competitors are the Power64 chip and Sun's latest and greatest -not some $300 chip you buy at Fry's.

Itanium has just released a dualcore version with up to 24MB of cache! I think you have to move up to Opteron or Xeon to get more than a couple MB of cache.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/18/intel_mont ectio/

You still need big-iron type CPUs for numbers crunching on the scale that simulations or Fortune500 business processes require and that will not be changing anytime soon.

-What's the speed of Dark?

Re:and selling us the half assed solution again by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:42 · Score: 0

> I read that Intel's 4x4 is a hack, 2 sockets.
> So once again they don't have a real product?
Absolutely correct! Intel isn't, hasn't, and won't be developing a technology called "4X4". You might be thinking about that other company, AMD, instead.

You earn a lifetime of ridicule on Slashdot's message boards!

Too technical by UnknowingFool · 2006-07-20 06:42 · Score: 3, Funny

All this talk about bridges and cores makes my head hurt. What I really want to know is if there finally is a processor that can handle Vista. [ducks]

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Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.

Re:Too technical by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 15:46 · Score: 0

Since Vista does not yet exist, the answer is yes.
Re:Too technical by TeknoHog · 2006-07-21 08:09 · Score: 1

And I want to know how the heck those AMD processors work at all, because only Intel processors have cores ;)

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.

Name just one really good home use for all this... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

Name just one really killer, gosh I just can't live without it, my life depends on this etc etc application at *HOME* that an average person whose hobby is *not* computers actually needs this kind of computing power for RIGHT NOW!

I did a head count - it's ZERO! Worse still - that's the core market right there - ZERO!

Sure, we can all see a day when our computers are able to intelligently discuss life issues at length with a voice interface (Hello, Dave) but we're not there yet. And there are the enthusiasts who are always willing to pay for a little more 'go' in their machine to get one extra fps in the latest, errr, FPS. Then there are server configurations that are actually more bogged down by storage transfer rates than CPU usage.

There I said it, the Emperor is naked - let's all have a good laugh at him and think about something more important.

Total Annihilation Fanboy Joke by p0tat03 · 2006-07-20 06:51 · Score: 1

I'm betting AMD will change their name to ARM, and we'll all have to hunker down for a very looooooong war.

If Intel names something Core Prime, I'm going to flip.

Re:Total Annihilation Fanboy Joke by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 08:12 · Score: 0

FYI, from the makers of TA: http://supcom.gaspowered.com/

4x4 shouldn't worry intel by buddyglass · 2006-07-20 06:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

The Ars article warns that per-core bandwidth problems could end up giving a performance advantage to AMD's 4x4 approach.

I see two problems with this. First, most cpu-intensive tasks are single-threaded, and Conroe beats AMD on those. Second, even if it turns out that two Athlon64 X2s scale better than a single quad-core Conroe, the Conroe is a single-chip solution in a single-socket motherboard. AMD will have to price its X2s at less than half the cost of a quad-core Conroe. "Less than half" since they'll also need to absorb the extra cost of the dual-socket motherboard 4x4 requires. I suspect they won't be able to achieve that price point. So, given an AMD 4x4 system and a comparably-performing Intel quad-core Conroe system, the AMD system will cost more and be less attractive to consumers.

Re:4x4 shouldn't worry intel by Joe+The+Dragon · 2006-07-20 08:43 · Score: 1

amd 4x4 is a stop gap in tell kl8 come out and that will have true quad-core + 4x4 will be able to take 2 quad-core cpu when they come out.
Re:4x4 shouldn't worry intel by buddyglass · 2006-07-20 09:35 · Score: 1

And what's to stop Intel from releasing its own dual-cpu version of Conroe, along with a dual-cpu chipset? Very little. Imho, things look pretty bad for AMD in the short term.
Re:4x4 shouldn't worry intel by swillden · 2006-07-20 12:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

And what's to stop Intel from releasing its own dual-cpu version of Conroe, along with a dual-cpu chipset?
As a dozen posts and the article and article summary all mention: Memory bandwidth. Intel's going to have a very difficult time getting data to and from four cores fast enough for the cores to be useful. AMD has a big edge there.
Imho, things look pretty bad for AMD in the short term.
IMHO, things look pretty good for the consumer in the short term. And in the long term, too, as long as AMD and Intel continue competing with each other.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:4x4 shouldn't worry intel by Cyno · 2006-07-20 13:11 · Score: 1

It sounds like Intel may release a quad-core P4 before they have a Conroe. Maybe AMD will have their quad-core ready by the time Intel has Conroe based quad-core chips.
Re:4x4 shouldn't worry intel by Cyno · 2006-07-24 07:29 · Score: 1

Doh, almost right.. not a P4. AMD dual X2 + glue chip.

The great hardware war heats up once again. by ackthpt · 2006-07-20 06:53 · Score: 0

The great hardware war heats up once again.

Unfortunately, looking at some of those benchmarks for Conroe, HEAT is the word. 370+ watts for a CPU? Shit. who needs a home heater when you could just run your computer. Seriously, one of the reasons for my last upgrade was to get a CPU which consumed 38W rather than 70+ Powerbill may be a factor on whatever Intel is shipping, screw the initial purchase price.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar

Re:The great hardware war heats up once again. by Proud+like+a+god · 2006-07-20 08:00 · Score: 1

As much as I like AMD, where are you getting that 370Watts for an Intel CPU stat?
Re:The great hardware war heats up once again. by ackthpt · 2006-07-20 10:25 · Score: 1

As much as I like AMD, where are you getting that 370Watts for an Intel CPU stat?

My bad, I remembered wrongly, it's from ~120 watts on idle to ~220 under full load. That's still far too much power consumption for me to justify for a desktop system unless I'm running a business and can expense the power bills. The CPU I'm currently using is considerably cooler than the Athlon 2600+ I started out with, which helps keep the electric under control for those days I can't get off my arse and remain on the computer for 4 or more hours.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar

screw everything, we're doing 8 cores. by TimFenn · 2006-07-20 06:53 · Score: 1

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of computing in this country. The Xeon was the chip to own. Then the other guy came out with a 64 bit CPU. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Pentium D. That's 64 bit processing and two cores. For supercomputing. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened--the bastards went to four cores. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling 64 bit CPUs with two cores. Dual cores or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to eight cores.

Its fun to take the original gillette article and play with it in this context.

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CAPS LOCK IS THE CRUISE CONTROL OF AWESOMNESS

Re:screw everything, we're doing 8 cores. by Khyber · 2006-07-20 09:19 · Score: 1

Whatever you said, even in jest, you're just a wee bit wrong. The Pentium D was basically a Pentium 3 processor, beefed the fuck up, with a massive L2 cache on it. It wasn't even 64-bit, so your onion-esque attempt at humor failed, because even the onion gets things a bit more precise than that. The ignorance just absolutely failed to make it funny.

--
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

It's a typo by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 06:58 · Score: 0

They probably meant: 4&4 (which equals 4).

Re:and selling us the half assed solution again by phasm42 · 2006-07-20 06:59 · Score: 1

Intel's chip is two dual-cores in one package, one socket. This is much more of a quad-core than AMD's 4x4 "hack": Two dual-cores in two sockets.

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"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner

one MILLION cores~!!! by Xtravar · 2006-07-20 07:00 · Score: 1

Some time in the future...

Intel: I will dominate the market with... ONE MILLION CORE CPUS!
[AMD laughs]
Intel: Er, that is... ONE HUNDRED BILLION CORE CPUS!
[AMD gasps]

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Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.

Re:one MILLION cores~!!! by RetroRichie · 2006-07-20 09:09 · Score: 1

Will that be before or after the soon to be famous "Four core and seven years ago..." speech?

benchmarks! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:03 · Score: 0

doesn't anyone else here frequent overclocking forums? intel's 4-core kentsfield chip has already been put through its paces by several respected overclockers, and its performance is anything but lacking.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php ?t=104773
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php ?t=103982
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php ?t=105355

multi-threaded benchmarks like cinebench and dvd recompression are scaling linearly - it's quite hard to starve these cpus for bandwidth, unless you're one of those synthetic junkies who just wants to read from memory without actually performing any work on it. the single-chip kentsfield has been outperforming dual-dual-core opteron configurations (i.e. 4 cores on 1 motherboard). so much for bandwidth concerns.

More dualies than a redneck conventition by GalacticCmdr · 2006-07-20 07:04 · Score: 1

Okay, with each processor having dual cores - then dual chips on the board - then each video card having dual GPUs (Gigabyte). It is only a matter of time before we can support 2 of these dual GPU boards. Drop in the greatly over-hyped PhyisX card and the box is likely to simply melt down. However, before that happens it will be the fastest PC ever tested by gaming magazines - declared on the front cover in the big block letters they love to use.

That will be a glorious month - until a faster system comes out the next month.

--
Programming: Its not just a job - its an indenture.

Re:More dualies than a redneck conventition by DarkDragonVKQ · 2006-07-20 07:38 · Score: 1

heh I plan on building one in 4-5 years. With some water cooling system..or whatever one I found an article on that was like water but better.

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"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC

Duggan by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:07 · Score: 0

I'm waiting for "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan to come along and let you all know about his 2x4 core.

Re:Duggan by Wolvie+MkM · 2006-07-21 09:19 · Score: 1

Jesus I wish I had mod points lol...

--
I Like Pie...

Re:Bandwidth will be a problem. NOT by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:10 · Score: 0

Intel already has processors at 1333Mhz FSB, check the 5100 series, chipset and processors.

What does this mean for Mac users? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:11 · Score: 1, Funny

Who wants an Apple with more than one core anyway?

Re:What does this mean for Mac users? by rdoger6424 · 2006-07-21 01:31 · Score: 1

Who wants an Apple with more than one core anyway?

the quad and dual core powermac users. Oops! don't forget the dual core mac mini and iMac users!. Also remember the Macbook and the Macbook Pro!

--
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 07:45 · Score: 0

I'm sure you have a point there somewhere, but you're being awful circumspect. If you don't want a 4 core system for your house, don't buy it. The rest of us will figure out ways to use what's available. If we followed YOUR doctrine of hardware development we'd all be using C64s.

Hypertransport HTX by brennz · 2006-07-20 07:59 · Score: 1

AMD's 4x4 approach isn't a mere reaction to Core 2 Duo. AMD has been planning this for a long time.

AMD systems don't suffer from bandwidth problems with additional cores, unlike Intel's Kentsfield (quad core).

AMD is opening up hypertransport for 3rd party co-processors. This will totally change the industry with the ability to drop in specialized processors onto boards. These kind of possibilities are going to give EEs a new meaning in life.

It's cyclical by sterno · 2006-07-20 08:02 · Score: 1

AMD and Intel are slightly out of sync in their product lifecycles. If you remember way back when, the Athlon came out and beat the pants off anything Intel had. Then Intel came out with the P4 and managed to edge out AMD for a bit, but then AMD came out with the X2, etc, and they took the crown back. Now Intel is on a new architecture and is thus getting the reigns back again.

With each architecture, there's a given life span for it. When it first releases it's a large jump ahead of the previous generation and gives a temporary advantage. The competitor is still eeking out the last ounces of performance from their previous gen and just testing out their next gen.

In the end, I believe AMD has been slightly ahead of Intel overall, taking the speed lead and holding it for longer. We'll see how it goes in the next round.

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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service

Re:It's cyclical by drsmithy · 2006-07-20 10:22 · Score: 1

In the end, I believe AMD has been slightly ahead of Intel overall, taking the speed lead and holding it for longer.
Maybe if you're going to ignore anything that happened before 1999, and anything except the low-end marketplace.

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 08:04 · Score: 0

Personally, I got more satisfaction out of Wizball on the C64 than any current FPS. ;-)

My doctrine is not to keep things back in the C64 age, its to realise we are being duped into thinking something is more important to life than it actually is.

What is clear is that the main market for this technology is gamers. What is even clearer is game developers are getting lazy - they want you to throw more processor power at the problem so they can make things look prettier.

My grandad used to say Heinz made their money from the sauce you left on your plate. The modern take on this is Intel and AMD make their money from making ineffective developers look better. ;-)

4 Intel cores != 4 AMD cores by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2006-07-20 08:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm not sure that a 4-core Intel processor, at least in the first iteration, is going to be all that wonderful. Intel still has the front-side bus problem that Dell used as justification to go to Opterons for 4way servers. Additionally, the Kentsfield approach of simply joining 2 Conroe dies in the same package may not prove much better than when they created the first dual core Pentiums by joining 2 Netburst cores in a single package. It is inherently not a well integrated design.

That being said, undoubtedly Kentsfield will be at least incrementally faster than Conroe, so that helps with bragging rights. And small, cache-based code (think Cell processor SPEs) could run well on it. But unless it is priced exceptionally close to Conroe prices, would not be my first choice.

AMD is likely to do 4-cores the right way the first time around, rather than ship a Marketing Solution.

--
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."

Re:4 Intel cores != 4 AMD cores by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 18:19 · Score: 0

You are right. The solutions aren't the same but I'd have to say AMD has more of the marketing solution at this point. Two dual core die in a package (from Intel) seems to be a much much better solutions that having to purchase two dual core AMD processors and a special 4X4 motherboard. Do you really think the Intel part is more of a marketing solution than AMD's 4X4 gimick?

Guess you've never ridden a REAL 4x4 before, by Khyber · 2006-07-20 08:13 · Score: 1

Nor do you obviously realize that their naming convention of 4x4 implies that all four cores run the entire machine all at once, kinda like how all four tires drive your ATV around in a TRUE 4x4. 4-wheel steering, 4-wheel traction/powertrain, four core computer running your programs. Jeeze, I swear some of you geeks need to have a tiny modicum of redneck in you, AMD obviously has it!

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Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

Re:Guess you've never ridden a REAL 4x4 before, by JamesTRexx · 2006-07-20 09:24 · Score: 1

I agree. Geeks here should have known more about this after all the bad car analogies in /.'s history.

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home

Waste makes haste by dalleboy · 2006-07-20 08:16 · Score: 1

Memorable Quotes from RoboCop 2

RoboCop: Waste makes haste. For time is fleeting. A rolling stone is worth two in the bush.
Boy: Go fuck a refrigerator, pecker neck!
RoboCop: Bad language makes for bad feelings.

Re:Is itanium officially dead? NO by Khyber · 2006-07-20 08:32 · Score: 1

Weeeellll... you don't *NEED* to move to those platforms to get higher cache - just do what always been available - buy a motherboard with a side L2/L3 cache expansion slot. (And people always wondered why my 233 MHz Cyrix with 512KB of L2 cache stomped their 333 MHz Pentium 2 machine with it's measly 128KB of L2. Winbond and expansion slots FTW!)

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Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

playing catch-up by Dangolo · 2006-07-20 08:36 · Score: 0

i love the innovation from intel and AMD but i feel their leaps in speed are leaving else behind.
Hard Drives - Despite SATA 150 and 300, NCQ, Perpendicular recording, larger buffers, higher rpms and whatnot... they've always been the bottleneck and will be for years to come. THey increase in speed at what 10% a year?
Software - VEEEEERRRRRRRYYYYYY few applications, including windows xp (only supporting 2), are coded to use the extra processors and use all their high tech advantages. i'd love to see more software using some processor affinity, some games sending physics calcs to 1 proc and 2D rendering to another proc and anti-lag IO/LAN data to the 3rd proc.....

i guess what i'm saying is that we have other areas that could use some focus and deveopment before we let processors run away from us.

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Khyber · 2006-07-20 08:41 · Score: 1

Hobby != computers

Hobby = Audio and Graphics applications.

There, your zero head count went from zero to one, across the entire question you just asked. Would you like to be so immature and presumptious to claim you know the rest of the fucking human population so personally, hrm? Remember this - the majority of computer users ARE NOT GEEKS - they're people who have to use them and learn how to use them so they can survive. Regardless of multiple processors or one processor, the need for power is still there so they can PERFORM THEIR JOB EFFICIENTLY.

Sorry, presumptious attitudes like that just piss me off - you make a statement as if you had the right to say what you said in my place - you don't have that right, nor the prerequisite knowledge about me, to make such a statement.

--
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Khyber · 2006-07-20 08:47 · Score: 1

And to make it a little more clear - as for programs that would need such power - ask any telecommuter that needs to run four or five programs that need internet access to some central database, and all of them must be running or you can't access things you need to get your work done. (We had plenty of people that had dual-core machines just because they needed that much power to process all that incoming info at once, and they worked FROM HOME, for Ingram Micro.)

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Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.

Re:Bandwidth will be a problem. NOT by default+luser · 2006-07-20 08:50 · Score: 1

Intel already has processors at 1333Mhz FSB, check the 5100 series, chipset and processors.

And my point was that 1333 MHz, while plenty for two cores, is not nearly enough bandwidth for 4 cores on a single bus. Their advanced L2 cache can hide the huge latency to memory, but it cannot make up for bandwidth starvation.

Additionally, I seriously doubt that Intel will be able to clock the FSB any faster than 1066 MHz. In the past, Intel has not been able to run multi-processor systems at the same bus speed as single processors. According to this link, Cloverton will be a 1066 MHz part, and I expect the same of Kentsfield.

Don't expect Intel's performance beyond 4 cores to be anything amazing. AMD's K8L, with an additional HT link and the ability to use "half links," will be the shining star of 8 and 16-core systems next year.

--

Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.

Yay, more cores... by shodai · 2006-07-20 09:10 · Score: 1

Now if only software engineers could write programs that weren't 10% effective and 90% bloat.

My p3 1ghz Dell runs great for everything but gaming. My 2.4ghz Opteron gaming rig runs everything but games at the exact same speed. I think we need better software, not hardware. Of course, it is much easier to attach buzzwords to hardware. :\

Re:Yay, more cores... by triffid_98 · 2006-07-20 11:07 · Score: 1

Now if only software engineers weren't forced to write code that goes through crappy windows API's on malware infested Dells....

Now if only software engineers could write programs that weren't 10% effective and 90% bloat.

My p3 1ghz Dell runs great for everything but gaming. My 2.4ghz Opteron gaming rig runs everything but games at the exact same speed.
Re:Yay, more cores... by shodai · 2006-07-20 20:10 · Score: 1

One can only dream.

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Surt · 2006-07-20 09:24 · Score: 1

Video editing. Parents and young grandparents are all over that.

--
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 10:06 · Score: 0

That's a HOME WORKER not a HOME USER. Big difference.
The poor telecommuter you are talking about is also suffering from inefficient use of current technology AND network limitations.
Again, inefficient programming coupled with poor infrastructure.

I fully believe my original point is still true. It all about marketing - 4 cores in my pc, 5 blades in my razor, 6 cylinders in my car, 7 days in my work week. No braincells in the marketing bunny who thinks this stuff is important.

Begun, this core war has by blueZ3 · 2006-07-20 10:21 · Score: 1

Winners will the consumer be.

--
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-20 10:24 · Score: 0

I found a use for the extra CPU power - cutting out all the profanity from Khyber.
My point is made *BECAUSE MOST USERS ARE NOT GEEKS* - or are you unable to read the post properly. If your hobby is AV then why spend money on addition CPU power when you are better served buying some good specialist editing hardware.

I think my point annoys you so much because you are so unable to articulate a sensible answer. Deep down you know I'm right and I have touched a nerve.

END-OF-LINE

Re:Is itanium officially dead? NO by RightSaidFred99 · 2006-07-20 10:25 · Score: 1

What is this, 1994? You can't add freaking cache expansion slots anymore, the latency is so much higher now. Back in the day everything was so slow it didn't matter. Try putting L2 cache anywhere but right on the chip nowadays and it's pointless.

Xvid/x264 encoding by RightSaidFred99 · 2006-07-20 10:28 · Score: 1

I encode some of my movies to x264, which is multi-threaded. It currently takes about 8 hours for a single movie. A quad core where each core is 50% faster than my current one could cut that time down to 2-3 hours.

Re:Bandwidth will be a problem. NOT by raxx7 · 2006-07-20 10:34 · Score: 1

Until now, Xeons supported 2 or 4 sockets in the same FSB, hence the lower speeds than the single socket versions.
With the 5000 series, they droped that and went with one socket per FSB. Thus, these Xeons' FSB can match or surpass (since the boards can be a bit more expensive) the desktop version.
5100 series Xeons with 1333MHz FSB are avaible for buyers NOW.

Kentsfield is already the king... by ktlewis02 · 2006-07-20 10:42 · Score: 0

Let me just point you all to this little forum post:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php ?t=107092

Who knows how these guys get ahold of these parts but from the looks of it the Kentsfield trips are blazing. They are basically 2x Core 2 Duo (Conroe E6700) one one die.

At ~3.5 GHz this guy got almost 13000 marks in 3d mark 06.. WOW JUST CHECK IT OUT ALREADY

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by Aeomer · 2006-07-20 10:52 · Score: 1

Video editing does indeed improve with processor power. But it improves much more with editing hardware! The emphasis on CPU speeds detracts from inefficient programming and the benefit of hardware fit to the task. It costs far less to buy a good video editing card than it does to retool your PC with a faster processor, new MoBo, different RAM (because the slot has changed from the previous MoBo).
I do use my PC for video editing, but my MJPEG/MPEG4 card takes the load. I get better video editing performance on my AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with video editing hardware than my bare AMD X2 4200+ because the video editing card is doing all the work. In the case of V.E. lots of RAM and a fast fairly-large HDD are the most important. Maybe we can get DELL to do a VE specced PC with proper editing hardware - but with better margins on CPUs I doubt they will consider it.

I want to see continual improvement in affordable computing power, but I refuse to get caught up in the gush from marketing bozos.

Re:Name just one really good home use for all this by BCW2 · 2006-07-20 10:58 · Score: 1

Easy! Think of serious graphic artists or heavy duty CAD with computer modeling, like car design.

--
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.

Re:Is itanium officially dead? NO by the+eric+conspiracy · 2006-07-20 12:09 · Score: 1

Its competitors are the Power64 chip and Sun's latest and greatest -not some $300 chip you buy at Fry's.

That's what Intel wants you to think. In the real world X64 clusters are eating the lunch of big iron UNIX.

The Itanium is a marginal competitor in a space that is losing market share. Waste of corporate resources IMHO.

Core Wars Episode ? by DrHex · 2006-07-20 13:03 · Score: 1

What episode would this be now in this ongoing saga?

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Scientia et Potentia

Re:Is itanium officially dead? NO by acomj · 2006-07-20 14:55 · Score: 1

We used to use superdomes (pa-risc). Now I understand the switch to IBM POWER machines on new projects..

Re:Bandwidth will be a problem. NOT by default+luser · 2006-07-20 16:57 · Score: 1

Yes, and that works JUST FINE. Those are 4-core systems, and like I said IN MY FIRST POST, they perform GREAT.

But for the THIRD FUCKING TIME PEOPLE, this article is about Kentsfield and Cloverton, which are two dual-core processors in one socket package. That's TWO processors on the same bus, and that is why Cloverton is going to use the pathetic 1066 MHz bus.

AND THAT IS WHY IT WILL HAVE A SEVERE BANDWIDTH PROBLEM.

--

Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.

A Cycle of Failure for Intel by thedletterman · 2006-07-20 19:55 · Score: 1

Intel has had a hard enough time releasing hardware that works properly. Plagued with architectural problems, it seems this company is simply failing to release stable, working products on schedule. Now they are going to rush, what could be their last triumphant stand against AMD out the door in order to "beat AMD to the market?" The two do not seem to have such competive timelines for release, and Intel moving their release date ahead of schedule to create a race condition between the two companies seems foolhardy AMD will release their products on schedule, and fully tested, and Intel likely due to political pressures will release a product hastily finished without through testing.

This is only going to lead to failure for Intel, which will lead to more political pressure, which will lead to worse products. Intel looks doomed to become the Microsoft of hardware, not getting their product functional and stable until the end of the product line in favor of marketing hype and product release deadlines.

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Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin

Re:4x4 is an accurate name... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-07-21 12:34 · Score: 0

the 4x4 mobos will take 2 dual core cpu's or 2 4 core chips - 4cores x2
so 4x2 would be mathmatically correct, but 4x4 is a nice marketing gimmick for BIG Powerful Machines...

I can't wait to see AMD sponsoring Monster Trucks
at the truck rally, crushing little intel cars and spitting mudd from 12' tires.

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Intel Stepping Up to Combat AMD's 4x4

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