Slashdot Mirror


Ars Evaluates Core 2 Duo in Latest System Guide

RevDobbs writes "I always take a peek at the Ars Technica System Guides before white-boxing my next PC. Well, today I hit the site and see that they recently published their first post-Core 2 Duo System Guide." From the article: "The new Intel Core 2 Duo processors bring a swift change to the Hot Rod, making the lifespan of Socket AM2 very brief in the Hot Rod. Performance from the Core 2 Duo (aka, Conroe) appears to be excellent in all regards, from pure performance to heat output. Overclocking prospects also look excellent, with an overclocked Core 2 Duo being an amazingly fast chip for the money."

88 comments

  1. Thoughts from a singulatarian by Cybert4 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Intel is doing a lot of things right. This is a common core from laptop to server. Keeping it simple--AMD has a lot to worry about. I wonder about what a giant leap in energy issues would do. For example, greatly reduce power reduction at the transistor level. The whole issue of power usage would go away--and you'd have Intel and AMD racing for performance as they did in the late 1990's. The Conroe is a great processor, but a lot of effort went toward being miserly.

    And I'm still waiting for an architecture change. How about finally retiring the byte as a base logical unit? In return, just use the bit, or whatever word length the machine is.

    1. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by bwthomas · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeay! do away with the byte!

      Also, i can't wait until we've got clockless quantum holographic computers booting off of non-volatile ramdisks and cooled by eskimo flatulence ...

      By the way, your hover car is getting towed.

    2. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by tomstdenis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Um, the laptop processors were the same as the desktop in the 754 pin category. And in the Socket A they were ALSO compatible with the desktops.

      And the move from K7 -> K8 brought about 90nm SOI which greatly reduced power and heat issues. A similarly clocked K8 would easily run 10-15C cooler than a K7 at idle.

      AMD has plans to move to 65nm and 45nm. I won't say when [cuz that's secret and frankly I don't remember anyways]. They're just not rolling out a completely new core every other month to avoid wasting time supporting really short lived products.

      Conroe seems like a decent design. Until I build a box with one I can't really say. If all the hype is true though it's a good competitor to AMD K8, not a replacement, certainly in a lot of server oriented computing tasks.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    3. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by Surt · · Score: 1

      And I'm still waiting for an architecture change. How about finally retiring the byte as a base logical unit? In return, just use the bit, or whatever word length the machine is./i?

      This has already happened. The base logical unit on conroe is the 64bit longword. You can access bits and bytes (and 32bits) within that of course, since that's a necessity for various kinds of programs.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    4. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm no AMD fanboy and recognize that the latest Intel core is superior, but any retard can see that AMD's next core is not finished yet and that it's not completely fair to compare the new Intel design to the three year old AMD design. It's neither surprising nor exciting that Intel has finally reclaimed the mantel of "superior x86 CPU". I'm much more interested in seeing how performance compares when the new AMD chips are available, I'm hoping they aren't a flop because if AMD can pull off another Intel-killer it will really force an even deeper competition. Intel looks like they are back on the right track finally, I want to see AMD keep pushing them so we see more innovative designs - I want my $100 10ghz quad core CPUs before the end of the decade damnit!

    5. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by rtaylor · · Score: 2, Funny

      cooled by eskimo flatulence

      Dude, you're getting a Smell!

      --
      Rod Taylor
    6. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 2, Informative
      AMD has plans to move to 65nm and 45nm.


      Intel is already on 65nm. The last I read about AMD's move to 65nm on the tech sites was that it was next year, by the time Intel will already be moving to 45nm. AMD is officially a generation behind in that department.
      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    7. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Informative

      Intel is the first but not always the best. Their move to 90nm for instance led to Prescott processors hotter than the sun. Granted their move to 65nm was a lot smoother, being first isn't always the goal.

      Frankly, even given where I work I'm happy that Intel is turning out good [or at least better] hardware. We all win when technology is getting neatoer.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    8. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by WuphonsReach · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Intel is already on 65nm. The last I read about AMD's move to 65nm on the tech sites was that it was next year, by the time Intel will already be moving to 45nm. AMD is officially a generation behind in that department.

      I'm reading rumor and news leaks that say more along the lines of Q4/2006 for the 65nm production. The new Opteron socket F CPUs are due out soon and I'm not sure whether they're going to be 90nm or 65nm. And that could slip until 1Q/2007 or later of course. (I confess that I mostly scan the news looking for when AMD's next price cut is going to take place. Because we mostly buy CPUs in the lower half of the Athlon64/Opteron lineup.)

      AMD is always going to be a generation behind on process size. It's the nature of being a smaller company (have to make do with less). So the downside is that AMD is always going to lag 6-24 months behind the process shrink of Intel. On the other hand, they've done very well with 90nm technology. So while the 65nm shrink won't be a magic bullet, it will hopefully at least narrow the gap (in terms of overall performance, power consumption and thermal output).

      It's a good time to be a customer. For either side of the fence. Reasonably priced chips that are multi-core, hardware virtualization (making things easier to run multiple O/S instances), and increased competition between the two sides.

      (We're mostly rolling out AM2 X2 3800+ CPUs in our desktops because it's reasonably priced. If they fire-sale the old 939 X2s, we may pickup a few more of them. Odds are low that we'll upgrade CPUs down the line, but it's a reason to favor AM2 over 939. The Core 2 Duos are still more then we want to pay for a desktop CPU and we don't want to buy end-of-life Pentium D 805/9xx dual-cores. If a low-end Core 2 Duo was $120-$150, I'd consider it for these particular machines.)

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    9. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Intel needs to move to 45 asap because their processors demand high L2 cache sizes. They also rely on faster, high latency DDR memory. All in all, AMD has nothing to ashamed of. Efficiency is always a virtue and in the near future, x86 will die off and 64bit computing will be the new arena.

    10. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A byte is the smallest addressable unit in a computer, so technically you could never "do away" with a byte. What you are proposing is to make a byte larger, 32-bits or 64-bits etc or smaller, a 1 bit byte.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

      "A contiguous sequence of bits within a binary computer, that comprises the smallest addressable sub-field of the computer's natural word-size"

      Yes I know the other definitions refer to 8-bits etc. But that is because most modern computers have 8-bit bytes, so in recent years a byte has become synonynmous with 8-bits.

    11. Re:Thoughts from a singulatarian by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      You realise that the performance of any processor will increase with bigger caches and faster main memory, right?

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. Wait a minute! by SeanTobin · · Score: 4, Funny
    from the can-i-have-a-god-box-please dept.
    Wait just a minute! A "God Box" wasn't mentioned in the article summary. This can only mean one thing... Zonk must have read the article before posting. What is this world coming to?
    --
    Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
    1. Re:Wait a minute! by RevDobbs · · Score: 1

      ... or he knows the article's format :-)

  3. I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    But to save some money, I'm going to put linux on it.

    Jesus Christ, under what circumstance would you build a desktop machine that powerful and use linux?

    1. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by Phillup · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Jesus Christ, under what circumstance would you build a desktop machine that powerful and use linux?

      Seems like, if you are building a god box... you simply want the very best.

      The real question is: which Linux.

      ;-)

      --

      --Phillip

      Can you say BIRTH TAX
    2. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by 5pp000 · · Score: 1
      Jesus Christ, under what circumstance would you build a desktop machine that powerful and use linux?

      That's right! Clearly, the only way to go on a box like that is Solaris!

      --
      Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
    3. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by Ruff_ilb · · Score: 1

      Under what circumstance would you build a desktop machine that powerful and not be able to boot into a zillion different OSes?

      --
      http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
    4. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by jason+ward · · Score: 2

      FreeBSD of course ;)

    5. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 1

      Interesting suggestion. How fast does Solaris 10 run these days?

      --
      Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
    6. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by 5pp000 · · Score: 1
      Well, I was only half serious -- I'm running Solaris on my quad Opteron, but most people probably wouldn't want to. Indeed, I would really rather run Linux myself, except that the Linux kernel has a terrible performance problem on the particular workload I care most about. It's a data mining application written in Lisp; I routinely run process sizes between 5GB and 20GB. Even at the low end of that range, the Linux kernel, under certain circumstances, bogs down badly and the machine becomes unresponsive. (I can explain in more detail if you're curious.)

      But Solaris runs just great on this and every other workload I've managed to throw at it. I haven't benchmarked it vs. Linux on more typical workloads, but subjectively it seems just as fast, or close.

      --
      Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
    7. Re:I'm gettin' me one of those 'God' boxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. The only reason you'd need a box that powerful is to run Windows Vista!

  4. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by legoburner · · Score: 5, Funny

    As an AMD fanboy, I'd say it is faster, but only it because it is made using the skin from beaten 3rd world children. Can you handle that on your conscience when you play GTA on your PC... CAN YOU!?

  5. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    First off, you're an idiot. The company is what people consider to be evil, not the CPU. I suppose that I shouldn't expect much logic in a guerilla-like flame from a testicular-free AC.

    Secondly, just because Intel might have gotten this one right doesn't mean that they're not evil. Show me proof that the major PC vendors are voluntarily making available equal quantities of AMD and Intel-based PCs (with no sneaky, inside deals with Intel to lock out AMD) so that their customers can have the choice of which one to purchase. Then, I'll reconsider my current stance that Intel is evil.

    Regardless, this just ups the ante for AMD. I'm very interested to see what they're going to do to try to top this.

    --
    The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
  6. PDP8 by Cybert4 · · Score: 0

    The PDP8 used the 12-bit word as its building block. It's not hard to see it expanded to 64-bits for the current generation. The byte is not the only way.

    1. Re:PDP8 by tomstdenis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Newsflash: A lot of data is still 8 bits wide.

      And for your information: Processors like the x86 series are not byte addressable. They usually load a cacheline and the processor fetches the byte you want.

      So instead of doing

      movb (%rax),%bl

      You'd have to do

      movq (%rax),%rbx
      andq $255,%rbx

      Worse yet, if you want the [say] 5th byte of a 64-bit word...

      movq (%rax),%rbx
      shrq $40,%rbx
      andq $255,%rbx

      That's clearly a winning idea!

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  7. Barney's feelings on the matter by CODiNE · · Score: 0

    I love Core
    Duo 2
    Makes my pooter fast as foo

    With a great big cache
    O(N) becomes O(2)
    My box won't need C Oh 2.

    Slashdot prepare for lawyer assault!

    --
    Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  8. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Laughable.

    There is no dal Intel has that AMD wouldn't take in a second.

    Evil...sheesh, how easy is someones life when there evil is a company trying to get exlusive contract.

    And don't forget two rules:
    The consumer rules
    The 99% of user do NOT care what cpu they use, so it makes no sense to create a line of machine for more then one processor company.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  9. God Box by richdun · · Score: 1

    We have a God Box (hideously old campus tour picture here) at IIT. It's the only building designed by "less is more" Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for purely religious purposes. It's not really for sale, though if someone would like to pay for the renovation, I'm sure we could work something out.

    1. Re:God Box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      We have a God Box at IIT. It's the only building designed by "less is more"

      I had a God Box that was a modded commode (water cooled too). It was inspired by my roommate -- "more or less" -- who used to pray to the porcelain god around 2am every Sunday morning.

    2. Re:God Box by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      ...and while they are scarce admidst the legions of slashdotters, any of them who have gotten lucky have had a god box, too. "oh god, oh god!"

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    wrong.

  11. Any other Motherboard Suggestions by ckawalek · · Score: 1

    I'm set on getting a E6600, but am still unsure about what motherboard I should get. The Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP looks alright Seems like a lot of them aren't in stock yet, any other recommendations for one in the sub $300 category? thanks, Chris

    1. Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by busydoingnothing · · Score: 1

      Wait for the motherboards based on the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI chipset. According to this article, their release is only about a week or so away. As far as price goes, I would expect them to be somewhere between $200 and $250, like their AM2 counterparts. As soon as these boards hit the street, I'm gonna pick me up one and a E6600 and build my first Intel-based system since my Celeron 300 (overclocked to 450, remember those?).

    2. Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by LIGC · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you're an overclocker, the Asus P5B's new BIOS revision supports multiplier unlocking for non Extreme Core 2 processors, as http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2822 points out.

    3. Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by snuf23 · · Score: 1

      I went with the one they recommend in the Hot Rod system - the Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe.
      Fanless design, 2 x16 PCI Xpress slots for SLI, 8 phase power, 2 SATA RAID controllers, dual gig-Ethernet, firewire etc.

      Although I've heard some issues, I believe with outdated BIOS and the Conroe chips. I guess I'll see when it comes in.

      --
      Sometimes my arms bend back.
    4. Re:Any other Motherboard Suggestions by Schmiggy_JK · · Score: 1

      Personally I would wait. We have review board coming in from Abit, the AW9D Max http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?c ategories=1&model=326/ which looks to be a good board that I will be testing out shortly here. Between that and the upcoming Nvidia 590, and ATI's r600 chipsets, if you don't absolutely need a upgrade wait it out a bit longer. DFI's 590 board is looking promising. http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5939/

      --
      Insert something witty here...
  12. Did the prices go up? by amcdiarmid · · Score: 1

    Or did my recollection go down?

    I seem to remember the Budget Box at $600, the Hot rod $1300, and the God box costing unholy amounts of money.

    Otherwise, we all knew that the core2 duo would get the nod: Low Power, fast, x86x64. (does the last one sound like an old memory chip?)

    $.02

    1. Re:Did the prices go up? by Frogbert · · Score: 1

      Yes! It's almost as if the prices have grown larger over the past few years, "inflated" if you will. I wonder what strange economic force is causing the cost of these items to rise.

    2. Re:Did the prices go up? by canuck57 · · Score: 1

      Yep, prices went up when building your own.

      Me, the local store is selling a AMD 64 X2 w. 2GB RAM AMD, dual layer DVD, 300GB HD, video card with digital and analog outputs with a 19" wide screen flat panel. As far as I can tell, the one I am looking at has workable Linux drivers for all the devices and costs $1000 CDN.

      Yes, I used to build, in fact built about 12 systems over the years. You can build them better than you can buy, but not cheaper. It does not seem like you can build them cheaper than you can buy any more.

      Even if the CPU never sees XP and runs Linux, I just write off paying Microsoft taxes.

    3. Re:Did the prices go up? by toddestan · · Score: 1

      No, prices haven't really gone up. It's just that everyone who is building a whitebox computer nowadays wants nothing less than dual core, so that's all that they are paying attention to. Dual core chips are still in the upper midrange of the CPU lineup, and even a low end dual core box is not what I would consider a budget computer. You can still build a reasonable budget box for $500-$600, it'll just be a single core system, that's all.

  13. Energy Issues by DaveWick79 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With the Core 2 Duo processor, there has been quite a significant leap in energy issues. While the current trend for the past 4 or 5 years has been to beef clock speeds and performance at the expense of power consumption, Intel's major stride has been to drastically increase performance while cutting power consumption in half. If AMD can match this power consumption (Intel's chips currently run at 40W according to their information), then we can concentrate again on having a speed war. The effort that went into being miserly had to be done at some point, and now it's up to AMD to catch up.

  14. This is what's bothering me. by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    There isn't a decent board for the Conroe that's under $250.
    Either they don't support DDR2800 (anything less is a waste), or they don't have SLI, or they're missing amenities like firewire or decent onboard sound.
    A "budget" Conroe system is difficult to spec since unless you go DDR2800 you aren't going to have much over a DDR400/DDR500-based AMD K8 system (and I'm not talking AM2, but the same logic applies). Memory bandwidth is a bottleneck for performance and usability. Despite Conroe's advances in CPU power, most situations where you wait for the computer are not CPU bound (unless you are heavy into movie/music decoding/compression). An bus-overclocked low power K8 (like the Opteron Denmark) can still beat a Conroe system in memory throughput.
    DDR2800 brings this to parity but then you are not talking about a cheap system anymore; it's everything EXCEPT for the CPU that costs too much.

    Hopefully in the next few months we'll see price drops in DDR2 memory and more competetion in the Core-2 Duo compatible motherboards. This should make them more affordable and help to shake out the gold implementations.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
    1. Re:This is what's bothering me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. I was waiting for the Core 2 Duo to build a new system, only to find out one "real" Conroe motherboard (by ASUS) - not some P4 chipset half-hacked to get it to work with the Conroe. And that board only had like 2 SATA connectors and such - a very basic board, and that was 285$ CDN! That's almost the total amount I was willing to spend on a motherboard *AND* CPU! Just for a very featureless motherboard (lacked MANY things I wanted). Then I looked at AM2 motherboards (because of the recent price drops) and found the ASUS M2N-E, which has it all - even *SIX* SATA ports, that you can even use in RAID5! At it's under half the price - only 120$ CDN. The rest of the money the Conroe motherboard would have cost bought me an Athlon64 X2 3800+. I grabbed six nice Seagate 320GB SATA HDs with it, and threw 4 sticks of nice and fast/low latency 1GB DDR2 on it. Quite the beast for the price. The Conroe would have been a faster CPU, but it would have been significantly more expensive due to the motherboard, and no RAID5 or anything.

      And for the next replacement, it'll likely be a quad core... So Intel's likely out yet again. I'm a bit worried about them bringing CSI to the market fast enough. At some point the old FSB just can't feed the CPU fast enough, whereas AMD has a very nie hypertransport bus which is proven to scale quite well (used in many multi-core/multi-cpu servers everyday - even in crays!)

      Intel is catching up, but it's far from being over. Competition is a good thing :)

    2. Re:This is what's bothering me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      285$ CDN! ...get a job you whiner.

    3. Re:This is what's bothering me. by TrancePhreak · · Score: 1

      http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d975xbx/ index.htm
      $265 USD -> $295 CDN
      Four SATA's w/ raid, ability to add four more SATA's easily.

      Also, you bought a 3800+ X2, you obviously weren't paying attention. It gets beat by the 3800+ 64 in some cases.

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    4. Re:This is what's bothering me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A job? Alerady have one TYVM. Chances are I paid more in taxes this year than you've made last year (or last couple years) actually.

      The whole point is, why pay 300$ for a motherboard that sucks instead of a 120$ one that's great? No basic motherboard should cost this much, it's ridiculous. At 300$'ish, I sure expect a LOT more than that POS.

      Only a stupid Intel fanboy like you would buy a crippled motherboard that's way overpriced and be happy about it.

      What's that you were saying? A Ferrarri's too expensive for a sports car? Get a job you whiner! (Not that you could get something almost as nice for half the price...)

    5. Re:This is what's bothering me. by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 1

      There isn't a decent board for the Conroe that's under $250. Either they don't support DDR2800 (anything less is a waste), or they don't have SLI, or they're missing amenities like firewire or decent onboard sound.

      If you aren't a hardcore gamer (but want instead a workstation or light-duty server), no reason to care about no SLI. And not that many people use Firewire (I have a Mac and even I haven't used it in quite a while).

      --
      I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
    6. Re:This is what's bothering me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Still. The whole point is, I *DON'T* want a 300$ motherboard. That's about what I wanted to pay for the board AND CPU together. And there just isn't a good and decently priced Conroe board. I'm sure that board and a Conroe 6600 is really fast, but that's over 600$ CDN (add RAM, HDs, Vid card and all - way more than I wanted to spend). And there's no RAID5 on that board (and only 4 HD RAID instead of 6 - quite significant difference), which is more or less what made me pick the M2N-E.

      And I was paying attention. Like you said, the 3800+ beats it in SOME cases. Not all (both are more than fast enough for everyday stuff). I bought this as a new dev PC, mainly to test massively multithreaded apps on a dual core system, so it was going to be a X2 no matter which speed.

      If Intel gets their act together and makes a nice and decently priced board, I just might use Intel in my next PC. Until then...

  15. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whoa there evil spotting cowboy.

    AlienWare and Voodoo were selling 90% AMD.
    Intel's alledged evil could not stop that.
    Superior products ruled in performance market.
    Now AlienWare and VooDoo are switching to 90% Core2Duo.
    Intel's superior products are the cause of the switch.

    AMD's Hector used to start every quarterly financial update
    whining that Intel was unfair. Once AMD got superior
    products, they gained a few market points every quarter.
    Hector cried they should have gained market share faster.
    (without sufficient factory capacity, and, with 0 consumer advertising)

    Now that Intel has the superior product, will Hector cry
    that AMD is not LOSING market share fast enough ? No,
    we will see Intel pick up market share at about the same
    rate that Intel lost it.

    Supernatual good/evil is not controlling the market.
    This is factory capacity, price, advertising, and typical market drift.

  16. Semi-OT Something I've always wondered about... by MarcoAtWork · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I remember not that long ago when socket 939 came out that AMD said that this was going to be the socket they were going to stay on for a looong time and that the sacrifices of obsoleting the 754 and 940 were totally worth it: when AM2 came out so soon after it really made me wonder, why is there a need for a new socket right now? It's not like X2AM2 chips are that much different from X2939 ones...

    And btw, I can't believe they put only 8gigs on the highest-end box, I would think 16 would be the bare minimum, heck, I'm thinking of going to 4 gigs on my pedestrian x2-4800, you'd think that something of that calibre would be a bit better equipped.

    --
    -- the cake is a lie
    1. Re:Semi-OT Something I've always wondered about... by WuphonsReach · · Score: 3, Informative

      I remember not that long ago when socket 939 came out that AMD said that this was going to be the socket they were going to stay on for a looong time and that the sacrifices of obsoleting the 754 and 940 were totally worth it: when AM2 came out so soon after it really made me wonder, why is there a need for a new socket right now? It's not like X2AM2 chips are that much different from X2939 ones...

      I sorta remember that too, so I went and looked. Socket 939 came out in June 2004 (or thereabouts). This could be part of the downside of having a built-in memory controller. Since DDR reached the end of it's reach (PC3200 seeming to be the fastest commonly available) and DDR2 commonly available, they decided to go with a new pin-out so that you couldn't mistakenly mix/match the wrong CPU with the wrong memory. Less confusion for the customer.

      At least, I think that's why the pin-out was changed... (according to the AMD FAQ it was).

      What AMD has said at this time is that the new AM3 chips (which support DDR3) will be compatible with AM2 and AM3 motherboards. So you can put an AM3 chip into an older AM2 motherboard, but not the other way 'round. We'll see if that holds true...

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
  17. Losing respect for Ars... by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I thought it was pretty cool until I saw:

    Windows 2003 Server is an excellent OS for those seeking to use the full power of the God Box as a server.


    No, actually, to use the full power of the God Box requires something with fewer root exploits and journaling file systems...
    1. Re:Losing respect for Ars... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NTFS is a fully journaling file system.

    2. Re:Losing respect for Ars... by poulbailey · · Score: 1

      What complete shills! How dare they mention something from Micro$hit! Makes me sick to my stomach.

      I will never browse their site again from my GNU server, no sir! It's dead to me.

  18. Two things by iamsolidsnk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Core Duo will be faster than anything AMD has released currently. That is primarily because it is manufactured with 65nm process unlike all of AMD processors which are made with the 90nm process.

    2. The push to the socket AM2 architecture was to enable DDR2 support for AMD chips. Socket 939 could not support the faster memory that is hitting the market now, such as the DDR2 800Mhz (cheaper) or the brutal DDR2 1066Mhz (save your pennies).

    AMD has stated that the AM2 platform motherboards will be able to support their next generation of chips. So if you are like me and made the plunge, your mobo won't be obsolete for a good long time.

    snake

    --
    Here I am, here I remain.
    1. Re:Two things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      65nm tech has nothing to do with the speed -- its the differences in core microarchitecture.

      (Example Yonah vs Merom laptop cpu's, both 65nm -- Yonah being the older micro architecture essentially two dothan (Pentium M) cores on a single die, where meron being the laptop version of conroe -- and merom is faster than yonah clock for clock.)

    2. Re:Two things by MrNemesis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The crazy thing is that, despite being on a seemingly ancient 90nm process, the AMD chips still seem to consume less power at idle that the core duo, at least according to Anand. That's why I'm currently sticking with my AMD's in my 24x7 boxes, which spend 99% of their time idling away.

      --
      Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
  19. Progress in the name of... Progress? by sam991 · · Score: 1

    I'm not entirely sure i have faith in the 'This just ups the game for AMD' argument since their stopgap measure, the 4x4 platform just seems like a bad idea. The C2D looks great and is now at a very reasonable price, but do we really need it? Speaking as someone who is still on sktA, can we really expect businesses and home users to buy into it when a ~2 year old machine still handles pretty much most things you can throw at it. I'm all for progress, but i think that at this point Moore's law has outstripped our need.

    --
    "No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
    1. Re:Progress in the name of... Progress? by DaveWick79 · · Score: 1

      It's not necessarily the business or even home users who have 2 year old systems who are upgrading to the latest technology. It's those who have 3 to 4 year old systems already in need of upgrade, those who want a system that is going to carry them through the OS'es and software that will be released in the next 3 to 4 years. In that regard, Core 2 Duo is an excellent buy, especially in a few months when prices will drop even more and Core Duo will be the entry level system. A good deal of Core 2 Duo purchases will be those already seeking upgrades or those who buy new systems with Vista preloaded. Most people don't need the power now, unless they are a gamer or power user. Home media center type PC's will also benefit from lower power/quieter/cooler setups, especially when they are handling lots of functions at once.

    2. Re:Progress in the name of... Progress? by HotmanParisHiltonKam · · Score: 1

      It's not necessarily the business or even home users who have 2 year old systems who are upgrading to the latest technology. It's those who have 3 to 4 year old systems already in need of upgrade, those who want a system that is going to carry them through the OS'es and software that will be released in the next 3 to 4 years.

      Precisely; this is why I just built a C2D 6400 to replace my frigging old P3 600MHz. The C2D, at 2.13GHz, encodes a DVD twice as fast as my other decent machine (a P4 2.8GHz). The C2D will last the next 5 years and all I'll have to do is throw extra drives on the 4 SATA ports than came on the mobo and maybe double the RAM to 2Gigs.

  20. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by Touvan · · Score: 1

    > The 99% of user do NOT care what cpu they use, so it makes no sense to create a line of machine for more then one processor company. It makes sense if you want to force your vendor to compete with another vendor(s), to drive down price, or drive up performance and features. It also removes your reliance on one vendor's whims. If one vendor can't (or won't) deliver, you can always use another.

  21. NTFS by SuperBanana · · Score: 1

    No, actually, to use the full power of the God Box requires something with fewer root exploits and journaling file systems...

    Last time I checked, it was called NTFS, and it predates ext3 by almost a decade (1993 versus 2001.)

    1. Re:NTFS by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 1

      OK, my bad. "Something with fewer root exploits" would be enough for me. Something with lower overhead for process spawning, and with a usable scripting interface, would be nice too.

    2. Re:NTFS by Russ+Steffen · · Score: 4, Informative

      NTFS wasn't a journaling filesystem until v5, released with Windows 2000. Ext3 is not the only other journaled file out there. SGI's XFS, IBM's JFS, Sun's UFS logging, Veritas's VxFS, NetApp's WAFL, BSD's soft updates, and ReiserFS all predate journaled NTFS, some of them by quite a few years.

    3. Re:NTFS by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Umm, what do you mean be "wasn't journalling until v5". It's always had a transaction log file from the initial release. Check here for NT 3.1.

      http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=101670

      The idea is it can rollback partially completed transactions and recover from bad shutdowns. Also it can do it quickly without searching the whole filesystem for inconsistencies. That's the whole point to NTFS.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  22. a winning idea by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1

    So instead of doing

    movb (%rax),%bl

    You'd have to do

    movq (%rax),%rbx
    andq $255,%rbx

    Worse yet, if you want the [say] 5th byte of a 64-bit word...

    movq (%rax),%rbx
    shrq $40,%rbx
    andq $255,%rbx

    That's clearly a winning idea!


    Uhm ... yeah. Clearly.

    1. Re:a winning idea by tomstdenis · · Score: 1

      Psst: Don't get into a thread of "CPUs should have $X" if you don't know ASM mnemonics.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  23. I thought that was a misprint. by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 1

    When I first saw the NForce 4 SLI boards for LGA775 it was on NewEgg, and I thought, that can't be right.
    But apparently the NForce MCPs were quite readily converted into an SPP and are giving the stock Intel chipsets a run for their money (while being essentially compatible with your AMD64 Nforce drivers).

    Your idea sounds pretty good. I'd probably aim for a 6300 or 6400 though, I hear they can hit 2.8, 3GHz without a voltage increase or water cooling. And while I'm too young to have experienced the Celeron 300/450 era directly (no job, no money), I read all the articles about it and that's what got me interested in this stuff.

    It's too bad. I was all set to get a Denmark Opt 165 with some of that crazy ass +500 DDR and overclock the everloving shit out if it. I heard people were hitting 3.2GHz and it was getting me all wet. @_@

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  24. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by kirkb · · Score: 1

    If a had a conscience, I probably wouldn't be playing GTA.

    --
    Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
  25. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by geekoid · · Score: 1

    the cost for Dell(for example) to equally support to different Vendors for CPU's is substantial.

    If Intel doesn't deliver, then they could go with AMD and pay a smaller cost for change over then two lines.

    Intel knows if they piss off a customer, they will loose it. So there is incentive for intel to play well with its customer.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  26. Crap!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I went on newegg this morning and happened to pick out almost the exact same hardware as in the article (the hotrod), I went back a few hours later to find out the motherboard is now out of stock. Thanks a lot!!!

  27. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by rmallico · · Score: 1

    as are your clothes, your underwear, your shoes and part from your car or motorcycle... what is your point?

    --
    sig goes here!
  28. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by Were-Rabbit · · Score: 1

    How true. Customer choice is such a bad idea. I so thank the PC vendors for letting me know that I'm too stupid to decide which processor I want to use in their products.

  29. Soundcard by edbob · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just checked out the system guide for the "Hot Rod". Since the Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard has Dolby 7.1 channel audio on board, why would one need to spend $110 on a separate audio card? Is there really a difference between on-board audio and the audio cards that are mentioned in this article?

    1. Re:Soundcard by cciRRus · · Score: 1
      Is there really a difference between on-board audio and the audio cards that are mentioned in this article?
      There may be a difference in the CPU utilization of your audio (sound) processor.

      I have a MSI K8NGM2-FID motherboard that came with a Realtek 880/860 onboard sound processor. Basically, the frame rates of 3D games became noticebly lower when I had used the onboard sound processor as compared to the times when I had used a Creative Soundblaster Live! PCI card. I suppose this has to do with the contention of processing resources between the onboard sound processor and the rest of the system. The use of the PCI sound card (SBLive has EMU10K1 processor, a 2.44 million transistor DSP capable of 1000 MIPS for audio processing) perhaps relieved a great deal the sound processing required by the games and therefore allowing the CPU to have more time to serve the games; as a result, the frame rates were higher.

      If you are interested about my experience with onboard sound processor and gaming performance, you can read it here.
      --
      w00t
  30. you're out of touch by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    DDR2 is already cheaper than DDR. Go price 1GB of each on newegg.

    Your idea of "decent" in motherboards is crazy. You are talking a very high spec board here. These kind of boards will cost a lot, for any platform. I looked on Newegg, there are only two Conroe boards that cost over $250, and each includes a WiFi interface with built in access point! Similar boards to these for AM2 cost $200, so the difference isn't all that much anyway.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
    1. Re:you're out of touch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Your idea of "decent" in motherboards is crazy. You are talking a very high spec board here. These kind of boards will cost a lot, for any platform. I looked on Newegg, there are only two Conroe boards that cost over $250, and each includes a WiFi interface with built in access point! Similar boards to these for AM2 cost $200, so the difference isn't all that much anyway.

      You're out of touch. Most of the boards out there that say they support Conroe actually don't. They're either very unstable or have features that don't work with it, and/or require BIOS updates in order to run with a Conroe chip at all. Even then there's no indication of how stable they'll be. As someone else pointed out, you can buy very fully-featured motherboards for AM2 for about half the price of a Conroe board, and they'll be a lot more stable than most of them too.
    2. Re:you're out of touch by bsims · · Score: 1
      You're out of touch. Most of the boards out there that say they support Conroe actually don't. They're either very unstable or have features that don't work with it, and/or require BIOS updates in order to run with a Conroe chip at all. Even then there's no indication of how stable they'll be.

      That's why I am looking at the Intel D975XBX.

      Intel says it does Conroe and I guess they should know. All that and great Linux support, what more do you need? Well besides a IDE controller card (I intend to reuse my old drives).

    3. Re:you're out of touch by quag7 · · Score: 1

      I am typing on a system right now using the Intel "Bad Axe" D975XBX with an E6700 Core 2 Duo.. I am not an overclocker or anything, but so far this system has been rock stable and Gentoo Linux slid onto it like butter. I only have one hard drive and don't use RAID so I haven't tested that but onboard sound, all of the drive controllers, firewire, and so on were automatically detected by Linux.

      *** Make sure if you are ordering the Intel D975XBX that it has a BIOS revision of at least 204. *** I've read that anything earlier than this will not boot with a Core 2 Duo. Some of these are being sold as "Conroe ready" or similar.

      So, I can definitely recommend this combination to Linux users at least. I recall reading something about a motherboard jumper having to be reset if an overclock setting doesn't work properly.

      Being fairly conservative, I used memory which others reported to work in a stable manner. Obviously not the fastest memory available, but rock stable without touching anything in the BIOS:

      CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Unbuffered (from the invoice)

      You can get faster memory but this was one that several people reported to work well, and it works well for me too.

      Then I used an eVGA eGeForce 7900 GT KO. FPS is something like 16751 in glxgears. There was a revision of this video card recently which fixed problems some users were having - the eVGA site has information on the right SKUs for the revised cards.

      Anyway I don't represent this as the best choice for performance or price or anything, but it works really well on Linux.

  31. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMDs complete LACK of control of the motherboard has locked them out NOT intel, the absolute MISERABLE situation from Sis ALI Via and the like is what has kept amds out of Dell and other big oems, NOT intel--- i want to be an AMD user again REALLY i do but the last DECENT amd i had was a k6-2 400 on a INTEL based Tx board (and yes that is possible)

  32. Re:Irrational AMD fanboys foaming at the mouth by drsmithy · · Score: 1
    Show me proof that the major PC vendors are voluntarily making available equal quantities of AMD and Intel-based PCs (with no sneaky, inside deals with Intel to lock out AMD) so that their customers can have the choice of which one to purchase. Then, I'll reconsider my current stance that Intel is evil.

    That's a pretty fucking stupid way of deciding whether or not *intel* is evil...

    You've obviously already made your conclusion and have no interest in changing your mind. Why bother pretending otherwise with ridiculous "I could be convinced otherwise if [insert stupidity here] happens" statements ? Just be honest and waste less time in your life.

    IMHO, if there's anything Intel has done that you'd consider "evil", then I think you need to step outside of your mum's basement and get a bit more perspective on current events and modern history.

  33. go ahead and say it... by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    But it isn't true. I priced the same mobos for both platforms. The AM2s aren't half price, they are $60 cheaper. These are top of the line boards, as the parent suggested, they are stable and the features work.

    If you want to compare across brands, go ahead. We'll never settle that argument because you'll say that the comparisons I make aren't proper because the cheaper boards I suggest aren't stable but the cheaper ones you suggest are. I've been there before, done that argument.

    I wouldn't buy an ASRock either, but there are plenty of affordable, well-working Conroe-capable motherboards out there whether the AMD fanboys see them or not.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95