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Intel Core 2 Duo Vs. AMD AM2
ThinSkin writes, "ExtremeTech has an extensive performance roundup across the entire line of Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD AM2 CPUs, from the cheap to the ultra-high end. Both companies bring five processors to the table, ranging from $152 to $1,075, with the mid-range CPUs boasting the best in price/performance. From the article: 'It's clear that Intel's Core 2 Duo lineup offers superior performance across the product line when compared with AMD's Athlon 64. In some applications, even a lower-cost Core 2 Duo can outperform some of the higher-end Athlon 64s.'" The ExtremeTech article is spread over 10 ad-laden pages. You can read it all on the printer-friendly page, but you'll miss out on the pretty graphs.
Nice, but can it perform cunnilingus on a hardwood floor?
Ah, Competition at its finest. Although it seems right now AMD is a bit behind Intel in speed I am glad it is there. Without head to head competition with Intel and AMD Intel will probably still be pushing higher GHZ with little consideration of performance/heat and power usage. I will not be to surprised if in a year or so AMD will be faster then in a couple years Intel will be faster. As well with these to guys fighting it out the consumer wins, as the companies compete for performance and price. I would say it is best not to be in love with either Company because if this processor war is won, we the consumer will loose.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
:-) crypto benches.
Seems core2 is closer to Opteron but not quite there.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
As much as it's done for us in the last 20 years, 32-bit x86 is not the future. Linux was AMD64-ready three years ago and Windows Vista which is just around the corner already puts more emphasis on the x86-64 platform than x86. Reviewing the 32-bit performance of core 2 duo is like reviewing Pentium processers based on 16-bit performance. Let's get some forward looking reviews instead of backward looking reviews, please!
Slashdot should make a habit of linking to the printer friendly version when someone submits their own site. I love it.
the review missing that there is no nforce 5 boards for intel out there.
The printer friendly link doesn't seem to be working. Meaning the people at ExtremeTech noticed Slashdot's evil attempt at denying them ad revenue and changed things around.
Shame on them. This article is a troll.
Weren't there about 20 Core 2 Duo reviews/comparisons with Athlon 64 X2's on July 23 when Core 2 officially launched? We've known these results for longer than a month.
Erm. Maybe you don't care. But if I can buy a mid-range Core 2 Duo for $350 that gives me equivalent performance to an AMD highend processer at $700, I'm damn sure I care.
The CPU of the true pimp. Nothing matches the Commodizzo' Sitty-Fizzo'!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
"The ExtremeTech article is spread over 10 ad-laden pages. You can read it all on the printer-friendly page, but you'll miss out on the pretty graphs."
Or you can just browse with Firefox and install the AdBlock Plus and AdBlock Filterset.G Updater extensions. Hell I don't even remember what the web was like with ads. I haven't punched a monkey in years. Well, a digital monkey anyways.
ok, I'll bite....
This is slashdot. We look at specs and drool. We crave machines with 64 gigs of ram, and a solid state hard drive in the petabyte range. If there is some way to make things blinky or shiny, someone is wondering how much longer their kids can put off braces. If someone comes out with a way to make IE 7 beta 4 load pages 3% faster, someone is going to be running tests all night long. It's news for nerds, stuff that matters. Go troll on digg or break.com and you'll have a point, but not here.
All in all I'm glad that Intel has decided to retake the lead in the price/performance war, AMD needs a new kick in the pants.
Storm
I want one of these companies to release a complete implemetation for hardware virtual machines. I want my Windows games to run full bore, right next to my linux dev environment.
Maybe I'll just have to wait another 5 years for Xen to come of age.
competing companies often take turns being the technological leader; rick romero reports at 11
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Performance/Watt or Performance/$$$ matters, what difference does it make how many cycles are required to accomplish a given task?
The last Intel processor I bought for home use was a P2. I recently purchased a Core 2 Duo 6400 and I am *so happy* with it. As discussed at this article:
8 02
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2
The Core 2 Duos are tremendously and easily overclockable. I upped my performance 25% by changing the FSB from 266 to 333. While this sounds like a significant overclock, for the Core 2 Duo it is actually rather conservative. You juse switch to DDR-667 memory. I'm using the stock Intel cooler and my chips are running just fine temperature wise. People who are more ambitious are going for 400+. When you combine the inherent performance and value in the line with the ease of significant overclocking, AMD isn't even in the same ball game anymore.
Evolution: love it or leave it
So how are you supposed to know how much performance you're getting for X money without benchmarks like these? Don't be so arrogant.
Not playing games is the reason. You're only using applications and most applications will be speedy with a 3.4 GHz machine. The applications that take 45 minutes+ could be speeded up, but will you notice it if you are not at the computer while it is processing?
I'm a PC gamer in need of an upgrade. I'm seriously considering going back to consoles since online gaming with them has really taken off. In that case, I probably would not upgrade my computer anytime soon.
Thanks to ExtremeTech for becoming the 519th hardware website to make such a proclamation. I normally just lurk but I felt compelled to comment given the fact that something like this made the front page. Did you guys just hear about the Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire too?
In reading the review, I came to the end and the author stated that the core duo lineup routed the X2 line... But I don't remeber seeing an X2 processor... I glanced back through the linup, but didn't see an X2 listed.
Did they just omit the X2 part of the processor line, or did I miss something, or is the author jumping to conclusions?
Someone correct me, but if they were comparing core 2 duo processors to single core 64's it doesn't seem like a consistent benchmark.
Did I fall asleep somewhere between the ads? Or is this a mistake?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
Looks to me like AM2 starts a little lower than $152.
Every AM2 processor is dual-core, or "X2."
Pretty graphs -- I don't think so.
A fuzzy and completely unusable 21KB GIF for "Half Life 2" is the biggest graph on the last page before the conclusion.
...um... if that is the case, how do you explain these?e gory=34&N=2010340343+50001028+1051720996+130282027 6&Submit=ENE&Manufactory=1028&SubCategory=3432 E16819103631 ...so which ones were they using? I can accept that they were beat, I just think it was kinda muddled... did they ever say that they were using X2's? Like I said, I think I missed it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Cat
You will see the listing of "single core" under each of the Athlon processors, along with the sempron,(which I know were not tested).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Here you see an athlon AM2 3800+ that is single core.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
No. AM2 Windsor is dual core, AM2 Orleans is single core (so is Manila, but that's Sempron, not Athlon).
just use adblock with firefox. Anyone who doesnt nuke banner ads deserves what they get.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I'm not going hunting for the links, but all power consumption comparisons I've seen show intel in the lead over AMD now in terms of power consumption vs. performance.
I'm not sure about dollar for dollar any more, AMD stuff is going cheap now because they've lost the lead, especially if you don't mind relatively poor performance.
dB for db? since when did processors make noise? If you're talking about their respective heat output for equivalent performance, again it seems intel are now ahead. The core 2 runs cool enough that he cpu fan can be easily replaced with a fanless (silent) alternative anyway.
And I want some *affordable* options for a POWER chip on a mobo that I can use to build a system with. One with a CELL as well, a real hybrid mobo. I am beyond annoyed with x86 amd versus intel duo duopoly nonsense for home desktops, let's see some more variety back in computers like in the olden days. Having two choices that are near identical is not all that much of a choice anymore, they are so close in price and performance and in function as to be almost indistinguishable. And now that apple went over-where's the real choice again? Yes I know you can get a very expensive workstation from IBM or some even more expensive Sun thing, I mean in the affordable range for the non business computer customer.
$DIETY bless the blinky bits, there's a lot of joy to be had at watching the flickering lights of a multi-disk array that you built yourself. Watching in real-time as different disks get used to service requests can be a bit mesmerizing. (Plus it points out a possible performance issue with mdadm's RAID10 implementation when disk 0 has a higher utilization then the other disks.) Of course, I used to be entranced by the lights on the front of my 14.4Kbps modem.
All in all I'm glad that Intel has decided to retake the lead in the price/performance war, AMD needs a new kick in the pants.
Indeed, prices for AMD processors have been a bit stagnant for the past few years. I think the Opterons topped out at 2.6GHz, but are very expensive. If nothing else, at least the new Intel Core Duo chips forced them to finally drop prices on the X2's. Now if we can just see some price pressure on the Opteron dual-cores I'd be a very happy geek.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Well if you compare the prices on price watch and the prices in the article you'll see that they are all x2's, or he way over paid for single cores.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The floor's construction is obviously tongue in groove.
And I'm so ashamed, I'm posting as AC. *sigh*
no, that is simply not true, you have brought shame upon your family.
you disgust me man-ape.
Given their prices, the E6300 should obviously be compared to the 4200+ rather than to the 3800+. Looking at this particular pairing, rather than the nearly clean sweep for Intel, they each win some and lose some. If you simply count wins, the Intel wins more than the AMD -- but to mean much, you need to look at what they win at, not just how many different benchmarks they win. Just for example, PCMark05 goes 3:1 in favor of the E6300 -- but quite frankly, none of PCMark05 really means a thing.
Unless money is no object to you, the two lines look pretty closely matched. In video encoding and rendering tasks, Intel wins quite easily. In the ScienceMark scores, AMD wins pretty easily. Elsewhere, a lot are really too close to call based on the data provided. There are a number of cases in which each wins by less than 2%. It's impossible to say for sure without knowing things like the standard deviations on these scores, but there's a pretty fair chance they have no statistical significance at all.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Therefore an invalid comparison according to TFA which only looked at the dual core offerings.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Except the frequency of the Orleans 3800+ is 2.4 Ghz, whereas the Windsor (and Manchester before it) clocks in at 2.0 Ghz (which is clearly pointed out in the article). And to the other replies I meant every AM2 tested...as in there is not a single-core AM2 4200+, 4600+, or 5000+. The only processor where you could even present an argument is for the 3800+, and the frequency clears that right up.
If anyone took the care to notice AMD Opteron still beats Xeon. Dual-core Xeons will then be trumped when dual-dore opterons come out in 2007. Check the site http://multicore.amd.com/en/Products/Availability/
If someone comes out with a way to make IE 7 beta 4 load pages 3% faster, someone is going to be running tests all night long. It's news for nerds, stuff that matters.
I'd agree with you if this was actually new news but it's not and I don't. It was news a few months ago when Intel came out with the Conroe and enlarged the hardware performance envelope a little bit but it's not news now and so it doesn't matter. Software is waaaaay behind the silicon. It's the software news that matters right now and there's not much of it.
This will still be necessary as long as there are AMD fanboys out there still living in denial.
Without 64 bit benchmarks, you can't make up your mind, unless you are some kind of Wintel fanboy who's ignored the Vista hype and does not think 64 bit will be practical for years.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As the owner of AMD socket 939 processor I'm going to skip any AM2 socket mainboard. It's time that processor manufactures realize the time to change sockets each year is over. Either they are able to foresee the socket interface for the next 5 years or they have to provide processors for any socket within that time line. The next mainboard I buy is the one which comes closed to this goal and mainboard manufactures are well advise to request this from their processor suppliers. I'll stick to this policy since any processor above a Athlon XP 3000+ is more that sufficient for any task I can envision (including gaming).
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Well, what's stopping you from opening up shop, hiring techs and chip engineers, building your own fab, and competing with everyone?
Oh yeah...that's right. The billions of dollars it would require. I knew there was a catch.
But today I looked at hardware prices and found out that my 2 year old 3.4 GHz Intel motherboard with AGP bus is hopelessly outdated, and that you can get a dual core Intel CPU cheap.
I just wished I could wave the same magic over my 0.001 Gig Internet connection. A super fast system that can render full motion video is fine as long as the video isn't Buffering 02% Complete Buffering 03% complete....
The truth shall set you free!
There is a third party. It's called Via. They compete mostly at the low end, and they're doing quite well in Asian markets.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Core2duo processors seem very attractive - nobody can deny that. HERE you can find Tom's Hardware benchmarks of Core2Duo against AMD processors.
However, another interesting thing is that Intel is very open source friendly. Intel's new top of the line graphics adapters (found on some core2duo motherboards) have _FULLY_ open source Linux drivers! That is a _BIG_ thing! You can find more information HERE. Imagine! Now you can have fully open source OS without any binary drivers messing up your system. These on board graphics adapters are also very fast and capable, so it's a big thing to many of us.
Umm... sure, I've got a minute to waste. Quit busting on other people like this now... here's why....
... and it was 64-bit
:
1) Many of us were using the later betas of Windows 2000 64-bit for the XP platform (MSDN subscribers had access) until Compaq cancelled their agreement with MS
2) Many of us have run Windows XP or Windows servers editions on Itanium
3) Many of us have played XP 360 running a 64-bit Windows 2000 derivative for PowerPC
4) Many of us have been in the Solaris world running 64-bit for a REALLY long time
5) Many of us have used IRIX workstations running in 64-bit for a long time
I will toss you a bone and let you feel a little better for getting the encryption bit correct... but wait a second... in a multitasking environment, the simple cost of task switching AMD64 is more expensive... BECAUSE of the additional registers. You may not realized, but for the most part, almost noone actually uses the standard task state change mechanism of Intel processors favoring manual backup and restore with a far jump instead since TSS related calls are painfully expensive. Now task switching has become far more expensive. Now instead of pushing and popping (not including index and pointer regs) general purpose registers requires pushing and popping 256 bytes compared to the earlier 32 bytes. Of course the faster memory performance will compensate for a bit of it, but let's face it, it still hurts a little.
Now let's get to media encoding... ummm what the hell are you talking about?
You seem to like talking about matrix calculations as if any CODEC actually implements the matrix operations in general purpose registers using the standard ALU.... well some do... strictly for reference implementations, but in reality there are units particularly built for this type of calculation. This is the entire purpose of SIMD, SSE, 64Now!, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4 (and altivec for example elsewhere). The fact is, why in the name of all that is good on this planet would anyone implement a matrix calculation in a execution path locked to 64-bit ALU based instructions when in reality, SSE first of all gives you a minimum of 8 packed registers executing on four 32 bit sets in parallel? As I see from your website, mathematical precision is of importance to you, but in the world of CODECs, there is limited need for anything more precise.
Mathematica, Maple, Mathlab etc... obviously benefit from the new architecture, but come on... are you actually making use of 64-bit integer instructions? If it speeds up anything, it's the UI when running simulations. In reality you're comparing apples to oranges. And not that you've noticed apparently, Mathematica has run on 64-bit for a LONG LONG time.
Ok... you talk about larger virtual address space... that's an excellent topic to discuss... Windows Server has supported PAE for a while, or Physical Address Extension allowing virtual memory to be addressed as 64-bit... this is in fact a documented CPU extension from Intel. Oh.. I'm sorry were you talking about PHYSICAL ADDRESS SPACE? Yes, the Xeon faced certain addressing limitations, but they were circumvented using chipset trickery that allowed PAE to be remapped to larger address spacing externally. This is how companies like Dell, IBM, etc... were able to ship Xeon systems that could address 8Gbytes or more. I don't know the full technical details, but I'd imagine that it is closely related to using fancy paging methods through a more advanced MMU.
Windows Vista will be released in two flavors, one in 32-bit and one in 64-bit. I'm guessing from watching the transition from 16 to 32 bit computing that one thing will be clear, since Microsoft isn't releasing a dual-mode binary (Apple didn't either, their package format just pointed to two executables), that intelligent vendors will rely on either
a) Release an installer that will detect the architecture and install the suitable executable 32 or 64 bit
b) Ignore 64-bit since for the most part,
Not really responding to anyone in specific, but this seemed a resonable place to bring this up.
You need a motherboard for these cpu's and really should consider the cost of that as well, much else can be retained from the system being upgraded, but not Mb's and in many cases the ram.
Last I heard Intell wasn't shipping to meet demand on MB's such that what you save in cpu cost you loose in MB cost.
This will probablly change for the better, but with the rate at which changes are comming down the pike it might just be best to wait a few months till things settle a bit and the various 'issues' are all discovered and the better boards and cpu's are more clearly identified.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
We all know that the performance crown (and certainly the performance per watt crown) went back to Intel with the Core 2 Duo. But at the medium and low price range the performance per $$ is contested. At the beginning the article says that you can't compare the product lines any more (so comparing simply by price would be best) and then make up their own comparison table where they put each AMD processor next to significantly more expensive Intel model. This BS to the highest degree.
64bit is a completely different story, but doesn't matter all that much, because almost all apps are still tuned for 32bit and that won't change for a while. After all hardware is made for software, not the other way around.
Many of the reviews I've seen show that the AMD systems consume significantly less power at idle than the equivalent C2D system. Whilst the C2D is pretty much undoubtedly the faster of the two arches, I'm still pretty staggered by the energy efficiency of the AMD64. As anothe poster pointed out, AMD's cherry picked ADD chips (well, the 3800 X2 ADD anyway) consume utterly tiny amounts of power, even on an appallingly stone aged 90nm lith process ;) I can't wait for AMD's 65nm to start shipping once their process is all sorted out, since 90nm SOI has worked so well for them. That said, since the ADD series are cherry picked they're expensive and hard to come by - last I heard they were of limited availability in Germany.
:D
Since most computers I own spend 90% of their time idling away at 1-5% load, I'm sticking with my AMD's for the time being - I'm not a gamer (although I do alot of video endocoding and have been contemplating a C2D system for my main workstation) so balls to the wall performance is not my highest priority, and keeping the costs of running my PVR's down is quite important to me.
As an aside, has anyone seen any benches for a Merom chip outside of a laptop? I've been thinking abut using one of these as a new Myth frontend, but the chips are like rocking-horse poo at the moment and I'm not aware of any UK stockists.
Anyway, like I said last time - yay for competition! For the first time in years both CPU companies are releasing some pretty interesting kit. Prices for both chips are incredibly low, and given that you can grab an X2 (i.e. more than enough CPU grunt to run anything quickly, including vista, except the latest games at max settings) for less than £100 makes this a great time for customers.
Anyway, enough rambling, time to drool over more CPU specs...
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I'm a cheap bastard and I need performance/price ratios. Tomshardware is too slow with its CPU charts.
Well, you know, IBM is still making chips, they're quite popular with the console market. I don't think there's any PC's or servers using them now that Apple has gone Intel. Although I'm sure that IBM still sells servers that use their own chips. Oh, and then there's SUN processors for servers and workstations. There's a lot more choice out there than you think. If your on the Windows platform, then you pretty much have just AMD and Intel, but if you're on another operating system link Linux/Unix, then there's a few other architectures you can choose from.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If you're a true PC gamer you'll get frustrated and bored with console games pretty quickly. The load times are intolerable, buying memory cards is insulting, running around levels looking for save points is infuriating, the textures are low res, the controls are way oversimplified, the cameras are crap, the controller is way less precise than a mouse... I could go on and on.
Buying a PS2 was actually what clued me in that it was time to upgrade my computer. Some PS2 games are incredible and totally irreplacable (Katamari Damacy!) but all the other best-of-the-best "classics" I tried really fell flat. Kingdom Hearts is simplistic, God of War is Final Fight with a makeover, Final Fantasy is a bunch of random battles with cut scenes... I could go on...
I recently bought an Athlon 64 AM2 with 2 gigs of RAM and a BFG 7900GT. Holy crap do I ADORE my new setup!! I'm replaying all the games I've already finished, Doom 3, Half Life 2 Episode One, Civilization 4, F.E.A.R., Tiger Woods, and I'm enjoying every one of them at 100% detail with 4xAA at a perfect frame rate. The PC experience is just so much more beautiful and immersive. I haven't touched my PS2 - even my beloved Katamari - in weeks and weeks because I love my new PC so much.
Save your pennies and get all the PC goodies you can. Consoles simply don't offer the same degree of immersion and atmosphere that a powerful PC can. Check out a 360 version of Oblivion side-by-side with a very slightly modded PC version and you'll realize all the advantages of the PC platform that we all take for granted.
You think 64GB of RAM is something to drool over? Take a look at the Broadbus B-1.
http://www.broadbus.com/products1.asp
We're talking over a terabyte of RAM here.
SDL wraps/can wrap audio/graphics/input, basically everything you just said. On MS platforms it frontends DirectX, so it's fairly obvious that they are aiming for a cross-platform DirectX alternative. I've programmed against it and it's pretty easy to use.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Xeons prior to Woodcrest did get stomped by Socket 940 Opterons, now with Intel Woodcrest dual-core vs. AMD Socket F dual cores, Intel I believe holds similar advantage that it does in the desktop line.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
don't count on too much price pressure. The memory latency benchmarks are going to hurt Intel, especially when AMD's next gen chips come out. Intel needs to fix its dependency on the FSB to really compete in the near future. There's a reason even Dell is going w/ Opteron for servers.
Just think, AMD's still competitive performance wise (ie, not a full generation behind like P4/P-M) compared to Core 2 on 90nm with a 3 year old design. Their next gen will include some nice features, including a 4MB L3 cache that runs at full CPU clock speeds with 4 cores and 65nm. Given the current comparisons and expected performance improvements, that may very well put the top of the field out of Intel's reach with even a 45nm process.
But we'll have to wait for benchmarks before going there. The AM2 multi-CPU system (4X4) is what I'm waiting to see, and hope that it comes with NUMA (though probably not, those motherboards are running in the $300 and up range).
Either way, things are going to be interesting for the next 8-12 months.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Shouldn't they be comparing the Core 2 with the AMD X2? I don't understand.
I agree that 64-bit has been supported in Linux for almost as long as Linux has been portable. I also agree that 64-bit is the future. What I do question however are those numbers. I don't think the simple action of recompiling for AMD64 will get any performance gain. From what other qualified individuals have told me (nothing I write is ever so large I benchmark 32-bit vs 64-bit versions to optimize), if you just recompile with a different target, your code will almost always be equal or slower in speed. It is when you code specifically to take advantage of the 64-bit address space you see benefit. However, just recompiling in itself won't help you much if any.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
The reason that non-x86 workstations are expensive is because of the lack of volume. By excluding the architecture popular in business, you have essentially severed off the volume manufacturers that can lower the costs for you. You will never find a low-cost computer that uses an architecture that is not mainstream. There is no incentive for companies to invest in the engineering resources to build a few thousand computers that may or may not be sold.
I looked into building my own computer from the chips up, and decided that it was simpler, and less expensive to just buy one.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I've been trying to learn which machine would be better suited for playing dual-stream HDTV or even higher-resolution video, for stereoscopic display. I know that front-side bus speed was a bottleneck for high-def video display once, and fear that it could be again. I am looking at playing two 1080p videos through a dual-head card. I suppose that the only way to know for sure is to try it on both an X6800 and an FX 62, but does anyone have a clear idea of what the difference should be, between the 1066 FSB and the apparently faster AMD bus? Thank you.
I agree - I'm very concerned about idling power. If the idling power can be brought low enough on an entire system, say 5 W, I could leave it on all the time and not bother with trying to get nvram wakeup schemes to work so an HTPC can start up and record a show. I'm typing this on a Windows Centrino laptop now and it annoys the hell out of me how hot the thing gets when I'm doing nothing but scrolling through a document.
This brings up the general issue - why aren't reviewers covering all power efficiency numbers given that is what AMD and Intel are both claiming they are concerned about lately. I didn't read the entire article linked here, but I didn't see any numbers referring to "number of Joules required to transcode a file" or something. I can get lumens per watt for all types of lighting, hopefully computing devices advertising will improve in the future.
Dara
While it is true that you can buy any chip you can imagine in a server, the original poster gave me the impression that he/she wanted a cheap solution with a simple chip-on-a-board (ala PegasOS). Unfortunately, the money is in complete systems tied in with services, so that's the last thing you'll catch IBM selling.
And sure, IBM's chips are popular in consoles, but that's mostly because IBM is the only major chip house that will offer to develop custom chip designs. The game console companies help fund the R&D bill and sign-on for some minimum initial shipment, and IBM makes some money. IBM takes existing core logic and pieces it together to optimize performance for consoles, and out pops a new chip design.
But there's a good reason IBM has time for game consoles: IBM doesn't have NEARLY the sales volume of AMD, let alone Intel. AMD doesn't have time for custom chips because they have enough trouble just meeting market demand for their x86 products. They are shooting for 100 million chips next year once their new fab ramps up, and Intel is shooting for 300 million. IBM, by contrast, will sell only 3-20 million chips per-console, per-year, depending on popularity, and those sales rise and fall periodically as consoles get introuced and mature. Even with all three consoles in their pockets, don't expect IBM to sell more then 30 million per-year.
I don't really see what the attraction is to small-market chips like CELL anyway. My prediction on the subject has already come true: way back when IBM announced the CELL, I predicted that by the time it was released, the PC market would have a similar-performance chip on-offer.
With Intel's release of the quad-core Core2 products later this year (Clovertown), my prediction becomes reality. With 2x128-bit SIMD units per core (for a total of 8 128-bit units per chip), Clovertown is capable of the same performance levels as Cell. AMD's K8L, due out next year, is expected to boast similar performance levels.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Of course AMD dropped their prices. In case you hadn't noticed, prices on CPUs have dropped on a regular basis ever since CPUs became commodity products. The news would have been if they were so far ahead of Intel on the price/performance curve that they didn't drop their prices.
What does the price on an AMD long before these Intel processors were available have to do with anything? Your statement is as pointless as saying the Intel 8088 was a terrible deal in 1982, because an AMD 3800+ costs half as much and runs a gazillion times as fast. Of course it does, but it just wasn't available in 1982!
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
>You can read it all on the printer-friendly page, but you'll miss out on the pretty graphs.
Why? Is there any legitimate reason for this? Printers have been capable of printing graphics for quite a long time -- anyone around who still has a text-only printer? Thought not. Or do they think the idea that if you prefer to read an article on paper, you must also dislike non-textual forms of conveying information?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I wasn't browsing low enough and I missed an AC post before mine giving a good link (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd- energy-efficient.html). There was also one after my post (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx ?i=2795&p=7).
Thanks for both of these. I've looked them over and will read them in detail later. The anandtech article covers power only on page 7 (the one linked) I think, and I was pretty disappointed to see the ratio of idle power to full power. More than 60% it seems. That doesn't bode well for my plans to have an HTPC that can stay on all the time. I'd like it to use 5% of the power when it isn't doing anything.
The xbitlabs story is longer and I couldn't find exact numbers I was looking for during a lunch break.
It appears labs compare processors by running a given program and comparing watts (which works for some things like decoding an HDTV stream), but I'd also like to see numbers from a given task and energy measurements (e.g. compressing a video) over the period of time needed. I'll try looking for that too.
Dara
Many of the reviews I've seen show that the AMD systems consume significantly less power at idle than the equivalent C2D system.
Then you obviously haven't read this one.
Summary:
Intel's most power consuming C2D
C2X6800 Max: 217W Min: 160W (Speedstep)
AMD's most power consuming CPU
FX-62 Max: 283W Min: 192W
AMD's least power comsuming offering (with comparable performance)
64 FX-60 Max: 255W Min: 161W (Cool'n'Quiet mode)
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Also forgot to mention:
I can't wait for AMD's 65nm to start shipping once their process is all sorted out, since 90nm SOI has worked so well for them.
They'd better hurry.. Intel is planning on moving to 45nm in mid-2007.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Completely agree, it's a much overlooked area of CPU reviews. Try finding real-world power consumption figures for the Intel E6300 - not easy. Everyone only seems to give a crap about overclocking the new XTXXLLLLGTSFX2006 these days ;)
For a great little run down on CPU power across a wide range of chips, try this one for size: http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/low_e/
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
This is awesome. After taking dexamethasone for just 3-4 days, I can''t figure a way to spin this article into an opportunity to bang people in the head with my desktop fusion engine discoveries. http://www.newpath4.com/ The drug overlords couldn't stop me with Lithium dissolving my brain, overdosed for 12+ YEARS til I developed Parkinson's tremors & Alzheimer's memory blackouts by 2002, so in the guise of HELPING ME BACK TO HEALTH, they vanguish me anyway! Well, at least SlashDot History will record Riley went down fighting for ImitationEnergy. http://www.newpath4.com/imitationenergy.htm
Hmm. I wonder what the missing newpath4 pages being held back say?
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
Yeah but you could also buy a $100 amd cpu and clock it to the same speed as a fx 60, not seen one that won't hit atleast 2.7ghz. So argument is kind of bunk.
All AMD chips clock to about the same so any x2 is going to be as good as another.