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AMD Athlon 64 6000+ Launched And Tested
Spinnerbait writes "AMD officially launched their next speed bump in the Athlon 64 product line,
in the form of
a new 3GHz part branded the Athlon 64 6000+. This new dual-core Athlon
64 sports 1MB of on-chip cache per core and is designed for AMD's Socket AM2
platform. This chip is still built on AMD's 90nm fab node and is comprised
of some 227 million transistors. It also carries a thermal power profile
of about 125Watts. Unfortunately, in all the
benchmarks seen here, it was still unable to catch Intel's Core 2 Duo E6700
chip at 2.66GHz."
In the full announcement they also mention new 45W single-core desktop processors: Athlon 64 3500+ for $88, and 3800+ for $93.
AMD's upcoming kl8 chip will have L3 that can be used by all cores also amd chips don't need a lot cache as they have a build in memory controller and a better chipset to cpu, cpu to cpu link. In a 2-4 cpu server the direct cpu to cpu links with out havening to use the chip set also reduce the need. I think that Intel may have to add cache to the ram controller / main chip set soon in there 4 cpu severs. Also AMD cpu let you have more then one cpu to chipset link in a system so you can have 2 chip set like in nforce pro systems 4x4 systems.
939=DDR Ram
AM2=DDR2 Ram
-- Karma: beyond good and evil - mostly affected by posting political
Not sure why you would be in any hurry to upgrade if you're just worried about your mainboard. AM3 processors will work in AM2 sockets.
It may be important for some things, true, but a significant reason for the performance of the Core 2 duo is that most of the benchmark applications are heavily optimised for SSE, and the core 2 duo executes 128-bit SSE instructions in one cycle, as opposed to two cycles with the Pentium IV and the AMD Athlon 64.
This is massively important as the core 2 duo can then operate on four 32 bit floating point numbers in one clock cycle instead of two.
Several things:
1. They have several production lines. They make more than one CPU type at a time. They are capable of simultaneously producing/testing 65nm while making 90nm parts.
2. Idle time in a fab is a KNOWN COST HAZARD. I'm not making this up. It costs money to keep rooms clean, pay the interest on the debt, etc
3. Word on the street [when I was an AMD employee...] was the average processor cost ~60-80$ USD in raw materials/time/effort to make (assuming 100% yield). Yes, your opteron cost about the same to make (excluding yield problems) as that $50 sempron. So why make semprons if they lose money? Yes, I know I'm discounting yield which does contribute real cost to the processors. On the opteron side though, my take [personal op] was that most of the cost was to recoup the R&D not the production costs.
Point is, both AMD and Intel produce low end parts that cost money. Even in the Celeron line which they call "mistakes" (e.g. parts with broken caches) that's not entirely true and is misleading. Even if you made a defective cache, it costs more money to just throw the die out, then to package it as a celeron and sell it at a loss.
4. Intel cores are fast, but they're not the be-all. They still lack NUMA support which is handy in HPC environments (re: not your desktop). They're also not quite a strong in the ALU front (though from my crypto benchmarks are VERY VERY close).
I'm by no means an AMD fanboi. Hell, my desktop is a core2. But I still love my 2-way Opteron workstation and get it to do things that run circles around the core2 (like hosting 15 engineers running simulations/verifications/etc).
Buy what you need, not what some lame commercial on TV tells you. For many, the core2 is the best buy. It's fast, wicked low power and the cost isn't bad. For others, AMD is the better buy (cheaper) or simply more powerful (opterons).
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The X2 names are double the clock speed (in MHz) for 1MB cache parts, 200 less than that for 512kB cache parts, and 400 less for the 256kB cache part. It seems they've stopped looking at them as Intel cpu performance equivalence numbers. The single-core chips still seem to be named pretty much arbitrarily.
Complete list:
3000MHz dual-core 1MB = 3000x2 = 6000
2800MHz dual-core 1MB = 2800x2 = 5600
2800MHz dual-core 512kB = 2800x2 - 200 = 5400
2600MHz dual-core 1MB = 2600x2 = 5200
2600MHz dual-core 512kB = 2600x2 - 200 = 5000
2500MHz dual-core 512kB = 2500x2 - 200 = 4800
2400MHz dual-core 1MB = 2400x2 = 4800
2400MHz dual-core 512kB = 2400x2 - 200 = 4600
2300MHz dual-core 512kB = 2300x2 - 200 = 4400
2200MHz dual-core 1MB = 2200x2 = 4400
2200MHz dual-core 512kB = 2200x2 - 200 = 4200
2100MHz dual-core 512kB = 2100x2 - 200 = 4000
2000MHz dual-core 1MB = 2000x2 = 4000
2000MHz dual-core 512kB = 2000x2 - 200 = 3800
2000MHz dual-core 256kB = 2000x2 - 400 = 3600
1900MHz dual-core 512kB = 1900x2 - 200 = 3600
It's unfortunate to AMD and those who would support AMD. The customer gets a hotter, more power hungry processor, that is probably just as, if not more, expensive than a cooler, slower GHz rated Intel processor that outperforms the Athlon.
The AMD processors are cheaper than the Intel chips and the difference becomes even more noticeable when you throw in the difference in motherboard costs. I was pricing this out the other week when I wanted to upgrade. I considered a core2 but then looked at the total cost and when with an AMD x2 instead.
My AMD 64 3800+ has FreeDOS on the 2nd partition of my 1st hard drive. It is formatted as a FAT-16 partition. It is one of the choices on the GRUB boot menu. I only boot up DOS every once in a while, but it does run on my AMD 64 computer. About a year ago or so ago I had IBM PC DOS 2000 installed on the 1st partion which also ran well. I later reformatted that partition as NTFS and installed Windows 2000 on my first partition instead. I still have FreeDOS on the 2nd partition. I have Slackware Linux installed on my 3rd partition and in that case I have 32-bit version of Linux running on a 64-bit computer. On a logical partition I have the AMD-64 version of Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Linux which is what I like best and use most of the time.
An easier way to run an old DOS program under Linux or Windows would be to just use the free DOSBox program. In the past, I also used VMWare and had PC DOS 2000 installed on one the the virtual machines. With VMWare I was able to run Linux, Windows and DOS all at once.
It does.
With Athlons, the memory controller are on the northbridge (just like Intel's). You can put whatever memory on the mother board, as long you put the correct north bridge.
So that's why you have both SDR and DDR Socket A mother boards.
That's not how is works with Athlon 64s : They have on die memory controller. The type of memory you can connect to the mother board is directly determined by the type of processor. And until recently each type of processor has it's own connector :
Single Channel DDR : Socket 754
Dual Channel DDR : Socket 939
Dual Channel DDR2 : Socket AM2
Only from now on will you have mutually compatible AM2/AM2+/AM3 mother board, which will use mechanically compatible connectors and the limitation will be only be the memory controllers on the chips (AM3 processors have both DDR2 and DDR3 and can got in all 3 motherboard. AM2 chips only have DDR2 and only go in AM2/2+ MB).
On Athlon 64 motherboard, the nortbridge is nothing more than a controller in charge of peripherals and their busses and doesn't touch the memory at all. It's completly agnostic of the memory and only speaks "Hypertransport" to the CPU. It is mutually interchangeable with all mother board. And in fact you can find the exact same VIA KT880 AGP chipset on mother board from 754 all the way up to AM2, regardless of the memory.
You can make different king of motherboard with the same chipset.
But 939 Processor can only connect to DDR memory, so you're stuck with it.
(On the otherhand, we could imagine building PCI-e nForce6 motherboards for Socket 754 CPUs and AGP KT880 mother board for AM3 connectors. But no company curently bothers.)
As a side note, that's one of the reason why Athlon64 have a smaller cache :
- Unlike Intels they're not limited by the bus speed for memory transfers. They have access to memory at full speed.
- Memory access is direct, without having first to be processed by north bridge and latency is much lower.
Of course now that DDR2 (and even more DDR3) have higher latency, these advantages don't shine any more.
To see it by yourself can look at the trace on the mother board. On regular mother board, the north bridge is in the middle and has trace both to the memory and to the CPU. The CPU is only linked to the northbridge.
On athlon64 mother board, the traces go from the memory to the CPU. The north bridge is only connected to the CPU.
In fact now that the AM2/2+/3 familiy has been declared upward compatible, you may start to see the same kind of compatibility that we had back with the Slot-1 connector which could be used with the first Pentium IIs all the way up to the latest Pentium II Tualatins (given one uses the correct slotket).
And this what exactly this is all about : AMD *does want* a stable socket so they can attract potential chip makers that will be interested in making specialized coprocessors that will remain compatible thru all upgrades from AM2 to AM3.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
- Athlon 64 X2 is their dual-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 939 motherboards.
- Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
- Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
- Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.
So, to answer your questions: Athlon FX's are not dual core (dual core chips will be labeled Athlon 64 X2), no matter what socket they use. Intel does have four-core offerings, and they do call them Core 2 Quads. The Core 2 Extreme is not necessarily a four-core chip; there are Core 2 Extreme Duo and Core 2 Extreme Quad flavors.Read my blog.
Just a nitpick, but this was never - officially at least - the case. The Performance Rating is scaled against a Thunderbird (B I think) at 1GHz (which was nominally rated 1000). Still, nice post.
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