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AMD Cuts X2 Processor Prices
BDPrime writes "AMD is cutting prices for its X2 processors, according to an update on its microprocessor pricing list. The cuts refer to AMD's Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 X2 chips. Some of the price cuts are almost in half."
...unless you'd like reduced performance on 64-bit code.
Going from 32-bit to 64-bit, Intel performance drops 5%. AMD performance goes up 30%.
You can't stay 32-bit forever. Even the Windows gamer world will end up 64-bit. Linux has already moved, with 100% 64-bit being common for years now.
Intel also does badly when you have more than 4 GB of memory. The AMD chips have an on-chip IO-MMU that can be used to avoid bounce buffers. PCI DMA on an Intel box can only reach the low 4 GB of memory; the OS must copy the data around if you have more RAM.
I just bought one, too: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. I can't say I'm too upset about missing a price drop. These things happen.
What's really cool about these chips, IMO, is that you can get the power-efficient ones that only draw 65 W max for the CPU. My new system only draws 133 W (monitor included) with both CPUs running full blast, and when they're idle and the monitor is powered down, it goes down to only 51 W! These chips have AMD's cool'n'quiet, which is fully supported in recent linux kernels.
This was my first time running a dual-core system. So far I really haven't seen any improvement in performance from the dual core. The sad truth is that most of the time when I end up waiting for my computer to do something, it's either (a) doing I/O, (b) doing something CPU-intensive that's not parallelizable, or (c) it's limited by the speed of the memory, not the speed of the CPU.
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I think they have. Although there have been fines imposed for fixing prices in the past that the memory companies needed to recuperate as well as supplies being limited because of DDR2 and 3 becoming more available.
There are several factors at work here but 5 years ago, 512 megs was going in the $100+ range. Now a full gig is under that in some cases. A key difference between the two might be the amount of competition that is limited by the CPU designs and motherboards that support them when dealing with memory. The memory is more of a reactionary process were they make something then wait for it to be used and the processors generally dictate what types of memory is to be used. You cannot have the same level of competition as you would with processors because of the dependence of usages. On the other hand, Taping into newer processes in production that would make them cheaper seems more reasonable for newer styles of memory when considering the retooling effort needed. Why spend million rebuilding the production system for a third generation technology when you can tool for DDR2 or DDR3 that will have a longer life span.
There are probably more factors involved. I think these are some that seem to pop out and could be likely to influence the price a bit.
I remember during the Pentium IV days all the AMD fans were constantly talking about how AMD owned the price to performance crown and that Intel was overpriced, ran hot (energy inefficient), and was just all around not as good an architecture. They were right - and I bought an Athlon 64 instead of a P4.
Now those same people are trying to argue that the less expensive, cooler and more efficient Core2Duo are still not as good as their beloved AMD. They will point to 64 bit performance or performance over 4GB of ram - or a myraid of little things that are not relevant to the vast majority for at least the next couple years to support their bias.
The processor wars, just like the video wars, will go back and forth. Nobody stays on top forever. Intel, after many years trailing, had their leap ahead for a generation or two. The people who are the most rational go with the best architecture or company at the time. I bought an ATI 9600 instead of a Nvidia 5600, even though I had always owned Nvidia and loved the drivers, because it was the better value for the money at that time.
The bigger person, the more rational person, is the one who can be objective about these things. Which CPU company you "love" is a very strange thing to have an irrational passion about...
Ditto with Debian and Ubuntu and probably every other 64-bit distro
Frankly, I got a 64-bit CPU cause I wanted to *use* it. It gives me extra registers (important for x86 code!) and access to more memory. And the warm smug feeling of knowing that all my Linux apps run 64-bit native *years* before the same can be said of Windows.
This is certainly a noticeable effect. Though so many apps use so much memory, I imagine there's a lot of low-hanging fruit to improve memory usage without worrying too much about 64bit vs 32bit.
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The real best-kept secret in the CPU world today is the X2 3600+. It's selling on Newegg for $65 right now, and while a dual-core 1.9GHz Athlon 64 isn't going to make Intel tremble, $65 is pretty darn close to Celeron price territory. Apparently the 3600+ overclocks well, too. Really well.
Intel has tried to move away from x86: look at the Itanium and Itanium II.
Also look at iAPX 432, i860 and i960, a long time before itanic (which is a science project gone wrong).