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The Gigahertz Race is Back On
An anonymous reader writes "When CPU manufacturers ran up against the power wall in their designs, they announced that 'the Gigahertz race is over; future products will run at slower clock speeds and gain performance through the use of multiple cores and other techniques that won't improve single-threaded application performance.' Well, it seems that the gigahertz race is back on — a CNET story talks about how AMD has boosted the speed of their new Opterons to 3GHz. Of course, the new chips also consume better than 20% more power than their last batch. 'The 2222 SE, for dual-processor systems, costs $873 in quantities of 1,000, according to the Web site, and the 8222 SE, for systems with four or eight processors costs $2,149 for quantities of 1,000. For comparison, the 2.8GHz 2220 SE and 8220 SE cost $698 and $1,514 in that quantity. AMD spokesman Phil Hughes confirmed that the company has begun shipping the new chips. The company will officially launch the products Monday, he said.'"
Anyone doing graphics, even hobbyists. Editing home movies with effects, for example can use an almost unlimited amount of resources. As an artist working with a graphics tablet on large file in photoshop, and complex vector graphics, processors are no where near fast enough. I want everything now. I don't want to wait for the screen to redraw. I don't want to have to wait for filters. Bollocks to that. Give me 64-core 24GHz machine an I'd find a way to slow it down.
I remember having multiple PaintShopPro files open at the same time and hearing the hard drives churning.
perhaps you need more memory? a bajillion gigawurtz won't help.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Want to see bloat? Check the latest version of Nero Burning ROM. It installs loads of crap, hoses the whole system and makes it unstable, and takes hundreds of MB in the hard disk. Then some pirate trimmed the crap and made a "lite" version, which works MUCH better.
Circumcision is child abuse.
AMD64 has 16 registers
AMD seems to be working on putting a GPU in ther CPU
Memory used to be managed by a dedicated chip -- the northbridge. But AMD moved it into the CPU because it was faster that way.
The APIC? But anyway, the slow part of interrupt handling is done in the OS kernel, which runs on the CPU. So I'm not sure how much a chip would help there.
I'm not an expert, but my guess is that because computers are all-purpose devices. Specialized hardware can accelerate something like encryption or audio mixing, but there doesn't seem to be all that much of that sort of thing that's still worth accelerating. Most people don't need to encrypt the huge amounts of data that would make a dedicated accelerator make much of a difference. Notice also how now almost nobody buys sound cards anymore, because you can just mix sound in hardware.
The only part of a computer that I can not picture graphics work using would be the sound card, and that's only because I haven't heard of anyone crazy enough to try it yet.
Low thermal dissipation is a much more prevalent theme for AMD than it is for Intel, especially outside of the notebook sector. Yes, Intel has some 1.06 and 1.20 GHz Core 2 Duo ULVs for laptops and those have a 10-watt or so thermal dissipation while AMD's lowest-TDP mobile chips rate in at 25 watts (Turion 64 MT/Sempron.) Intel also has the single-core Core Solo series at 1.06-1.33 GHz that dissipates 5.5 watts. However, those chips are very rarely seen in any notebooks larger than a 12" screen size. You'd be much more likely to see a 31-watt Core Duo or 34-watt Core 2 Duo sitting in an average laptop than a 10-watt C2D ULV. AMD's Turion X2s have similar TDPs, ranging from 31 to 35 watts. All of the processors have similar frequency and voltage scaling mechanisms and battery life is roughly similar.
For desktops, most of Intel's newer Core 2 Duo processors have an average thermal dissipation of 65 watts. The fastest Core 2 Duo, the 2.93 GHz X6800, has a 75-watt average TDP. The quad-core chips range from 105 watts for the 2.40 GHz Q6600 to the 130-watt QX6700. These chips have a very reduced version of the SpeedStep that Intel puts in its laptop chips. The lowest core speed of the 800 MHz FSB chips is 1.20 GHz and 1.6 GHz for the 1066 MHz FSB chips. AMD's current new desktop processors start from a maximum thermal dissipation of 35 watts for the single-core Sempron EE and go up to 45 watts for the Athlon 64 single-cores (Lima), 65 watts for the Athlon 64 X2 models from the 3600+ to the 5200+, 89 watts for the 5400+ and 5600+, and 125 watts for the X2 6000+ and FX-70 series. The AMD chips all clock down to 1 GHz at idle. AMD also rates the chips on their absolute maximum thermal dissipation rather than an average thermal dissipation like Intel does, so a 65 watt AMD chip will usually end up drawing less power than an Intel 65-watt chip. The AMD chips also draw significantly less power at idle due to their lower clock speed.
The scenario is much the same for servers. AMD has their High Efficieny line of dual-core chips that draw 68 watts, the normal line that draws 95 watts, and the SE line that draws 125 watts. Intel has a few low-voltage Xeons, but those are very uncommon and pretty much limited to blade server vendors. AMD sells its Opteron HEs through a wide range of vendors.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Actually, games are heavily optimized and do use everything they're given effectively. The use of a GPU is normal when you consider the graphics on modern games (it takes a LOT of processing power to render something that beautiful 30 times a second...). The CPU is used for physics and game state calculations, which are certainly not negligible.
Le français vous intéresse?
Someone who does heavy video work can certainly chew up a lot of processing power.
nope.
I edit 1080i HD video all day long on a incredibly old P4-3.0ghz processor.
I even render effects on it as well as CG at those resolutions and it works just fine and speedy. a 30 minute episode renders in a little over an hour to mpeg2 for airing at a TV station or for bluRay disc. The biggest thing you need in video editing is MEMORY. 4gig or more helps a lot as well as really fast U320 scsi drives.
Processor speed has a far lower effect on video editing performance than hard drive speeds and available memory.
Note: 1080p is not going to be common. 1080i is here to stay for ENG (news and TV show use) shooting progressive for anything but a movie with planned lighting and camera moves makes a really crappy looking news clip , tv show or sitcom.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
KDE4 and appropriate libaries for will supposedly be compatible with Windows, though last I checked I think the estimated release date is sometime like October 23, 07...
If Fedora users who are KDE fans are lucky and I remember Fedora's release cycle right, Fedora 8 should be out around late October or November...