AMD Quad-Core Opteron (Barcelona) Tech Report

crazyeyes writes "AMD has been very tardy with Barcelona. Countless AMD fans have eagerly awaited a new processor. As the day draws closer, TechARP takes a look at the upcoming quad-core AMD Opteron. Is there more to it than just its four processing cores? Will it be the Intel-killer that AMD promised long ago? From the article: 'AMD is in the same boat as ATI. Delays after delays of their long-awaited Barcelona core not only ensured the dominance of their rival, Intel, in the desktop processor market, it also ensured that Intel would be the only choice for those who want a quad-core processor. Although that wait will end in August, 2007 when the Barcelona is finally launched, it remains to be seen if AMD's new processor will be able to inflict serious damage to Intel's dominance.'"

Comments

Re:Better quad-core how?

[bluSCALE4]

That's because you're not aware of the power of using the GPU in coordination with the CPU. Folding certainly shows GPU as a force not to neglect. You also fail to realize into your comment that quad cores are two dual cores. AMD and Motorola would do this sort of thing to claim next tier technology when in reality they were today's tech on steroids (They often fix GHz speeds with two CPU sets). Now, for some reason, AMD has opted not to do that and we'll see the true worthyness of this strategy with the release of the true quad core.

Re:Intel's sever / workstation chip sets suck

[Maniac-X]

Intel has had an 8-core platform since last summer. Are they talking about "native" quad-core? Does a slight technical difference matter when one exists and one does not exist? How do we know "native" quad-core is better than dual-dual-core-on-a-single-chip?

Actually it makes a lot more difference than you'd think. This is most evident in caches. Intel's quadcore has two shared L2 caches (one per two cores). AMD has a full L2 cache per core AND a shared 2mb L3 cache. Intel doesn't have an L3 cache on any of their stuff. Besides that, HTT is a lot faster than Intel's dated FSB. More bandwidth and faster aggregate links means that yes, the native quadcore will be a lot better.

Aside from that, AMD also still has much better memory performance via the on-chip memory controller, and doubled-width op registers from the last gen AMD stuff.