Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

THG Labs In Depth With AMD Spider

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the caught-you-in-my-web dept.

The Last Gunslinger writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has published detailed results of their laboratory analysis of AMD's recently released Spider platform, including the Phenom 9500 and 9600 running on 790FX chipsets. Amongst other interesting details, the 2.4GHz Phenom 9700 has been pushed back to Q1 2008. The 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 benchmarks on average 13.5% lower than Intel's Q6600 quad-core CPU...and the MSRP for the Phenom is about 13.6% less as well. Much is made of the AMD OverDrive utility, by which the THG labs were able to OC the Spider platform by 25% (3.0GHz) using air cooling alone."

103 comments

  1. Four graphics cards! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With the new 7-series chipset family, consisting of the 790FX, 790X and 770, AMD is simultaneously unveiling the Spider platform. Up to four graphics cards can be set up as a Crossfire X configuration using the new 790FX chipset. Four graphics cards! Now that sounds like a gamer's wet dream. These days, CPU performance is not nearly as important as GPU performance. Four GPUs, running in parallel, with the right level of support in DirectX and OpenGL and you can just imagine those FPS! That's the real news of interest in this article, IMHO.

    --
    My blog
    1. Re:Four graphics cards! by Ed+Avis · · Score: 1

      Has gcc been ported to a GPU yet? Can you compile kernels (or Gentoo) on your video card?

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    2. Re:Four graphics cards! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Has gcc been ported to a GPU yet? Can you compile kernels (or Gentoo) on your video card? It looks like there might be some work ongoing in this area, yes.
      --
      My blog
    3. Re:Four graphics cards! by Dunbal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Four graphics cards! Now that sounds like a gamer's wet dream.

            Yep, only you'll need a 2kW power supply. Can't wait to see your electric bill :)

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    4. Re:Four graphics cards! by bl8n8r · · Score: 1

      > Four graphics cards! Now that sounds like a gamer's wet dream.

      Yes, but unlike wet dreams, 4 gfx cards take a lot more power off the grid. At some point, people are going to have to get by without excessive dependency on energy. It's really just a matter of how bad things will get before people start thinking about conservative choices.

      --
      boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
    5. Re:Four graphics cards! by Spokehedz · · Score: 1

      You won't be using them 24/7 so you'd hardly notice a difference between 1 of these videocards and 4 of them.

      And your 1KW powersupply is usually a 'peak' measurement, not a continuous output.

      And I have space inside my case for two power supplies, so I'm all good.

    6. Re:Four graphics cards! by wwmedia · · Score: 1

      there there! do you need a tissue?

    7. Re:Four graphics cards! by Hemogoblin · · Score: 2, Informative

      This seems an odd move by AMD. I thought that multi-gpu systems were a complete failure? Take a look at Valve's recent hardware survey:

      Multi-GPU Systems (1073 of 269297 Total Users (0.40% of Total) )
      NVIDIA SLI (2 GPUs) 880 82.01 %
      ATI Crossfire (2 GPUs) 193 17.99 %

      So only 0.4% of Steam's users had a multi-gpu system. Maybe this segment is actually profitable, but it's hard to imagine that with such low numbers.

    8. Re:Four graphics cards! by Hemogoblin · · Score: 1

      Oh, here's the link to that survey.

    9. Re:Four graphics cards! by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      You won't be using them 24/7

            And you call yourself a "gamer"? Heh :)

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    10. Re:Four graphics cards! by MrBandersnatch · · Score: 1

      If ATI only came through with the goods that they hyped, such a accelerated video encoding using the cards, then there would be those of us with these on 24/7. I invested in 2xX1800 (while these things where expensive) and I'm still waiting to see a realistic return on that investment.

      DUE SOLELY TO THAT, when my video encoding system gets an upgrade its going Intel+NVidia+Linux....a complete swing from its current AMD+ATI+Windows deployment.

    11. Re:Four graphics cards! by hansamurai · · Score: 1

      I would agree with you that it is a small segment (only 1000 Steam users), but just how much money is coming from just those 1000 users? A lot of these multi-card gamers are probably buying two relatively expensive, high margin cards. The R&D on NVidia and ATI's side is done, now that second card bought by gamers is just extra dollars in the bank for them.

      Now I have to ask you why it's a complete failure? Because they only managed to con 1000 Steam gamers into buying an extra card? Then maybe. Because they've sold 1000 extra video cards to Steam gamers? Not so much then.

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    12. Re:Four graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think they do it because the 0.40% of people with multiple GPUs happen to be the 0.40% of people who buy the GPUs the day they come out, for 10x the price they'll be next month.

    13. Re:Four graphics cards! by Hemogoblin · · Score: 1

      Well that survey shows ATI sold about 200 extra cards. For the sake of the argument, lets say they get $100 in profit off each card. That's a profit of only $200,000. That barely pays for the yearly salaries of a couple of engineers.

      Of course, there could be any number of problems with this brief analysis. For example, the steam hardware survey may not be representative of all gamers. Even so, this is at least some evidence that multi-gpu's aren't the new sliced bread.

    14. Re:Four graphics cards! by pat+mcguire · · Score: 1

      I don't think you can parallelize compilation of a single program. While being able to use the GPU for a stage one Gentoo install would save a lot of time, it won't really help with compiling OpenOffice.org or any other similar enormous piece of software, which are the enormous timesinks that come with that distribution. If you planned it right and did all your compiling at once you might be able to save a little bit of time by compiling one of those big programs on one of the GPU processors while you comile a series of other large programs on your processor, but the gains will be slight.

    15. Re:Four graphics cards! by mdm-adph · · Score: 1

      If you ask me, it's because up until now (with the release of the 3800 series), multi-GPU systems didn't give you that much more of an increase in performance when compared to the amount of money you were spending.

      If you bought two low-end cards and ran them together, it wasn't worth it (the performance increase was negligible), but if you bought two high-end cards (which sometimes showed quite a bit of improvement), you had to spend a fortune.

      The benchmarks I've seen from this new 3800 series, though, tells me that it might become a lot more affordable pretty soon to have a multi-GPU system that actually performs!

      (No, I'm not paid by AMD, but I do think red is a prettier color than green, if it matters.)

      --
      It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
    16. Re:Four graphics cards! by steveaustin1971 · · Score: 0

      Not a very reliable way to judge SLI systems, since most of the Source games on steam don't need/allow SLI anyway, my last 4 rigs have had 2X Nvidia cards in them, and I have two running dual cards in this room now. Also MOST ppl don't send their info to Steam when they install, and its pretty much the CSS stress test that gives them their stats, and CSS is not what you would call a high end game. I keep seeing ppl trying to use Steams stats to show that SLI is a failure, when its not even an accurate sampling of gamers, just a small percentage of Counter Strike players. Most people don't choose to send their results to Steam after running the oh so obsolete CSS stress test, which is where these results come from. If no one is running SLI, how come the SLI bundled video cards are always sold out on Newegg and Tiger direct?

    17. Re:Four graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please, you don't know what you're talking about, so refrain from commenting as if you did.
        Compilation can be parallelised just fine, since large programs usually consist of multiple small files. Unless you use something like kdeenablefinal (in which case they are joined together). Distcc compiles in parallel, for example.

    18. Re:Four graphics cards! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what other gamers think but this gamer here will not buy another Ati card because their OpenGL support sucks and I need good OGL support.

    19. Re:Four graphics cards! by UnrefinedLayman · · Score: 1

      For what it's worth, Valve occasionally pops up a notice in Steam asking users if they'd like to participate in a hardware survey, so while it's true that the stats can be reported when running the CSS stress test it is not true that that is the only way they receive information for their surveys.

      I agree that using Valve surveys alone is a poor metric, but they're a leader for this type of poll and offer popular, high-end games like The Orange Box (Half Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, TF2), Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Quake Wars, Lost Planet (the first DX10 game), STALKER, and they're the sole purveyor of the entire Half Life franchise, so it's not like they're polling only a niche of CSS players.

    20. Re:Four graphics cards! by Wavicle · · Score: 1

      Um, that is someone talking about writing a GCC backend to target GPUs. Completely dissimilar to the question being asked: can you run GCC on a video card.

      --
      Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
      Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
    21. Re:Four graphics cards! by Wavicle · · Score: 1

      I would agree with you that it is a small segment (only 1000 Steam users), but just how much money is coming from just those 1000 users? A lot of these multi-card gamers are probably buying two relatively expensive, high margin cards. The R&D on NVidia and ATI's side is done, now that second card bought by gamers is just extra dollars in the bank for them.

      I'm not sure where your economic theory is coming from, I assume you don't actually work in the semiconductor industry. So let someone who does clue you in:

      First, those 1000 cards represent at most $300,000 in gross margin. That is about the cost of 2 engineers for a year (maybe less since they are both bay area companies).

      The R&D side is not done. Every new GPU that comes out must go through multi-GPU validation. The cost in people for this alone exceeds that $300,000 figure by several times. Add to that the cost of boards with logical analyzer headers, the cost of the logical analyzers themselves... Suddenly you're paying out at least $1 million per gpu to go through multi-GPU validation (if that is all it is costing them, it would be considered a terrific bargain by the industry).

      So it is costing them $1 million to get $300,000 is gross margin. Which is a fancy way of saying they're losing $700,000 per GPU. I have not added the non-engineering costs of multi gpu (sales, marketing, etc.).

      Strategically multi GPU is very important. Economically, it is a complete failure.

      --
      Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
      Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
    22. Re:Four graphics cards! by Thing+1 · · Score: 1

      Of course, there could be any number of problems with this brief analysis.
      I'll say! 200 * $100 = $20,000. That's about one month's expenses for a couple engineers (not salary, total expenses).
      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    23. Re:Four graphics cards! by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 1

      If ATI only came through with the goods that they hyped, such a accelerated video encoding using the cards, then there would be those of us with these on 24/7. I invested in 2xX1800 (while these things where expensive) and I'm still waiting to see a realistic return on that investment.

      My guess is that ATI said that "video cards can be used to accelerate video encoding", and you misunderstood it to mean "we are going to magically force the people who make your video encoding to optimize to use our current line of video cards for acceleration". Sorry, buying a bunch of hardware to take advantage of software that doesn't exist isn't an "investment", it's either a waste of money or an excuse to buy high end graphics cards to play video games.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    24. Re:Four graphics cards! by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You seriously need to get a sense of proportion on A.) what energy supply problems our society has and B.) what stuff uses how much energy.

      I'll give you a hint - no-one's going to have to give up having a ridiculous gaming computer until long after everyone's replaced their electric ovens. Things are different for servers and workstations, but the only rational reason why power consumption matters in personal gaming machines is the fact that cooling is noisy.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    25. Re:Four graphics cards! by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 1

      I don't think you can parallelize compilation of a single program.

      Where do people come up with this stuff?

      It's currently annoying to parallelize the compilation of a single source file, but non-trivail applications have a whole bunch of source files - so parallelizing compilation of applications is really easy. In fact, compiling the Linux kernel was one of the benchmarks that I remember seeing used to demonstrate the advantages of multiprocessor machines back in the 90's.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    26. Re:Four graphics cards! by skarphace · · Score: 1

      Your analysis is flawed. It assumes that every multi-GPU system owner owns a Steam game AND takes part in their survey. If I remember correctly, you could opt out of sharing system and usage data.

      I can only guess at the actual sales numbers but if all you would need is to triple that to make a profit, that's easy. I doubt Steam represents more then 10% of all gamers. Then we're assuming all the people running multi-GPU setups are using it for gaming too.

      Then, on top of that, this setup is barely out of experimental area. Games can't even utilize that much umph. So these people are just early adopters. Give it time and this part of the graphics business will likely grow much larger.

      --
      Bullish Machine Tzar
    27. Re:Four graphics cards! by Hemogoblin · · Score: 1

      Good thing I'm not responsible for their profit analysis ;)

    28. Re:Four graphics cards! by Wavicle · · Score: 1

      I was giving them the benefit of a doubt. Their multi-GPU design and validation costs for each generation likely stretch beyond $10 million dollars. nVidia doesn't have a fab of its own, so it must contract out samples for post-silicon testing. I think your "not everyone owns steam" is countered by my insanely low estimate of per-GPU validation cost. Remember, that's 1000 multi-GPU steam users across every GPU that has been made. If my $1 million figure is correct, they'd have to get 30x that many people buying the cards to break even. If it is, as I suspect, more like $10 million it would be 300x.

      As I said, it is an economic failure and done for purely strategic reasons.

      --
      Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
      Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
  2. How many pages? by Barny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    PAGE 1 of 42


    Ok, I can deal with it taking a few pages, and you wanting a few ad hits, but only taking up half of my screen width, and then only using 1/3 of the remainder for text broken by seemingly useless photos... not going to bother.

    Summery 4tw
    --
    ...
    /me sighs
    1. Re:How many pages? by Slashidiot · · Score: 0

      Yes, that's what I call an in depth review... wow. Really, I don't think I've never read a 42-page article. I've seen shorter books.

      --
      Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
    2. Re:How many pages? by EvilMonkeySlayer · · Score: 1

      You're right, I think click here for page 2 of 341

    3. Re:How many pages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I nudged my mouse and was assaulted with a barrage of roll-overs. Eurgh.

    4. Re:How many pages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      THG stuff is often quite long, the detail is helpful if/when you need it. Just read the first and last pages and you will get the talking points.

    5. Re:How many pages? by legoman666 · · Score: 1

      no kidding, I made it to page 6 or so of ads before I gave up.

    6. Re:How many pages? by Neil+Hodges · · Score: 1

      I don't know: with Platypus and NoScript it was somewhat bearable, other than the short pages.

      - Neil

  3. Obligitory Colbert Reference by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 1

    Did they get this platform from a guy who lives in a Ford Taurus behind a Wal-Mart?

  4. 25% increase in clock speed is.... by drspliff · · Score: 1

    If it translates to 13.5% or more performance in the same test then their onto a winner with the overclocking audience (that love numbers and driving a hard bargain).

    1. Re:25% increase in clock speed is.... by DrMrLordX · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately the stability of B2 chips past 2.3 ghz has been called into question thanks to problems with the Transition Lookaside Buffer (TLB). Anandtech was unable to get their B2 chip stable past 2.6 ghz despite the fact that it would run at speeds as high as 3 ghz. It is telling that reviews on AMD's supplied system (like Tom's) did not include any real stability testing of the much-touted 3 ghz B2 stepping Phenom X4.

    2. Re:25% increase in clock speed is.... by fitten · · Score: 1

      Only if they just like to overclock for the sake of overclocking. Even when you overclock the part to its highest (those who went to Tahoe played with AMD hand-picked chips that could overclock to 3GHz, everyone else had problems with stability at even 2.8GHz), it's still outperformed by a non-overclocked mid-ranged Intel part. So, even if some fanboi starts crowing about overclocking their Phenom(inal failure), almost anybody can say "Yeah, but my stock mid-range Intel part is still faster than your OC'd rig".

  5. For Gord's sake, not THG by JohnnyBigodes · · Score: 4, Informative

    For Gord's sake, not THG... They're well-known for accepting "tips" in the past, have a horribly laid-out site that favors 90% ads with 10% content, and their reviews are anything but "in-depth", catering for the lowest denominator. I also love it when they draw brilliant "conclusions" that contradict their own data.

    THG is a wart on the face of internet journalism, in fact, it can't even be called that. Unfortunately they still have too much weight for $ome rea$on.

    1. Re:For Gord's sake, not THG by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They used to be good, in fact they probably used to be the best. That's why they still carry some weight this long after they sold out and lost the dominance on hardware news.

    2. Re:For Gord's sake, not THG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh, the good old scam:

      1) Buy company with good reputation.
      2) Lower the quality of the products. Sell cheap-ass products for high prices.
      3) Open second company which competes with first company and sells the real thing
            at double price.
      4) Many people buy from first company because of good reputation. After they are
            disappointed they buy the expensive thing from second company.
      5) This goes on for a couple of years.
      6) Profit.

      Instead of selling one product at $1, you sell a cheap-ass product at $1 and then the
      good one for $2. Stocks of first company go to zero, stocks of second company go up.
      Buy low, sell high. Repeat loop.

      Same thing with Novell.

    3. Re:For Gord's sake, not THG by zerkon · · Score: 2, Informative

      The biggest reason I still go to their site is the cpu/gpu charts. google toms cpu charts if you haven't seen them. Whenever I'm building a computer for someone and I need to know at a glance which $SUPERAWESOMECPUNAME is better and if it's worth the price.

      --
      The Answer
    4. Re:For Gord's sake, not THG by lokal2b · · Score: 1

      History repeats itself. But if that's the case then let's follow this line of logic:
      1) Intel will release a 128-bit N-core CPU that will be dirt cheap and universally accepted and praised for a decade, or more (re: 8080, 8086, 80186, 80286)
      2) Intel will rely on this single, gargantuan leap forward to build it's product line for the next decade. (re: 80386, 80486, Pentium etc.)
      3) Competitor will beat Intel at it's own game by releasing chips that are just slightly faster, and just slightly cheaper (re: AMD)
      4) Competitor will release a 256-bit N*N-core CPU that will be competitively priced, but slightly underpowered, running a new instruction set they engineered after collaborating with the open source community that fixes many holes that were present in the previous 128-bit N-core from Intel, but goes further and enables programmers to write new tools that create new branches of software (re: AMD64)
      5) Intel will beat Competitor at their game by beefing up L1, L2, L3, L4, [Ln...] caches since etching out banks of transistors is cheap, then sell the cache laden 256-bit N*N-core chips for just more than Competitor, pushing them out of the market (re: EMT64)
      6) Step 2 (0:

      Who needs THG baby? The writing's on the wall!

  6. AMD underwhelms us, again. by Peter+Cooper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Much is made of the AMD OverDrive utility, by which the THG labs were able to OC the Spider platform by 25% (3.0GHz) using air cooling alone.

    And almost everyone with a Q6600 can get it up to 3GHz on air too, even on the stock heatsink. With something a little more special, like a Thermalight air cooler, speeds of 3.4->3.6GHz are not uncommon. If we look at the benchmarks in the TomsHardware article, the Phenom gets its ass kicked nearly everywhere across the board. It can be argued that this is because most apps are not optimized to work on quad-core chips yet, but even in the benchmarks where quad-core is clearly a benefit, Intel still edges out a respectable lead with their reasonably older technology.

    The advantages of the Spider platform are that you won't need to buy a new board for future processors

    We've heard that before! Okay, AMD has done something pretty clever with making the chips compatible across the board.. but I'm willing to wager that the percentage of PC owners who actually upgrade their machines year by year is reasonably low. There are a lot of enthusiasts who do it, and this is likely AMD's market if their performance wasn't so poor compared to Intel nowadays, but computer parts are cheap enough to get a new machine every couple of years instead. Certainly this won't be of any interest to the main manufacturers.

    Still, I'm glad AMD's there. Their presence is helping to keep Intel honest and the prices generally low, but as an ex-AMD diehard, I'm not seeing any reason to go back to them yet.

    1. Re:AMD underwhelms us, again. by darthflo · · Score: 1

      We've heard that before! Okay, AMD has done something pretty clever with making the chips compatible across the board..
      If we leave gaming/enthusiast and CAD/3D markets out, Intel has been doing just that for years. Coupled with their love for open source drivers, Intel-only systems are a great way to ensure linux compatibility. Nice example: Lenovo's X61: lspci lists 23 devices, of which only the cardbus bridge, firewire and sd card reader (i.e. stuff not critical to system functionality) are not made by Intel.
    2. Re:AMD underwhelms us, again. by corychristison · · Score: 1

      Disclaimer: This comment deals with my experiences and opinions. Please do not reply complaining or flaming because I do not share the same opinion as you.

      I've always enjoyed AMD's products... I don't know if it's some force from above, but whenever I deal with any Intel system, it "feels" slower. I'm not saying that it is, just doesn't feel as snappy.

      I have an (older) AMD system. It's an Athlon XP 2500+, 120GB SATA drive, 1GB generic DDR RAM. I run Gentoo linux.
      I'm not a gamer nor do I do anything too CPU intensive. My concern is how much power my system is sucking back, and how much heat it is putting out. That's it. The speed is great for what I use it for.

      These new processors seem to use a lot less power. When this system dies out (it was a little flaky a few months ago) I am going to go with who uses less power at that time. I would certainly prefer AMD, as I do want to support their efforts and I have never once had any issues with an AMD based system. Sadly, I cannot say the same about Intel.

      So, to keep this on topic and not just an opinion, I leave the following question:
      Who uses less power? I was looking at todays gen processors and right now AMD seems to be pushing out 65nm/65W processors. My price range for the processor is $100-$150 (canadian). In that area AMD has 4400+ - 5200+... what does Intel have that performs on par/better?

    3. Re:AMD underwhelms us, again. by poached · · Score: 1

      not to mention you lose features when you use older boards with new processors. For example FTA says Hypertransports goes from 3.0 to 2.0 (whatever that means) and DDR3 won't be supported if your board only supports DDR2, obviously.

      I used to intern at AMD during the K8 days (Athlon 64). It was awesome that they came out with the chip and kicked Intel P4's ass. But now I guess the juggernaut took notice and focused its efforts on regaining the performance title and look at what they were able to do.

      I also don't like the spin AMD is putting on with this spider platform. It feels too gamer orientated whereas Intel leaves it up to the board manufactures like Nvidia or formerly ATI to provide the gaming platform and it focused on making the chip. AMD really needs to focus on getting the OEMs to put their chips into their computers to be profitable, not by selling to a niche market, albeit with a high profit margin. Maybe that's what they were going for in the first place, to provide a platform, but I feel it's going the wrong directly. More integration isn't necessarily better and in the enthusiast market where the consumers want to customize everything, this is probably going against their wishes.

    4. Re:AMD underwhelms us, again. by turgid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've always enjoyed AMD's products... I don't know if it's some force from above, but whenever I deal with any Intel system, it "feels" slower. I'm not saying that it is, just doesn't feel as snappy.

      That's because intel's front side bus architecture, off chip memory controller and inefficient caches hinder performance, especially under heavy multitasking. You'll also note that multiprocessor (i.e. multicore) intel systems scale very poorly as the number of cores (or processors) goes up compared with AMD processors which have a more sophisticated design.

      As code becomes more parallel as a matter of course, we'll see these effects becoming more important. Next year, intel is bringing out a more AMD-like NUMA architecture (new processors, chipsets and motherboards) to try to address these issues. AMD has a 5 year headstart.

      --
      Stick Men
    5. Re:AMD underwhelms us, again. by Peter+Cooper · · Score: 1

      Good post, but as you're a user whose requirements are a couple of years behind the curve it doesn't make sense for you to buy cutting edge products.

      Regarding your question, nearly all of the Core 2 Duo 6x and 4x series processors are 65W. Depending on your supplier, you should be able to get a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo on your budget which would vaguely be able to keep up with an X2 6000+ but still have significant overclocking potential (even on stock cooler - these chips work so well that they almost seem designed to overclock). I've seen lots of people raving about even jacking the 1.8GHz Core 2 Duos up to 2.67GHz, although heat would definitely be a consideration!

    6. Re:AMD underwhelms us, again. by mollymoo · · Score: 1

      If you can find a suitable board, use a CPU intended for laptops; they are more power efficient than desktop CPUs.

      --
      Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
  7. Canned benches by DrMrLordX · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tom's Hardware agreed to the terms of AMD's carefully-managed benchmarking sessions. Way to drink the Kool-Aid, Tom's. Anand stuck up for his own integrity as a reviewer and produced a much better review of the chip. Moral of the story: If you want a Phenom X4, wait for the B3 stepping!

  8. 42 Pages... by darthflo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since THG managed to inflate this a wee bit too much, here's a quick summary of what's new:

    - Up to eight processing cores (one quadcore cpu, four single-core graphics cards)
    - Targeted, of course, at the enthusiast market.
    - Weird bug when running >2.3 GHz. Top-End model (Phenom 9700) not available until very later on. Disabling L3 Translation Lookaside Buffer fixes this and costs some 10% performance.
    - (According to THG) processors some 13% slower and cheaper than corresponding Intel models. Graphcis performance has more variations, nVidia stays undisputed performance king, with it's relatively new 8800 GT being arguably the best midrange choice.
    - Up to 42 PCIe 2.0 lanes total; Graphics via 2x16 or 4x8.
    - Power-efficient Northbridge (some 10 Watts of usage) and GPUs (especially in 2D mode which is, thanks to Aero, Aqua and Compiz, slowly disappearing)
    - Lots of critizism for stability problems in testing systems (not too troubling) four days before launch (troubling).

    Long story short: AMD, thank you very much for trying, I'll stay with, and continue recommending, Intel/nVidia.

    1. Re:42 Pages... by Hemogoblin · · Score: 2, Interesting
      ... and their conclusion:

      In the end, if you're looking to make the most of a long-term investment, AMD is without a doubt the better platform choice.
    2. Re:42 Pages... by darthflo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Strange. I remember, not too long ago, Tom's Hardware to be as Intel-friendly as it possibly could get. This time, AMD spent their marketing money in the right places, it seems.

    3. Re:42 Pages... by Ephemeriis · · Score: 1

      Long story short: AMD, thank you very much for trying, I'll stay with, and continue recommending, Intel/nVidia.
      Gotta love competition.

      A few years back I was a big fan of AMD/ATI for gaming. You could get a blazing fast CPU/GPU for quite a bit less than Intel and nVidia were offering. Left you money to throw into fancy cases, ginormous power supplies, light-up fans, big-ass monitors...

      These days I'm not so impressed with AMD or ATI. AMD is still making decent processors, but they don't seem to be top of the heap anymore. The price difference isn't that great between Intel and AMD, and Intel really seems to be turning out a better product. ATI... Well, I'm just kind of disgusted at ATI right now. Their hardware seems OK, but I really don't like the driver architecture. Don't like the fact that I have to download and install .Net separately.

      These days I'm recommending Intel/nVidia to anyone interested in gaming - due largely to the fact that AMD and ATI kicked Intel's and nVidia's asses for a while... And I'm sure that eventually AMD/ATI will make a comeback, and I'll wind up using their hardware again. Back and forth...and in the end the one who really wins is the customer...
      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    4. Re:42 Pages... by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 1

      These days I'm recommending Intel/nVidia to anyone interested in gaming - due largely to the fact that AMD and ATI kicked Intel's and nVidia's asses for a while... And I'm sure that eventually AMD/ATI will make a comeback, and I'll wind up using their hardware again. Back and forth...and in the end the one who really wins is the customer...

      Given similar price/performance between products, it's always a better consumer choice to buy from the financial underdog. Otherwise you risk healthy competition degrading into a single producer with a crap product. Currently AMD is producing excellent products in the midrange market segment (where almost everyone actually buys stuff), but for some reason everyone's turned into Intel/Nvidia fanboys - which is a horrible market strategy.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    5. Re:42 Pages... by gnuman99 · · Score: 1

      AMD has best performance for the buck. 99% of people would be happy with AMD X2 AM2 socket processors. That's what I use. I also use nVidia graphics - on-board graphics chips are quite good these days.

      Intel CPU prices are generally higher than AMDs and ATI drivers suck. Hence my decision. Oh, and memory bandwidth on AMD processors at least used to be high than Intel's - not sure where that is right now.

    6. Re:42 Pages... by Ephemeriis · · Score: 1

      Currently AMD is producing excellent products in the midrange market segment (where almost everyone actually buys stuff)
      For my customers, I price out whatever meets their needs. We sell plenty of AMD machines and usually the video card doesn't matter at all. For myself, I do a lot of gaming, so I am not generally looking at midrange stuff - hence my preference for Intel/nVidia at the moment.
      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    7. Re:42 Pages... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you kidding? Tom's was absolutely out for Intel blood during the P4/Rambus days, to the point where I was reading and saying to myself "Whoa guys, this is only a computer platform..."

      THG is a bit editorial. This is ok in my opinion, as sometimes its difficult to be completely neutral when it is clear one side of a mostly two-sided competition is completely F'ing up. Smart techies tend to be very passionate and opinionated about things. I will take an informative opinionated article any day over AP watered down news any day.

      So yeah, P4/Rambus era, THG was harsh on Intel. Since the Core2Duo release, they have been pretty harsh on AMD since they had almost nothing to bring to the table on the high end, the low end, or anywhere in between. Until the Core 2 Duo, I wholeheartedly recommended AMD to everyone and built several systems for family members off of AMD chips. It appears AMD is at least making an attempt now, but Intel is still the undisputed king of the hill right now.

      When is the recent trend of accusing someone with a positive opinion about a product of being a paid shill going to end? Its ok to have an opinion, and its even more ok to change it as the facts and environment change.

  9. 13%? Oh great! by LibertineR · · Score: 1
    Sort of like your wife's spending going down 13% along with her fidelity rating.

    Or, your heart surgeon costing you 13% less, but he went to medical school in Haiti.

    Or, you survived that Grizzly Bear attack, and lost only 13% of your face.

    Psst! AMD! That aint competition, baby!

    1. Re:13%? Oh great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not quite like that. It's like buying a car that's 13% slower, but also 13% cheaper, which gives you the same price/performance ratio, but gives you additional choice. Some people don't need the fastest system available and therefore don't want to pay the premium involved with it.

      How is this a bad thing? Oh wait, I'm expecting rational responses from the "ZOMG not teh fastest!" crowd...

    2. Re:13%? Oh great! by LibertineR · · Score: 1

      It is a bad thing, because it does not foster competition. Sort of the way that Ferrari has no fear of Ford. You pay less, but you GET less. Stalemate doesnt help AMD. We want AMD to succeed, because WE will be the winners. Had AMD come out with these processors 40% off of the Q6600, they would sell MILLIONS of them, and be back in the game. Instead, they are just playing "Me-too....almost", and nobody wins. In fact, AMD loses again, because they would have been better off with nothing new, until they could compete on a performance level. I have purchased 80 or so X2-6000s this year, because that is a price/performance argument worth fighting. That processor is fast ENOUGH, but WAY cheaper for people who dont need quad-core power. For those who do, they can afford the best, and AMD loses. I dont know who does AMD's market research, but whoever they are, they suck. If we dont get MASSIVE discounts on these chips in the coming weeks, the thing will be a massive dud, and Intel will continue laughing at AMD all the way to the bank.

  10. What exactly are you doing AMD? by Carbon016 · · Score: 1

    The 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 benchmarks on average 13.5% lower than Intel's Q6600 quad-core CPU...and the MSRP for the Phenom is about 13.6% less as well.
    So..another second-fiddle AMD chip? Are they going to try to release something better than the competition at some point or stay the cheaper #2 for another few years? I don't really understand their marketing scheme here. Gamers will pay more for better performance. Nobody is buying quad-cores just on a whim. Intel could cut their quad-core prices at any time - they've already got most of the market with them. So who wants to buy a slightly cheaper quad when they're still so expensive enough to be primarily for the people that have money to throw around? Not me - compatibility be damned. On a slightly off-topic note: you had a chance to fix your chip naming schemes and you wasted it!
    1. Re:What exactly are you doing AMD? by Hanners1979 · · Score: 1

      Is not about 'not trying' to create performance leading parts, but rather the simple fact that AMD don't have the manufacturing clout that Intel does. Regardless of engineering talent between the two firms, Intel have always been one step ahead with regard to manufacturing processes and die shrinks, and it's telling that the only time AMD have ever really led the market performance-wise for any period of time was when Intel made a huge mis-step with their Netburst architecture. Short of another slip-up from Intel, AMD are going to have to continue to carve out niche markets and compete on pricing.

    2. Re:What exactly are you doing AMD? by Carewolf · · Score: 1

      People will buy it because it is cheap. AMD survives like they did in the past by being cheaper than Intel and Intel being greedy. Intel has tried the non-greed option for year or so now in the hopes of smothering AMD, but sooner or later the Intel stockholders is going to demand Intel raises the prices to what people(fanboys) are willing to pay for they privilege of rooting for number #1.

    3. Re:What exactly are you doing AMD? by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 1

      Gamers will pay more for better performance.

      This is largely false. The vast majority of real gamers want to pay a moderate amount for decent performance. Hardcore gamers who are willing to spend $250+ on just their CPU (or video card) are a tiny minority.

      With this new Phenom release (and the 38xx video cards last week), AMD has very competitive platform for mainstream gamers. The only thing that really sucks for them is the overhyping of the high end by benchmark sites - many people will buy Intel because "it's faster" even though the products in their price range are actually worse. But that doesn't change the fact that this new Spider platform (with either released Phenom and either released Radeon HD 3800) makes for an excellent gaming computer for the price.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    4. Re:What exactly are you doing AMD? by mollymoo · · Score: 1

      So..another second-fiddle AMD chip? Are they going to try to release something better than the competition at some point or stay the cheaper #2 for another few years? I don't really understand their marketing scheme here.

      Do you think AMD could have made a better part than Intel, but decided not to? What a bizarre idea. It's overwhelmingly more likely that this is the best AMD can do.

      --
      Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
    5. Re:What exactly are you doing AMD? by Wavicle · · Score: 1

      The 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 benchmarks on average 13.5% lower than Intel's Q6600 quad-core CPU...and the MSRP for the Phenom is about 13.6% less as well.

      Yeah, this is just THG trying to please AMD. Newegg, which is not the cheapest around, sells the Retail boxed Q6600 for $279.99. The cheapest X4 9600 I can find is $291.97.

      MSRP is not street price. The Q6600 is 13.5% faster and also 4.1% cheaper.

      --
      Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
      Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
  11. AMD's slashdot ads.. Fail. by DraconPern · · Score: 1

    Ok, those virtual presentations by Hector (CEO of AMD) fails. Can't he be a bit more enthusiastic about the product line!? Another reason to never let a ceo talk to the public.

    1. Re:AMD's slashdot ads.. Fail. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FYI, he's not enthusiastic because AMD is letting him go.

  12. Holy crud batman! by drspliff · · Score: 1

    "PAGE 9 of 42"....

    Sorry I can't be bothered to click through 42 pages and over 200 adverts. If there were a text mode version I might consider RTFA.

    1. Re:Holy crud batman! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is always a text mode, its called "lynx."

    2. Re:Holy crud batman! by JaLooNz · · Score: 1

      There is... check out the address below.

      http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/print.html

  13. Deactivating cores by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    Interesting item in TFA about if one of the four cores is unstable or malfunctions, they disable it and sell the chip as a three-core chip. Now I'm no engineer, but I certainly hope that deactivating a core is done physically at the factory and not through software/firmware, otherwise I can imagine a generation of viruses that go around zapping people's cores...!

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:Deactivating cores by SargentDU · · Score: 1

      That is exactly where the defective core is deactivated, where else could that occur and them market it as an X3? Think man!

  14. Odd pricing by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The AMD's are less powerfull then the Intel in this race. Okay, no harm done, but why on earth does AMD then price them at the same dollar for performance ratio as intel? Lets say intel charges 100 bucks for 100 performance points, AMD now says, well we can't give you those same 100 performance points, instead we can only give 80, but aren't we nice, we only charge 80 bucks for it.

    Sounds nice in theory, but if I am buying a new cpu at the top of its range (and therefore paying a premium) I want to either have the highest speed OR a far better deal. Computer components often are priced on a curve, the slower, the cheaper, usually leading to a sweet spot where you get the best price for performance. Is it smart of AMD to make straighten this curve into a line? For 13% more power, intel just charges 13% more? No wonder they are losing once again, they used to be the company that was the best value for money. Perhaps they need a reality check AMD YOU ARE NO LONGER EQUAL TO INTEL, the days that your CPU's were better are over so you can't charge as much anymore.

    a performance of 80 for a price of 50, now that would be a sweet, I could then reason that, well I get less power, but I save a lot of money. At this rate, I might as well buy an older intel and get a far far better deal.

    It seems a pity AMD is once again second, the deals were so much better when intel and AMD where constantly at each others throat.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:Odd pricing by SargentDU · · Score: 1

      The AMD's are less powerfull then the Intel in this race. Okay, no harm done, but why on earth does AMD then price them at the same dollar for performance ratio as intel? Lets say intel charges 100 bucks for 100 performance points, AMD now says, well we can't give you those same 100 performance points, instead we can only give 80, but aren't we nice, we only charge 80 bucks for it. Because they need to make money too?

    2. Re:Odd pricing by Barny · · Score: 1

      Probably because these are not "top of its range" chips, they are bottom of the range ones, wait for jan/feb (well maybe April the way they are going) for the high end parts.

      --
      ...
      /me sighs
    3. Re:Odd pricing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh?

      From what I see prices are not linear with performance.
      You pay disproportionally more for slightly faster CPUs.

      I yet have to understand what's the point of paying that kind of premium...

    4. Re:Odd pricing by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      Lets say intel charges 100 bucks for 100 performance points, AMD now says, well we can't give you those same 100 performance points, instead we can only give 80, but aren't we nice, we only charge 80 bucks for it.

      Maybe I only have 80 bucks.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    5. Re:Odd pricing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about the comfort of a sports car with the performance of a sedan? Oh, wait...

    6. Re:Odd pricing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep in mind that for most people quadcores are a novelty. If all you want to do is have a quadcore for the sake of having a quadcore, then why not get the one that is slightly less? Your limiting factor will be single threaded performance anyways, and if it were that big of a deal you would have gotten a dualcore.

    7. Re:Odd pricing by owlstead · · Score: 1

      Sometimes I buy this. But I'm living in Europe, and each time I look at building systems, AMD is always cheaper *overall* compared to Intel systems with the same system configuration. CPU be buggered, motherboards and memory are the things that are needed and create the end price. Since AMD seems to run fine with slightly slower but much cheaper memory, AMD is the king for cheap self build systems. At our company we run Core 2 Duo's in our development machines, and I don't think they are much more expensive than AMD systems, so that's fine as well.

    8. Re:Odd pricing by Cleanskater · · Score: 1

      How are AMD and Intel not at each other's throat RIGHT NOW? AMD is grasping for a breath of air with the Spider platform--their stock prices have been slammed. The only thing AMD is able to do right now is to position themselves in the "midrange market" until their investment in ATI begins to pay off by giving them another radical design edge (with Fusion, etc.). Let's face it--any buy in the CPU market at the moment is a good deal. Spider isn't all about the CPU anyhow: if you want high performance games, it would be better to have 4 high end GPUs than the best Intel CPU and 2 similar GPUs. It's pretty funny that people once thought AMDs acquisition of ATI was foolish--its really the only thing they have going for them at the moment in my opinion. (Disclaimer: I own stock in AMD).

    9. Re:Odd pricing by saldate · · Score: 1

      Did you read the same reviews I did? As I understand AMD's pricing structure, it's more like you get 80 performance points for 100 bucks, which is obviously even more confusing. Phenom generally performs worse than Intel's lowest-end Q6600, but costs more. Have a look at the less-biased version: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153

  15. More easily digestible coverage at HotHardware by MojoKid · · Score: 3, Informative

    HotHardware has some pretty extensive coverage of the platform and new Phenoms as well. There's a lot fewer pages to sift through and more data on performance.

    1. Re:More easily digestible coverage at HotHardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Judging by your post history, you work for HotHardware.

  16. AMD ought to name it "Boris" by R2.0 · · Score: 1

    which would be AWESOME!!!

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  17. Forget gamers... by Svartalf · · Score: 1

    Think in terms of stream compute clusters. Four-way GPU setups make complete sense in this space and while
    the gamer crowd is a big spur for new tech, the high-performance cluster computing space is shaping up to
    be an easier target and just as much a spur for that same class of tech. Having said this, the fact that
    they're not upping the cache (which is where that discrepancy in performance in the benchmarks is REALLY
    coming from...) to match Intel's lead in this space (With an insane 8Mb of L2 on the top-end, it becomes
    a little tough to keep up...).

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  18. ExtremeTech Review (8 pages) by ThinSkin · · Score: 1

    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2218301,00.asp

  19. AMD and NVIDIA AMD MB still cost less and use less by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    AMD and NVIDIA AMD MB still cost less and use less power as well And where are the NV 7XX a chipsets boards?

  20. Price factor by DrYak · · Score: 1

    they're not upping the cache (which is where that discrepancy in performance in the benchmarks is REALLY coming from...) to match Intel's lead in this space


    The difference isn't that big. (~13% is mentioned in the /. blurb).
    Now throw in the price difference, and in fine, it'll probably turn out, as usual, that AMD remains an interesting solution that'll give the most for your buck.

    And, as though intel will be king for the enthusiast market, where gamers are willing to shell big wads of cash for some "Extreme Edition Intel" in order to squeeze out the tiniest last performance out of their gaming rig, on the other side AMD will probably meet success in the low and middle range machines.

    To go back to cluster and stream computing, the price per performance ratio may be interesting for clusters, because of the number of machines involved. If you can cut a lot from the price by going for a slightly slower solution that can be that can a success. You could still compensating the difference by throwing in an additional CPU while still keeping lower costs.

    Watt per performance is also something worth considering for cluster computing and the results of the die shrink between the HD 2900 and the HD 3800 will probably be worth looking in details.

    All in all, it may not be the ultimate power beast, but this platform could be interesting from a price and power point of view.

    (Now if you factor in that AMD has committed to provide information to help the opensource efforts, and is actively helping some stream-computing platforms like Brook [as an alternative to nVidia's CUDA], it can indeed get interesting for Linux clustering)
    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Price factor by Svartalf · · Score: 1

      Heh... There IS a reason that they bought ATI. It's the very thing you're telling me here.

      To be honest, the bang for buck comparison between the top-end is something I didn't compare. There's slots
      in the price points where it makes slightly more sense to buy Intel, there's quite a few slots where you're better served with an Athlon64 class CPU. I picked a slot where it made sense for a Core Duo for my last purchase- in 4-6 months, the next major upgrade will be for a quad-core rig lashup. I'll probably do the price comparisons then and probably arrive at an Athlon/Opteron solution. :-)

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  21. Print view by killa62 · · Score: 1

    http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/print.html

    There you go, no more clicking!

  22. DECIMAL ERROR ALERT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ATI sold about 200 extra cards...$100 in profit off each card. That's...$200,000.

    Did you computer this in Excel 2007?

  23. Recommend AMD, will ya? by Britz · · Score: 1

    The sole reason why Intel does have an edge is because of AMD. Without AMD you would still heat your home with a nice Pentium 4, single core, at about 3 Ghz this year. Competition is very important. And in the performance per dollar AMD is at least on par with Intel, so there is not even any harm done by suggesting it. But if everyone starts suggesting Intel AMD will go down the drain. They are pretty close anyways.

    Or do you want to start paying upwards of 200 dollar for a processor again? Just look at what monopoly has done with the OS market. And remember that Intel is hated even more than Microsoft by many in the industry.

    1. Re:Recommend AMD, will ya? by Red+Herring · · Score: 1

      "You should buy a less-optimum system now, so I can have a better one in five years."

      Screw that. I didn't buy Intel a few years ago when P4 sucked, and I'm not going to buy AMD now when they suck.

      > And remember that Intel is hated even more than Microsoft by many in the industry.
      Ermm... and AMD is hated by many as well, I assume? What's that got to do with the price of tea in China, or what processor is in my PC?

      --
      #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    2. Re:Recommend AMD, will ya? by Britz · · Score: 1

      Actually, if you have the money for a Core2 Q6600 and a board to go with it go ahead. They are so cheap because of AMD. But AMD doesn't even make processors that fast. So they have no choice but to sell them cheaper. And for processors half as expensive AMD packs more punch per dollar.

  24. The Humble Guys? by fishbowl · · Score: 1

    I didn't think THG did anything since the early 90s.

    --
    -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  25. SSE by wikinerd · · Score: 1

    Having Intel and AMD with different SSE4 sets is a headache. Couldn't they just agree to a standard?