AMD Launches First 45nm Shanghai CPUs

arcticstoat writes "The wait for AMD's next-gen CPUs is finally over, as the company has now officially launched its first 45nm 'Shanghai' Opteron chips for servers and workstations. 'AMD's move to a 45nm process relies on immersion lithography, where a refractive fluid fills the gap between the lens and the wafer, which AMD says will result in 'dramatic performance and performance-per-watt gains.' It's also enabled AMD to increase the maximum clock speed of the Opterons from 2.3GHz with the Barcelona core to 2.7GHz with the Shanghai core. Shanghai chips also feature more cache than their predecessors, with 6MB of Level 3 cache bumping the total up to 8MB, and the chips share the same cache architecture as Barcelona CPUs, with a shared pool of Level 3 cache and an individual allocation of Level 2 cache for each core.'"

Comments

Oh please.

[Moryath]

The two companies take turns one-upping each other for the bleeding edge, but every time (10 years running) I've specced out a mid-range (home gamer, single CPU motherboard) to low-end (grandma's email/photo machine) machine, AMD's been the way to go. It's a lot like trying to decide which company's video boards to pick if you're trying to make a game machine without breaking the bank.

Some people are Intel partisans, some people AMD partisans. Benching them and looking at spec, I've consistently found that AMD's got faster chips (for the same $) up to the "sweet spot" in the curve where price starts shooting upwards during the times I've been buying, but I also know there were times I was not in the market when Intel had done a price cut and AMD hadn't caught up.

I'm not going to call someone an idiot for their CPU choice, as it's a long-term purchase decision that has to be balanced with other factors (motherboard choice, RAM, video board, power concerns, cooling solution, etc) anyways. In fact, I recommend consumers try to stay OFF the "bleeding edge" because they're basically throwing money away on it; even if you buy the latest, hottest chip right from the factory it's obsolete by the time you get it home. Your best bet is looking at the curve, because there's always a spot (usually between $150 and $250) where the price starts to jump up exponentially for only an incrementally "faster" product. Buy at the spot beyond which the relationship between price and performance fails to be linear and you'll turn out pretty happy.

Re:Oh please.

[Colonel Korn]

Since the C2D arrived, I've been going with Intel. I usually don't overclock, but the C2D handles it so well with such little effort that I based my purchase of a $200 ~2.2 GHz chip on that alone. With the addition of a $30 heatsink I had it at 3.4 GHz with temperatures under 60 C at load (below the temperature seen at stock speed with the stock cooler, implying good longevity), back when there were no 3.4 GHz Duos and the closest thing cost about $1000. I have several friends who had never OCed before who did the same thing, all ending up with 2.8-3.6 GHz chips that all are still working perfectly and speedily ~1.5 years later.

Re:Oh please.

[LWATCDR]

I tend to agree. The honest truth is that and AMD 780G motherboard and one of the low power X2s makes a great system for most users. If you want to play games throw on a 3870 or if you really need it a 4850.
I just built a system for my wife with an ASUS 780G motherboard, X2 and 4 Gigs of ram. Total cost was under $200 and it runs very well.
If you not into high end gaming then AMD seems like a great choice.
I can hardly wait for 45nm AMD desktop CPUs to start showing up. I really want one.

Re:Congratulations!

[postbigbang]

If you're hinging your comments on the wafer size, you're blinded by Intel propaganda. Take a look at AMD's SPECjbb numbers, their cost per socket/core, and their threading for virtualization. Then perhaps you'll stop being an Intel shill.

Re:Clock

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing two CPUs based on clock speed alone is like comparing the speed of two cars by measuring only the RPMs of the tires. It won't get you anywhere ... you need to know the size of the tires as well!

Thus concludes my first /. car analogy. Thank you.

Re:Which to buy now?

[MBGMorden]

AMD is still doing OK on price to performance, but what I think is hurting them is that the margins are not the same, because CPU's as a whole are just so cheap now. I remember back when an ENTRY LEVEL off-brand chip like a Cyrix (or, AMD) cost $150. "Intel Inside" cost $350 or more starting out. We'll call that a 50% ratio. The AMD (and certainly not the Cyrix) chips were not quite as fast as their Intel competition, but to a high school student who was making $50 per week part time, I certainly didn't mind that small gap in performance.

Now today, the ratio has changed. AMD still beats Intel in price to performance, but not by the same ratios, and the margins are much different. If a $40 AMD chip is slightly slower than a $65 Intel chip, then that's great, but the difference is only $25. A lot of people are going to be pretty quick to drop the couple of extra $$ for the Intel chip. Particularly now that I've noticed that, quite often, when you go over to the motherboards, Intel compatible motherboards are often coming in just a bit cheaper than AMD motherboards.

Now personally, when I can, I still buy AMD at least 50% of the time, but the only reason I do that is because I remember the days when Intel's competition wasn't as tough, and I remember those days of $350 chips from them. I only support their competitors to ensure that that situation doesn't repeat itself. For people without such a goal though, Intel is certainly tempting.