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AMD Undercuts Intel With Six-Core Phenom IIs
EconolineCrush writes "As Slashdot readers are no doubt aware, Intel's latest 'Gulftown' Core i7-980X is an absolute beast of a CPU. But its six cores don't come cheap; the 980X sells for over a grand, which is more than it would cost to build an entire system based on one of AMD's new six-core CPUs. The Phenom II X6 line starts at just $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update."
In short this posting is old and not very accurate. So doubly pointless
all these cores and benchmarks...
i still run computer with one core and no modern graphics card
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
The problem is AMD is using an outdated architecture. More cores != more speed for general use. Yeah, if you are compiling your own software you can get things to work really fast with 6 cores but how many applications really take advantage of multiple cores? Very, very few. A single fast core can outperform a few slow cores in general usage and AMD seems only concerned with getting more and more cores on a single CPU die which really doesn't translate to great performance in the real world for general use.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And additional benefit of AMD processors is that they all support ECC RAM.
I have four cores. I run an IDE and an AppServer at all times, which uses up at least two cores. Then there is my bit-torrent app and...
Seems like you can easily use all those cores.
Blar.
BIOS updates come out all the time.
Yes actually...I've worked with so many boards that were made for AM2 that were made long before Phenom came out that work phenomenally with Phenom chips after a quick bios update. Now if your talking a prebuilt HP special POS, well that's your own fault.
yah except with intel even if the new cpu used the same socket the new chipset was required for the new cpu forcing an upgrade 755 broke the mold but intel are back to there old tricks with 2 or 3 cpu sockets that ARNT compatible with each other amds guilty of it too 754 949 939.. but they eventually chose 939 for the definitive socket for the first gen 64 bit cpus then moved on to the AM sockets all are compatible with each other AMx doesn't work in AM3 BUT AM3 works in AMx
I am running an M4A78T-E with ATI HD 3300 integrated graphics. It does surprisingly well. I have not doled out any money for new high end games for a while, but it easily handles games that brought my previous graphics card to its knees (it was top of the line in 04). I am eventually going to get a modern graphics card so I can play around with OpenCL, but I really have not felt a pressing need for it with my gaming habits.
then DONT buy an SiS or VIA based mobo buy one with an AMD chip set or an NVIDIA chip set VIA if your desperate for cheep
Yes. This is far from the first time a new CPU has been supported on older boards by updating BIOS.
It seems Intel doesn't get even a "honorable mention" until page 3. At $120 price point, Core i3 gets a look in. Oh, they also don't recommend anything above about $160 to quote Tom's: "Best gaming CPU for $190: None
and then... you stopped reading.
Best gaming CPU for $200:
Core i5-750
The new Core i5 brings top-of-the-line Nehalem-class performance at a $200 price point. We recently awarded it our Recommended Buy honor after seeing it stand up to more expensive CPUs in games and other demanding apps.
They don't recommend spending more than $200, though.
Your anecdotal stories are really only relevant to you. You'd be better off on /. presenting some sort of statistical evidence for your claim otherwise it's simply FUD and readers are correct to dismiss it as such. We're all here for conversation so if you have a real point bring it.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I've noticed some IDEs are annoyingly more CPU hogging than a lot of other applications I run. Code::Blocks, for example, seems to start eating up CPU usage after being kept open with not even a very large amount of files open. It gets worse with more files open, but I've seen it happen with relatively small projects. I've seen the same with other IDEs, also--I've just been using Code::Blocks with one project I've got going lately, so it's most fresh in my mind. I'm not quite sure what it's doing, but some of them seem to like eating up CPU even when the window is off on another virtual desktop. That seems to affect me more on Linux, though. On Windows, I usually close what I'm not using, because it drives me nuts having so many windows open with only one desktop area to work with. As such, I'm not sure how the comparison goes...
Hell I'm pretty much an intel guy and even *I* wouldn't insult amd's reliability that much, even dating back to the socket 5/7 era. With the exception of overheating parts (which AMD was initially notorious for, until intel decided to create the P4 just to say they could technically beat AMD in ALL areas of cpu design (:D), amd parts have rarely been any less reliable than intel so long as the peripheral components didn't fail (PS, video card, keyboard/mouse shorting, etc). Quite frankly out of the myriad of AMD based systems my friends have had, the only ones I've seen dead were due to fan failures, and almost to a T those were Athlon XP era parts from being the on board thermal diode. After that, there hasn't been a single failure I'ev seen that wasn't DOA from the factory.
Maybe you'll be happy to know there are other alternatives that are very interesting appearing on the CPU manufacturer radar:
1)Godson 3A(4-core) and 3B(8-core).
http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gmw.cn%2Fcontent%2F2010-04%2F21%2Fcontent_1099818.htm&sl=zh-CN&tl=en
www.lemote.com will also have a 3A offering in August.
2)Nivida Tegra T20 seems to also be a 4-cores among other cool features.
http://www.clonedinchina.com/2010/01/viewsonic-vtablet-101-android-tablet.html
I'm in a computational biology lab. I extensively benchmarked intel vs. AMD. We run different kinds of calculations, some of which will use a whole node's worth of processors and others that run just on a single core, but we run tons of them at the same time. AMD is a tremendous value in either scenario. Intel processors are interesting if you can only have a certain small number of nodes and are only trying to maximize processing power rather than cost effectiveness, but AMD's approach of just giving you a bunch of cores on the cheap has been great for us.
Don't doubt for one minute that Intel gets that too.
That's why intel disables their VT instructions on certain CPU's
People, what a bunch of bastards
I even remember back in the early 2000's walking into a local computer shop, I needed a mobo asap, and one of the sales reps told me that AMD CPU's were, "Garbage. We don't even stock any AMD parts."
back in 2003 i ordered a custom built machine at a local shop, they favored intel, but since the northwood 3.0 GHz (only intel chip i cared about at the time) was WAY out of my budget (700 euro cpu, 300 euro mobo), i insisted on an athlon XP. The guy tried to convince me that amd makes unreliable shit and overclocks their own stuff and such, but i insisted.
I got my system, and was happy, but after i while i found out it was running at 100 mhz FSB (as opposed to the specced 166 mhz), they had just upped the multiplier to have the core clock match the specs (yes, my athlon XP 2600+ does not have a multi-lock, none of those chips did until the barton core came about). I asked the guy who built it about this and he claimed that he could not get the system stable at 166 mhz (implicitly blaming AMD). A few years later i found out the stick of ram he had used has errors in it, and doesnt run stable at 166 mhz, causing the instability. Just last weekend i swapped some different ram in there, upped the FSB to spec, and the system is solid as a rock.
moral of the story, people slagging off AMD for stability and such are tools and dont know what they are talking about
People, what a bunch of bastards
So do you think it's only the occasional cinematographer or pirate who uses software based on FFmpeg and X.264
AMD and Slashdot are located in the United States. In the United States, the encoding process that x264 uses is subject to royalty-bearing patents, and royalty-bearing patent licenses are incompatible with the copyright licenses for FFmpeg and x264. So anyone using FFmpeg and x264 is a pirate, except possibly in one or two corner cases that someone is likely to chime in to clarify.
to transcode vids for HTPC or iPod?
Before this discussion succumbs to Layne's Law, let us clarify something: Are we referring to major-label video or homemade video?
For anyone that plans on using this CPU as a workstation or light server chip, this is the best way to go. I recently priced an Asus M4A785TD-V EVO motherboard and it's only an amazing $120. (Comes complete with a built in low powered graphics card too) Pair that with this Phenom X6 and ECC ram and you have an amazingly great value Virtualization or Parallel rendering system. This chip is probably overkill for consumers and gamers but for the folks who can use it, it's an amazing steal. :) In any event, I work for a small company and so far AMD's proven to be the best value for light servers. Intel's primary best designs and strengths are in the Laptop market where they make advanced chips but on the Desktop I still find AMD to be great.