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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 $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update."
finally...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
all these cores and benchmarks...
i still run computer with one core and no modern graphics card
Me too, it makes a great router.
Try transcoding some video one time kiddo.
Hell if I could get 24 atoms in one socket that would be fantastic for me.
There are more than a few things that AMD besides gaming and over clocking (Intel strong points) that make an AMD a good choice. I don't want to start holy war here but there is not much real gap here 10-5% in my tests at best. The price * power use thing shows AMD is a good choice in many places. Price alone makes me deploy more than a few AMD clusters. Don't just look at the max value on the "speedometer" to see how good a car is, we mostly drive at the speed limit. Take from it what you will.
Rest assured that most of the 1337 h4xx0rZ who will soon spew reams of artificial benchmark trivia are just demonstrating that what they really use their Maibatsu Monstrosity XP9000 system for is running a web browser.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Almost all those processes spend almost all their time idle or blocking on something, though, not contending for a core.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It gives us VM's - lots and lots of VM's. I can reproduce a production app environment entirely on one quiet little box, including the load-balancer, firewall and name servers. It used to take a half a rack of loud, expensive servers all with disks and other stuff that breaks and needs monitoring and replacing. I can't wait for the 8-core chips to become affordable.
Well if your load average is always less than 0.10 your computer is likely overpowered.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Way to belittle an excellent example of the usefulness of multiple cores.
Original HD production? Illegal to break DRM? So do you think it's only the occasional cinematographer or pirate who uses software based on FFmpeg and X.264 to transcode vids for HTPC or iPod? Because neither currently targets OpenCL or CUDA.
I have been wondering for quite some time - do regular joe consumers really need all those cores? OR is everyone buying into the marketing hype of processor manufacturers without thinking whether we would actually need that many cores??
First of all, any computer organization text will inform you that as the number of cores increase - scheduling amongst those cores becomes an exponentially costly issue in itself. This scheduling/load balancing of course has to be ultra low latency to maintain a reasonable throughput.
Not to mention the fact, that on software side managing threading and choosing instructions to parallelize is a big headache. Many decent programmers cannot get it right so that in itself defeats the presence of different cores.
Secondly - unless you are continuously doing protein folding, calculating eigen values of huge matrices, or are acting as a node for traffic in your part of the world -- most people's processor cores will spend a majority of their time idling or spin-lock. Is it any surprise then that both Intel and AMD are advertising technologies to power down three cores, boosting the power for the other three?? Simply because most end-users will rarely utilize all six of their cores simultaneously. Yes, that is even true no matter if you are doing heavy video transcoding or running multiple servers, and playing games simultaneously - you will still leave your cores without any task simply because unless the bandwidth of the memory bus catches up, your cores will be waiting for data to process.
This is why Intel's i-series architecture is superior to AMDs and likely the fact their processors cost more, because they have addressed the memory bus issue.
You have to realize your computer acts like a chain and it is only as fast as its weakest link.
I have been advising people that any new dual or quad processor will suffice - they should instead spend that extra money on buying a better motherboard, speedier RAM, and of course high-speed HDD.
Trust me when I say that just that approach above will yield systems that are actually much faster than coupling an i7/Mega-core behemoth with an old hard-disk and crappy RAM.
It is an altogether different matter that computers are already so speedy that most users cannot for the love of God discern between the speeds of any recent dual-core and a top-of-the-line processor - and it is not their fault -- the advantages now we are talking about are incremental. The power is present but cannot be harnessed. So any gloating is moot.
Your real-world usage is what exactly? Playing badly designed games?
I want to play badly designed games *while* I am compiling, listening to some music and possibly leaving my browser on with some badly written JavaScript running. I also want my CPU not to melt.
You would need at least a 5GHz CPU to match a current dual-core CPU in this area. The ongoing trend is to have more and more things running and getting updated in real time. An it has been for a long time.
Files getting indexed, illegal files getting downloaded, stupid GUIs getting rendered, music getting played, Interpreted languages getting JIT-compiled ...
Gamers are still stuck in the microcomputer era. The real world isn't. And there isn't really a choice in the first place, the choice is more cores and a better experience or getting stuck at XGHz and having to pipe liquid Hydrogen into your home.
I think we will see more CPUs with more cores and likely more storage units to avoid resource starvation. More speed is just not possible.
10 little-endian boys went out to dine, a big-endian carp ate one, and then there were -246.
For all us virtualization types more cheaper cores = more better. The future is in virtualization and I think AMD gets this.
watching HD porn of course!
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Modern IDEs do quite a bit these days beyond just organizing files and giving you a color coded editor. Between parsing your code as you write it, context-sensitive auto-complete, and dynamic recompilation of the files you're changing, there's plenty of things for it to do to try and make your life easier as a developer.
Intel started doing a bit more than "cut prices, but also released a huge speed bump" (BTW, remember P3 Coppermine 1.13GHz? ;p ), as shown by recent record-breaking fine from the EU and settlement with AMD (both almost $3 billion total? Supposedly Intel cheated the market for at least that much...imagine what AMD could've done with R&D and fabs if they would have the funds which were otherwise illegally funelled to Intel). The company for which you presumably do care about doesn't really share your enthusiasm for competition...the way they fought, it kept costs higher and quality lower on AMD side.
BTW, "Ok but they were still plenty good chips, they performed well enough for what most people used" in regards to P4 wasn't quite the case with first versions, which were much more expensive and slower than P3s they replaced. Plus lots of unsuspecting people of "CPU must be from Intel" type got Willamette Celerons, which were very castrated, cache-starved (as far as Netburst was concerned)...making them very slow, and a horrible deal.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Unfortunately for AMD there is little money in being the underdog of PC processors. Intels better process technology and income from high end chips like the 6-core i7* means they can set prices on the low-midrange stuff at a level that is comfortable enough for them while being extremely painful for AMD.
*Which unlike most extreme edition chips (which tend to cost a shitload of extra money for a marginal improvement over thier regular counterparts) doesn't seem that bad a deal to me. Afaict it will get you the performance of a lower end dual-quad (and more in processes where only some stages are multithreaded) at a similar CPU cost (2.4 GHz quad core 5500 series chips seem to be about $500 each, the 6-core i7 is about $1000) without the expense of a workstation board and chassis. The dual-quad soloution supports more ram though and has more total cache (though of course in the dual-quad that cache is split between two chips) which will be an advantage in some applications.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Anandtech managed to get a stable 4.0 GHz overclock with air cooling. It makes an already great deal all that much better in my opinion.
How is a $299 6 core/6 thread chip at 4GHz a better deal than a $199 4 core/8 thread chip that can also be overclocked on air to the same speed, and benchmarks far faster at that point?
On the other hand Youtube is filled with people doing HD-video, so I guess it's not such a small fraction of the users anymore, it's very close to mainstream actually.
New things are always on the horizon
I've always used AMD CPUs for their bang for the buck. I don't need bleeding edge performance.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
I have found that it doesn't matter for computer life if you have Genuine Intel, or Authentic AMD.
Want to know the stuff that actually matters?
1: First and foremost a decent PSU. This means the difference between a well made, stable machine versus one where components die of mysterious causes every few months. I have had great luck with Corsairs and Antecs. Just make sure to get one that has significant headroom between the estimated wattage and its rated wattage. Mainly because one of the most reliable ways to feed USB devices power is through hanging them from your machine, and a couple USB PCI cards. When in doubt, find a quiet 1000 watt power supply, and call it done.
2: A decent enclosure. Yes, people talk that cases are cases, so go with the cheapest. However, I've had enclosures last multiple motherboards. So might as well get a case that has rolled metal edges to minimize getting cut, a solid rack for hard disks, etc. Cooling is important, so it can't hurt to get a case that can support multiple fans.
3: Cooling. What can kill a machine is not enough air blowing through it. Getting a case and decent fan setup can make a machine last a long time.
4: Motherboard. Yes, it might be easy to go cheap on this, but this is what is controlling your CPU, and going cheap on this may mean major headaches in the future, especially if something partially works. You want to get a decent name brand motherboard, because the better ones actually have true hardware RAID on board (not hardware-assisted), which allows you to use two drives for your OS.
5: RAM. I've seen people buy pulls and then wonder later on why they keep having subtle problems, until I fire up a RAMtest utility and find areas with problems.
6: This is one thing that is important as everything else, but something not often checked after. A UPS. Unexpected power cut outs are horrific for equipment. Not just software with unexpected downtime, but hardware. Putting your machines on a solid UPS will easily prolong their lives a number of years.