AMD... you better come up with something quick.

[JungleMan]

Basically, I'd say that the Prescott would be a better choice than the Clawhammer simply on the basis of its .09 micron process.

Die shrink does not always mean better.

NV30 is 0.13u and the 9800 Pro is 0.15u...does that mean that the NV30 is better than the 9800 Pro? the NV30 (well, at least the Ultra) can't OC worth chicken turd, and the 9800s sometimes get 20% core OCs on stock cooling.

Remember AMD's 2200 T-Bred A, which could barely get 200Mhz above default?

Besides, you can't make decisions based on a die shrink. Even if Prescott may OC better, who knows what the chips might do architecture-to-architecture. 64-bit is some pretty big stuff.

 

[Pepsi274]

in all of my computer i have had nothing but amd and im happy with there performance and im sticking w/ amd they do the same thing as intel make a computer run and thats all i need the cpu to do then i will go w/the cheaper one amd and play my games on my computer lol nothing against intel just that the last intel i had was a p2 200 mhz cpu

 

[Mark Larson]

AMD is stressing the unimportance of Mhz. They're more likely to increase the pipline length by huge amounts than increase their clock speed. It's the approach they chose to take when the released the Athlon XP, and they will stick with it. Intel chose to reduce pipeline length and increase clock speed.

You're off the mark again. Not even off the mark, that "information" is completely false.

Intel chose to increase pipeline length with the P4 dramatically, while AMD chose to let it remain the same from the Athlon to the AthlonXP. AMD relied on their engineering prowess to have a core scale from 500Mhz to 2Ghz with nothing but two die shrinks. (0.18 and 0.13).

A short pipeline design is more conducive to performance than to clock speed, while a long pipeline design is the other way around.

As a comparison, the P4's pipeline is 20 stages long, while the AthlonXP's is 10. I can't condense all the stuff i've read across the web into one post, so i suggest anyone who wants to read up on why the AthlonXP performs better should google. There's tons of info out there.

I'm having to control myself - i got banned once because i tried to correct some other poster who presented patently false information like this and they thought i was flaming. Misinformation irritates me when it is so easy to dig up volumes of information with a few keystrokes.

I just wouldn't want to buy a Clawhammer knowing that a few months later a new core revision will come out.

Man, i sure would've hated to buy a P4 when they came out. Who knew they would put me through performance hell, expensive RAM hell and two socket changes, along with a core revision just a few months away?

 

[Gautam]

I'm really sorry for irritating you. I know how it feels, believe me. I meant to say that AMD shortened their pipeline length and Intel shortened. This is what I get for having only 5 hours or so of sleep, and posting during lunch in school, while trying to prevent myself from getting kicked off. I had the whole pipeline thing mixed up. I'm still going to stand by most of the other stuff I posted. Obviously posting that much with my severe lack of knowledge was going to get me flamed to some degree... AMD will only shorten their pipeline length further. This means that, at stock, they will invariably have far lower clock speeds than Intel. A die shrink leads to less power consumption, and less heat production. I don't think anyone can possibly argue with that, or possibly argue that those are bad things. The NV30 suffers from many other problems, therefore I don't think that NV30 vs. R350 is a suitable example. However I do agree that the T-Bred A's were not exactly the greatest overclockers.

 

[JoJoMoJo]

Oh yes we AMD lovers cant wait to see what AMD has maybe that 64. Hell why not all wait and see after all Im sure we will receive the same as we have in the past.......with bs supported motherboards that have a hard time running what they claim to achieve ........and ya haveing to run them to bios corruption to be competitive. I figure with the amount of processors and motherboards I buy from AMD in a year...... That Intel isnt anymore expensive. GoodBye AMD Hello Intel. Ill leave others to be the guinea pigs for your products and supporting devices now on. Ya Ya Ya about the 64bit when windows hits........let me ask you this....when have you ever known intel to sit still? That ton of R&D money is just wasteing away right?

 

[Mark Larson]

Well, considering AMD owned everything Intel for 2½ years from the launch of the Athlon to the launch of the P4 Northwood, i think AMD has the cojones and will get my money.

And if you're having problems with AMD, you'll probably have problems with Intel. Its like saying Macs are more stable than a good Windows XP machine. They aren't. Good luck overclocking an Intel-made board anyway they're the ones noted for stability.

Anyway, it all depends on the person. The AMD rigs i build always elicit more "oooh this is fast" comments than other people's Intels. But then i'm intelligent and most people aren't.

 

[BigJk-47]

AMD will always have a future,take a look at gaming benches,I dont see intel "Crushing" AMD in the 3.0 vs XP-3000. The highpoint intel reaches is only a 10% increase.I dont see the point in wasting $$$$ for a 10% increase. I will switch to intel when I see benchmarks that have a 50% boost over AMD.That would impress me.Plus,what application requires a processor to run at 3.0ghz ???? If you 3Dmark you will see a difference and a minimal difference in gaming.

So...intel you better do somthing to impress me quick .

 

[treepop]

BigJk-47
you stated my point perfectly....10%.....ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww wow ......why would I spend extra $$$ for a 10% boost.....I thought the whole point of overclocking was to save$$$$ not WASTE! $$$....just my 2 cents

 

[big_cochino]

BigJk-47 wrote:

>Plus,what application requires a processor to run at 3.0ghz ????
>If you 3Dmark you will see a difference and a minimal difference
>in gaming


Well.......I'm editing video and burning DVDs. The conversion of
the video files from the .AVI "capture" format to the mpeg2 files
needed for use in TV style DVD players is *extremely* mHz
dependant. More speed = more projects per week = more $$$.

 

[Maxvla]

there are two schools of thought on overclocking.

1. buy cheaper chips to overclock them to make a better purchase. (probably most people here fall into this category)

2. buy whatever will o/c the absolute fastest. (it seems more of the intel people fall into this category)

there's nothing wrong with either. just depends on what you want and how you want it.

 

[sanford1]

I buy AMD just on general princples, without AMD's competiton there would be no 3gHz Intel processors, even the Intel boosters realize that. Competition is very healthy for us consumers in this case. Cautious corperations blindly support Intel because they think they need a "safe" choice in CPU's. I can afford to wing it and do anything I want, so I buy AMD and support the underdog.

What AMD needs to do to compete with Intels latest is increase memory bandwidth and the Opterons on die solution looks really good to me. If they can get the Athlon64 out with a really optimized integrated memory controller that's even better than the first Opterons, Intel better watch out. DDR2 needs to be supported also.

 

[Maxvla]

i agree completely gary. if amd can get all that done on the A64 then i think intel will have its hands more than full.

i hope they do get that together. closer they are the cheaper chips are.

 

[Audioaficionado]

there are two schools of thought on overclocking.

1. buy cheaper chips to overclock them to make a better purchase. (probably most people here fall into this category)

2. buy whatever will o/c the absolute fastest. (it seems more of the intel people fall into this category)

there's nothing wrong with either. just depends on what you want and how you want it.

If I had the spare bux, I'd have the best of both just to see for myself. I don't mind Intel, it's their prices that are keeping me out. AMD Tbreds are so good for so cheap that by the end of the year each member of my family will have their own 2+ GHz box.

 

[DaddyB]

Who's Gary?

Anyway... the on die memory controller for the A64 is only single channel, not dual channel like it's big brother so there goes half the bandwidth.

The A64 may have a 200mhz FSB (and RAM) which would be better then opie (opteron) except that, as I said above, it will only be single channel.

Some motherboards may use their own memory controller that will allow you to use an A64 with a dual channel setup but then you lose the benefits of the on die controller (lower latency etc.).

DDR1, DDR2... it's all the same if it runs at 200mhz (400ddr), the only reason to use DDR2 is to have 500mhz+ RAM (1GHz ddr.. yeah yeah, some will say technically DDR2 starts at 400ddr but that's not really accurate) which isn't going to happen if the on die memory controller is used.

What does it all mean? Who knows... wait for it to come out. My best guess says that the A64 is opie's little brother for a reason, it probably won't be quite as fast...even though its faster (CPU clock).

Ed wrote a good article which is a lot more in depth then what I said and he tries to give a rough estimation of the performance of A64 here.

 

[Maxvla]

Gary Sanford
[email protected]

 

[DaddyB]

Oh OK, now I see it in his sig...guess I should start reading with my eyes open..

 

[treepop]

all I know is I hope AMD comes out with a 64bit chip with quad memory and a .09 die running at 3gHz that would rock

 

[schismspeak]

there are two schools of thought on overclocking.

1. buy cheaper chips to overclock them to make a better purchase. (probably most people here fall into this category)

2. buy whatever will o/c the absolute fastest. (it seems more of the intel people fall into this category)

there's nothing wrong with either. just depends on what you want and how you want it.

2. Wont an amd at 2.45ghz out score a p4 @ 3.4ghz in 9/10 of all programs that dont use SSE2, including games.?

Or did you mean fastest as in ghz?

 

[RangerJoe]

AMD IS NOT GOING TO FALL. we have been over this MANY times before. because if AMD fell, INTEL would have a monopoly on the cpu market. im really not worried at all about AMD. they seemed to have done pretty well with the tbred's. and the pallys also ruled.

i will say one other thing though. intel is losing a decent selling point ASAP. their new chips run REALLY HOT. compared to the older ones, which you could run without a heatsink for a little while, and not kill the chip. now...they are just as hot, if not worse than the upper level bartons. and the opterons...they are nice and chilly with the extra help of the heatspreader.

 

[Maxvla]

AMD IS NOT GOING TO FALL. because if AMD fell, INTEL would have a monopoly on the cpu market.

just because AMD is the only thing keeping Intel from being a monopoly doesn't mean it will never fall.